We watched the extended version of
Brotherhood of the Wolflast night. It makes more sense, in that it's possible to follow what's happening, but no more sense in terms of WTF would anyone think THAT was a good idea?!?
But then I started (over)thinking, and it's got a lot going on. There's the obvious thing where the "Brotherhood of the Wolf" is killing wolves and scapegoating them, but Mani and Fronsac are the actual brothers of the wolves. They never say what Fronsac's totem is, although presumably Mani read it for him. I'm guessing wolf or lion.
Then there's some neat motifs of disguise: Everyone first appears as something else, from the soldiers dressed as women to Mani in European garb, to the Brotherhood themselves, to the Vatican spy. Even the wolf presented to the court is a fictional construct, as is La Bete (which turns out to be wearing a disguise too.
Only the Marquis le Mullet stays the same, but even he is first shown as an old guy about to be (deservedly? we don't know) guillotined, and it's only at the end that we recognize the Revolution took the good with the bad.
And, aside from Monica Bellucci's costumes being amazing, there were some neat costuming choices: Marianne wears red at first, like the rest of the Brotherhood (even when not in BotW uniform) but as she realizes her own identity she starts wearing blue.
Most impressively, the movie had a theme - what is savagery? Who are the real animals? - rather than just being a slasher flick.
I'm still not sure I'd recommend it for anything beyond Mani's fighting...but hey. An attempt at depth.
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On a different topic, I titled my QoS review "Previously Drilled Oil Fields."