Compile a list of Shakespeare's top five tragedies, and Titus Andronicus . . .probably won't be on it. It's a brutal play, modeled on the revenge melodramas that were fashionable at the time, in which terrible people do terrible things and eventually meet a terrible fate. The play has bombastic and bloody charm, but it lacks a certain nuance when compared with, say, Hamlet. The Hungry (2017) is a different story.
The film opens with a New Year's Eve party, attended by two families. The Ahujas consist of wealthy patriarch Tathagat (Naseeruddin Shah), hapless son Sunny (Aejun Gupta) and spirited daughter Loveleen (Sayani Gupta). The Ahujas are joined by Tathagat's right hand man Arun (Neeraj Kabi). The Joshis, meanwhile, consist of widowed mother Tulsi (Tisca Chopra), golden child Ankur (Suraj Sharma), and her other son, Chirag (Antonio Aakeel). The families are close; Tulsi is the daughter of Tathagat's old business partner, Ankur and Loveleen are in a relationship, and Sunny is nursing a hapless crush on Tulsi. During the party, something goes terribly wrong, and Ankur is discovered dead, an apparent suicide.
Two years later, Tathagat is released from prison (for white collar crimes) just in time to preside over the preparations for Sunny's and Tulsi's wedding. Sunny is happy because he may be a coked-up loser, but he's finally landed the girl of his dreams and a place in the family business. Tathagat is happy because Tulsi agreed to sign a very generous prenuptial agreement. Loveleen is happy because her obnoxious boyfriend Bentley (Karan Pandit) is present. And Tulsi is grimly determined, because she knows Tathagat is responsible for Ankur's death, and she and Arun have hatched a plan to wipe the Ahujas out.
Chirag is not a part of the revenge plan, and so Tulsi is horrified when he shows up at the wedding unannounced. Before she has a chance to explain things to Chirag, he gets into an argument with Loveleen which ends in an act of horrifying, brutal violence. (I am not kidding - I was genuinely horrified by the brutal violence.) Tulsi asks Arun to send Chirag back to London while she cleans up his mess, but neither of them quite succeed. Loveleen manages to leave a clue for her father, and he starts cooking up a revenge scheme of his own.
Meanwhile, the film keeps flashing back to the New Year's Eve party, revealing more and more of what actually happened to Ankur. And there are several loving shots of fine food being carefully prepared, just to ensure that if you know Titus Andronicus at all, you know exactly where this is heading.
The Hungry isn't an exact adaptation of Shakespeare's play; the characters (apart from Ankur and Loveleen) are still terrible people doing terrible things, but they are motivated by more than the simple love of evil, and the film has some of the nuance that the play is lacking. Making the Tamora equivalent the protagonist rather than Titus is also a new and interesting twist.
However, one thing the film and play definitely have in common is violence. Not elegant, stylized violence, nasty and brutal violence perpetrated on helpless people, with graphic and lingering effects. If you choose to watch this movie, be prepared.
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