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| Found Titus Andronicus in complete works of Shakespeare |
Just watched a movie called The Hungry. It has Naseeruddin Shah, Tisca Chopra as its main leads. It is directed by Bornila Chatterjee. Did not know anything about the movie, just stumbled across it on YouTube. In the movie everybody gave a low key performance, everybody underacted. And that created a slow horror. When we used to prepare notes in our university days we used to use a line very often in our answers, "an impending doom lurking large on the horizon". This movie is that. Towards the end I felt I know the story, felt an itch you know! Then found out that the movie is based on Titus Andronicus.
Who could have written about such horror, brutality other than "the man" himself. Wanted to write "the bard", but thought "bard" is more relevant to his sonnets and comedies. Titus Andronicus is Shakespeare's first tragedy, and probably his most brutal one. I read somewhere that Titus Andronicus foretold what to come in terms of his later tragedies, but I think those are mellower compared to this one. Yes, the blackness of hearts became darker and blacker, hatred became thicker mixed with malice in his later tragedies but something about Titus Andronicus makes you forget to breath for few seconds.
Nowadays every thriller-murder-mystery writer is strive to create a more brutal world, right now I am reading a Jo Nesbo where the murderer super glued a victim to the floor of a bathtub and then slowly turned on the tap. Recently, I saw 2 movies, Siccin 1 & 2. Got very scared, but realized everything has already been written by Shakespeare long long ago. And now do not say that no no all are written by Bacon or Marlowe or Blake or Queen Elizabeth herself! And tomorrow some eager aspirant of PhD is going to say that they were actually written by Queen Elizabeth's footman!
Shakespeare got this capability to create a world filled with flowers and fairies and beautifully scented forest and he also created this black hatred that made people embark on such a journey of revenge.
At the end I was more appalled by witnessing pure impossible hatred that can possibly reside in people's heart than by the sheer brutality of it.
Everybody is thinking I am a ghoul who takes pleasure from only gory stories, much like Raj's girlfriend Emily, but it is not true. But romantic comedies, sweet love stories often make me too much aware of its absence in the world, and as a result makes me sad. Philosophical bildungsroman makes me aware of the fact that I am not writing one, but reading one! End result...sad. But after watching an adaptation of Titus Andronicus, not to mention a much mellower version than originally how Shakespeare wrote, I feel so restless that now I am about to take refuge in cute cuddly cat videos!
