The sense of abandonment felt by those activists working around the clock to try and help the living and count the dead is painfully clear.
Waking the Dead Keith Gordon's painfully earnest screen adaptation of Scott Spencer's novel grasps at a fusion of historicism and heartbreak we normally expect to find in Hollywood epics.
"Instead of making real changes, SeaWorld is adding meaningless cosmetic decorations to its stadiums, continuing to force orcas to jump and splash for a reward of dead fish, and painfully inseminating dolphin mothers," Tracy Reiman, Peta's executive vice-president, said.
Because it was dead, its form intimated painfully that it had once been alive.
The nation's obligation to honor its war dead has been shockingly and painfully dishonored at Arlington National Cemetery.
One is a painfully realistic, lifesize stone figure of the dead Christ, eyes closed, chest emaciated, body taut.
It is this aspect of Murder that most recalls The Killing, which dwelt so painfully on the stifling effect of grief on the dead girl's family.
What is close up is the adolescent son's painfully confused emotions about his potent, stylish father, his dead mother and his father's sexy, alluring second wife, with whom Nuri falls adoringly in love the moment he meets her.
Both the poet and the dead are abroad in the night, walking together, though painfully far apart.
It may be easier to admire than it is to love, but Dead Centre make the most of nothing, making absence painfully tangible and forcing us look hard into the glare before the lights fade to black.
