The Pain And The Pity

The film starts with the credits. The cast of characters drifts across moving cloud formations to repetitive e-guitar, simulating an atmosphere of deep contemplation after an exhilarating film in the cinema. Dark indistinguishable silhouettes and computer-generated voices complain about a snafu with the credits. Apparently, the actors’ names were cited incorrectly. And everyone is wondering: “Where is our director?”
But Phil Mulloy, both the actual director and the one referred to in the film, does not appear on the screen. The almighty Director is, at best, impersonated in the film by a prophetically whispering spider that orders the protagonist Roger to finish off his fellow actors one by one. Admittedly, Roger stands out against the other black masks with his American accent and angular facial contours. But his sketchiness leaves the viewers a lot of leeway for their own projections.
The animation, reminiscent of shadow theatre, plays with genre quotations, especially from mystery films – and not entirely without irony. Ingeniously, the British director incorporates our potential reactions to his film into the plot with, for example, a furious voice interjecting: “The drawings could be more expressive!” With such enigmatic images as a historical photograph of his hometown Wallasey and a portrait of him as a child, he also establishes autobiographic references, occasionally giving rise to the creeping suspicion that we are witnessing a conversation between Mulloy and his creations. As the final installment in the “Christies” trilogy, ”The Pain And The Pity” confirms once again Mulloy’s interest in the dark side of human nature and his uncompromising “take it or leave it” approach. (rr)