Forgot to mention...

On the subject of movies of interest...

Titus:
Based on Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus, Titus is one seriously f***ed-up story. Seriously! I feel this play presents somewhat of an antithesis to Hamlet. The title charachter in Hamlet meditates upon the justness, the rightness of seeking revenge for the murder of his father by none-other than his brother, Hamlet's Uncle, who then proceeded to claim the throne and the Queen of Denmark. He piddle-paddles around for four acts, and then finally becomes resolved in the fifth to...do nothing. If it's gonna happen, it's gonna happen - to paraphrase.

Conversely, (and I speak here from the movie, having never read the play) Titus Andronicus, the aforementioned really screwed-up play, doesn't exactly set out to get vengeance, but vengeance does it get, and bloodily so. Titus, a veteran and much-venerated military 'person' of Rome, returns from fighting the Goths to find the old emperor dead and the two sons of the dead emperor fighting for the throne . Titus has captured the Goth queen and her three sons, the eldest of whom Titus sends to be slaughtered, his entrails an offering for the Gods. The Goth Queen pleads for her son, but Titus, ever a slave to duty and the Gods, turns a kindly, but a deaf ear to her, and has her son carried off. Wrong move, Titus. The Goth queen eventually marries the new emperor, and turns her remaining sons loose to rape and maim Titus's daughter, Lavinia, and to kill her husband and frame two of Titus's sons for the crime. Those two sons are carted off to be executed, but a missive from the emperor comes and says that if Titus will but cut off his hand and send it to the emperor, he can have his sons back. Titus quickly and gratefully acquiesces, sending his severed hand to the emperor promptly. His hand is sent back along with the heads of his two sons - a jest or the like from the queen. His eldest son is then banished, and Titus is left with his grandson, his brother, his ravished daughter Lavina (sans hands or tongue), and only one hand. The queen then tries to toy with his apparently diminished reasoning, and presents herself as Justice, and her two sons play parts in this farce which seeks to convince Titus to call his son back from banishment. Titus, seemingly taken-in, agrees, but stipulates that Justice's two sons, who 'look remarkably like the empress's sons' remain with him. They think he is mad, and consent. Away goes the empress, and then the two sons are taken inside and slaughtered, their blood caught in a basin held by Lavinia. Titus then invites his son back from banishment, and then invites the emperor and the empress and their court to dine at his house. He serves them meat pie. Do you see where I'm going with this? He asks the emperor if it was right for some character in a story to slay his ravished daughter, and the emperor responds in the affirmative, saying that no maid that had been ravished (read: raped) should outlive her shame. Whereupon Titus kills his daughter Lavinia, throwing the house into turmoil. He reveals that Lavinia what raped and maimed by the empress's sons, and when those sons are called upon to account for themselves, Titus maniacally states that the boys are in that pie that all did feast upon. The empress starts retching, but Titus spares her from any disgust or grief by killing her, whereupon the emperor kills Titus, and Titus's un-banished son kills and then becomes the Emperor. Revenge is sweet. And f***ed up.