Titus (1999) User Reviews

Madness

[thniels · 8/10 · 19 December 2004]

Titus Andronicus is the strangest of Shakespeare's tragedies and the tragedy which most underlines the modern day observation that his tragedies are often comic and his comedies fairly tragic. Particularly the final chain murder has always made me laugh in the theatrical renditions and this one is definitely up to par. As for the rest of the movie, it is a mix of beautiful images, wonderful acting, rotten acting and failed attempts to surrealize an already surreal play. Anthony Hopkins is almost perfect as Titus, Colm Feore pretty good as his righteous brother and Jessica Lange intolerable as Tamora, while most of the rest range from mildly indifferent to pretty okay. As for Aaron in the shape of Harry Lennix he is actually quite convincing albeit not quite in the same league as Kenneth Brannagh who did the all time finest Shakespeare mischievery playing Iago in Othello. But Brannagh as a Moor would be downright laughable - so a compromise well turned out.

The modernisation of Shakespeare is in my opinion an impossibility. Some of his plays have a plot which makes a good basis for a modern production, but Shakespeare's absolute forté is his language and his linguistic jokes and acting in old English requires settings true to the play. That said, I think some of the scenes worked better in this surrealistic environment than they would have - scenes like Titus assembling his men for the shot at the Gods, or the messenger returning his sons' heads in a theater truck. That was novel.

As for the overall feel of this movie, only one word suffices: Madness.

• Thomas Nielsen

Wrenching and powerful

[olliewim · 7/10 · 8 November 2005]

I wasn't going to comment on Titus, particularly, but I thought in case someone who wasn't a film theory and/or Shakespeare maven wanted to know about it, I'd leave a somewhat normal review, for this completely abnormal film.

First, I was interested in seeing this because of 1. Anthony Hopkins and 2. I'd read that this play is regularly rated as Shakespeare's worst by contemporary reviewers, but was also by far his most popular play in his own lifetime. I would be interested to know how many of the reviewers who gush over this play, also hold their noses up at modern slasher films (or would fall all over themselves, explaining how Titus is something much more meaningful.) I do agree with those that said (let's see if I can do it in less than 5000 words though) this lacks Shakespeare's more subtle plotting and language in his better known plays, but the raw power and intensity of the story in Titus is also very compelling. And it is quite cool, in AH's final scene, when he starts out as "Remains Of The Day" Sir Anthony at the beginning of the scene (serving dinner no less), and ends the scene as "Hannibal Lecter" Hopkins. Hannibal Lecter on crack, even. Booyah.

Re: Jessica Lange, she's never been to my taste, so me not being impressed is probably just me. And Alan Cumming is always such a delightful freak of nature. I'm more than half convinced he's an alien life form. He very wisely chooses roles that suit an alien freak perfectly.

Know the story before you try to watch it

[Philaura · 7/10 · 22 August 2000]

The opening of this film had me convinced that I was about to view the most fantastic film I'd ever taken the time to sit through. Between the soundtrack and the visuals I was spellbound. The visuals have so very much be praised for, originality, flair, shock value, beauty, however not knowing anything about this original Shakesperean play I found myself in a constant state of frustration trying to piece together what was happening. My only clues came from the stream of abstract visuals. I received no help what so ever from the dialogue. I should have known better. It's Shakespear.

Enough said. If you have had no contact with this play before, the extraordinary images may hold you all the way through to the end. I didn't make it. If you are interested in taking a look, I would highly recommend you at least investigate the storyline first.

gripping, absurdist view of Shakespeare

[Buddy-51 · 17 August 2000]

In recent years, a new fashion has sprung up among filmmakers who have attempted to bring Shakespeare's works to the screen. No longer content to keep the plays bound to the historical eras in which they are set, many an adapter has chosen to transport the plots and dialogue virtually intact to either a completely modern setting or a strange never-never land that combines elements of the past with elements of the present. In just the last few years, we have seen this done with `Romeo and Juliet,' `Richard the Third' (albeit this one made it only as far as the 1940's) and even Kenneth Branagh's `Hamlet,' which, although also not exactly contemporary in setting, did at least move that familiar story ahead in time several centuries. Now comes `Titus,' a film based on one of Shakespeare's earliest, bloodiest and least well known plays, `Titus Andronicus,' and, in many ways, this film is the most bizarrely conceived of the four, since it creates a world in which - amidst the architectural splendors of ancient columned buildings - Roman warriors, dressed in traditional armor and wielding unsheathed swords, battle for power in a land disconcertingly filled with motorcycles and automobiles, pool tables and Pepsi cans, punk hair cuts and telephone poles, video games and loud speakers. The effect of all this modernization may be unsettling and off-putting to the Shakespearean purist, yet, in the case of all four of these films, the directorial judgment has paid off handsomely. Not only does this technique revive some of the freshness of these overly familiar works, but these strange, otherworldly settings actually render more poetic the heightened unreality of Shakespeare's dialogue. Plus, in all honesty, Shakespeare's plays are themselves riddled with so many examples of historical anachronisms that the `crime' of modernization seems a piddling one at best.

Those unfamiliar with `Titus Andronicus' may well be caught off guard by the ferocious intensity of this Shakespearean work. Moralists who decry the rampant display of unrestrained violence in contemporary culture and look longingly back to a time when art and entertainment were supposedly free of this particular blight may well be shocked and appalled to see Shakespeare's utter relishment in gruesomeness and gore here. In this shocking tale of betrayal, vengeance and rampant brutality, heads, tongues and limbs are lopped off with stunning regularity and it is a measure of Julie Taymor's skill as a director and her grasp of the shocking nature of the material that, even in this day and age when we have become so inured and jaded in the area of screen violence, we are truly shaken by the work's cruelty and ugliness. Yet, Taymor occasionally injects scenes of daring black comedy into the proceedings, as when Titus and his brother carry away the heads of his sons contained in glass jars while his own daughter, who has had her own hands chopped off in a vicious rape, carries Titus' own dismembered hand in her teeth! There are even meat pies made out of two of Titus's enemies to be served up as dinner for their unwitting mother. Thus, even though we can never take our eyes off the screen, this is often a very difficult film to watch.

`Titus' is filled with elements of character, plot and theme that Shakespeare would enlarge upon in later works. It includes a father betrayed by his progeny (`King Lear'), a Moorish general (`Othello'), a struggle for political power (`Julius Caesar' among others) and - a theme that runs through virtually all Shakespeare's tragedies - the need for revenge to maintain filial or familial honor. Anthony Hopkins is superb as Titus, capturing the many internal contradictions that plague this man who, though a beloved national hero and military conqueror, finds himself too weary to accept the popular acclamation to make him emperor - a decision he will live to rue when his refusal ends up placing the power directly into the hands of a rival who makes it his ambition to bring ghastly ruin upon Titus' family. Titus is also a man who can, without a twinge of conscience, kill a son he feels has betrayed him and disembowel a captive despite the pleas of his desperate mother, yet, at the same time, show mercy to the latter's family, humbly refuse the power offered him, and break down in heartbroken despair at the executions of his sons and the sight of his own beloved daughter left tongueless and handless by those very same people he has seen fit to spare. Jessica Lange, as the mother of the captive Titus cruelly dismembers, seethes with subtle, pent-up anger as she plots her revenge against Titus and his family.

Visually, this widescreen film is a stunner. Taymor matches the starkness of the drama with a concomitant visual design, often grouping her characters in studied compositions set in bold relief against an expansive, dominating sky. At times, the surrealist imagery mirrors Fellini at his most flamboyant.

The fact that this is one of Shakespeare's earliest works is evident in the undisciplined plotting and the emphasis on sensationalism at the expense of the powerful themes that would be developed more fully in those later plays with which we are all familiar. At the end of the story, for instance, many of the characters seem to walk right into their deaths in ways that defy credibility. We sense that Shakespeare may not yet have developed the playwright's gift for bringing all his elements together to create a satisfying resolution. Thus, it is the raw energy of the novice - the obvious glee with which this young writer attacks his new medium - that Taymor, in her wildly absurdist style, taps into most strongly. `Titus' may definitely not be for the faint of heart or the weak of stomach, but the purely modern way in which the original play is presented in this particular film version surely underlines the timelessness that is Shakespeare.

Missing the Point

[bkdement · 9/10 · 16 December 2004]

"The ideas that Julie has might to some executives seem very radical, and the play itself might be indigestible, when in the same moment they can do Armageddon 2, 3, 4 and 5 and blow all kinds of stuff up, and kill countless numbers of people! Yet chop off one hand, you rape one girl in a poetically powerful way where it actually hits - oh, no, sorry we don't do that kind of stuff. And we're certainly not going to you millions of dollars to do it." -Colm Feore, Marcus Andronicus, "Titus"

Shakespeare's tragedy Titus Andronicus is basically a formula for violence, in order for Shakespeare to gain popularity over his contemporaries. It also uses the overflow of violence to draw some pointed conclusions about the elegance and civilized society of ancient Rome. But never mind that, it's just needlessly violent...right? Of course it's violent - and "Titus" became perhaps his most popular play. But to criticize this film for being nothing but violent is to miss the point, and run the risk of hypocrisy. Feore was right in his little diatribe which I included above.

How many people were killed in Independence Day? Armageddon, anyone? Kill Bill? Kill Bill VOLUME TWO? Pulp Fiction? Batman? Hero? Spiderman? Catwoman? Just about any other Tarantino film? Gladiator? Die Hard? Terminator? Jurassic Park? Just about any big-budget film made since Gone With the Wind? There is needless violence in just about EVERY MOVIE MADE these days. And forget about television. The American Medical Association recently published a report claiming that children in the United States, living in a home with cable television or a VCR, typically witness around 32,000 murders and 40,000 attempted murders by the time they reach the age of 18.

How many of those deaths actually made us feel the desperateness and terror that would actually result from a violent death, of either someone we love or someone we just met moments before? How many of those films had a message that could not have been achieved without all the blood? For all the above films, the deaths involved were there to invigorate us because we've grown accustomed to watching violence, and our version of the Coloseum is now the "action" film genre. We think seeing someone torn in half by two dinosaurs (which were cloned from age-old DNA in order for all of to enjoy the violence as if there weren't enough instruments of violence still living) is really fun. We don't want to be repulsed by murder, which of course we ought to be, but we find it entertaining nonetheless. That's a little sick if you ask me, and THAT is the point of Julie Taymor's film version of "Titus."

"Titus" was directed by Julie Taymor, a brilliant stage director (and for whom this film is her first) worlds away from James Cameron, and about as far removed from Hollywood as you can get. Taymor is renowned for her stage direction, and based this film in part on her recent off-Broadway production of "Titus Andronicus. She also directed and designed the costumes for a musical you may have heard of, called "the Lion King," for which she she was awarded several Tony awards. So her unique and self-consciously absurd visual style, combining modern and ancient design elements in order to suggest that violence has been one of man's favorite past times throughout the ages, really shouldn't be that surprising.

But it is that style which points to the fact that this is not a typical Hollywood film. A typical Hollywood film would be a romantic comedy or a drama about drug abuse and sex. Producers have to take major risks on these films, because most people don't know that Shakespeare can be riveting, or even fun. It isn't better or more worthwhile than any other type of cinema, but it does happen to be one of the underdogs.

Taymor directed this picture with the obscenity of today's culture of violence firmly in mind. Why did the film begin with a deranged, yet oh-so-normal eight year old boy playing with menacing action figures, watching television and killing and destroying everything in sight? Seems out of place, right? Except his appetite for violence creates ratings for television producers which perpetuate the whole phenomenon. So in an abstract way, he conjured up the violence - which then becomes "Titus," and he's made an active participant for the remainder of the story. Perhaps if someone had taken Arnold Schwarzenegger into the Roman colloseum after he finished making "T2" he would've felt a little differently about his actions, too.

In other words, it's all fun and games until somebody gets hurt.

PS -

As for the ridiculous notion that Shakespeare "reads better than it sounds," any ounce of credibility left in the angry critique of "Titus" which inspired this message was pretty much wholly obliterated by that comment. I suppose we have been force-fed infantile dialogue with more expletives than adjectives for too long, and have now decided to hate and reject screenplays that appear to be smarter than we are. Or smarter than we have been led to think we are...shouldn't we welcome the challenge of deciphering more mature language?

Marvellously Shocking!

[arbarnes · 7/10 · 18 February 2016]

Having just read Titus Andronicus for the first time I was eager to take a look at the 1999 film version. I found it an uplifting experience, because though the film was quite different to my own visualization of the story, it was a perfectly consistent modern take that both respected the language and construction of the original play and provided an exciting, personal interpretation –respectful of Shakespeare but true to itself. In fact, I rate it as among the best screen versions of Shakespeare's work. Perhaps because it also succeeds in balancing on a line that is purely theatrical on one side and purely cinematic on the other –so that though I often feel I am watching a film of a stage production, I never feel constrained by this, for the film is genuinely and richly cinematic. I am also extremely glad that a certain amount of restraint was shown in the direction –it could so easily have been totally overloaded with effects, forced gimmicks and gore, but here the visuals –and impressive they are– never overpower the language and the interaction between the characters.

The performances are of a high level throughout, and the actors are all comfortable with the language, which is a relief because so many other "modern" versions of Shakespeare suffer from an inconsistent mixing of acting styles that distract us momentarily from the story. Here there is no attempt to slur the dialogue to make it seem "real" –it succeeds because it retains its metre and theatricality. I think Anthony Hopkins' performance is interestingly low-key and playful –the character itself is a difficult one to fully sympathize with– but Hopkins takes us down many different paths. He is both former hard general, ambitious and later grieving father, warm grandfather figure, madman, avenger –a complex character indeed. And again, the restraint in his performance says more than any rant. I also particularly like the pairing of him with Colm Feore as his brother. Alan Cumming gives a very memorable performance as the emperor –I found this character difficult to fully get hold of when I read the play, but the boldness and audacity shown by Cumming makes him very clear –and again it's never over- the-top as it so easily could be.

I think it does help to know at least something of the play before seeing the film as there is no real explanation of exactly who is who to begin with and this may cause some confusion – the unravelling of characters and their relationships is equally challenging in the opening of the play, so the fault (if it can be called that) lies with Shakespeare. The whole first act is a bit of a mess –perhaps intentionally– and though we are able to work out who is who and what their relationship is to the next person, it does demand a bit of extra concentration at the beginning of the film that could perhaps have benefited from some form of narration or on- screen signing. This is, however, my only complaint –otherwise I found the film marvellous; utterly shocking, of course, but marvellously shocking!

A "timeless" retelling

[shaquanda36 · 9/10 · 14 January 2004]

Titus. Where to begin? Oh yes, at the beginning. William Shakespeare wrote Titus Andronicus early in his career. VERY early in his career, and such is apparent. On stage, this script as a play must be awful. Character motivations are not explained, there are holes in the action, a character leaves the country and then comes back, seemingly only to set up the climax. There is little explanation of action, and it is less poetic than some of his masterworks (Midsummer, Hamlet, Lear). And yet, Julie Taymor, renowned for her fantastical vision of The Lion King on Broadway, chose this, possibly Shakespeare's most problematic play, to be her introduction to film.

This adaptation is wonderful. Why? Because it fills all the holes of the initial play. She adds scenes without dialogue, she makes the setting timeless and symbolic, and removes it from the realm of reality, wherein the play never worked to begin with. She tranforms a difficult play about revenge into much, much more. It is now a feast for the eyes, a commentary on revenge, power, theatre, film, and villiany.

To be fair, I am not giving Shakespeare enough credit. The play he wrote has many marvelous aspects, mainly the Aaron - possibly Shakespeare's greatest villian. He is unrelenting. And in the film, he is wonderfully acted. Titus is a good character too, and Anthony Hopkins acts him well enough.

It would be easy for a Shakespeare purist to say "eww, what was that," but I would call this retelling a gem. It is moody, gritty, passionate, clever, awe-inspiring, and true to the theme of the original script. It has only added to Shakespeare's words. Is it perfect? No. It does make you stretch yourself, the ending is a head-scratcher, but this will be my favorite Shakespeare adaptation for a long time to come. 9/10

Shakespeare via Riefenstahl.

[the red duchess · 7/10 · 18 December 2000]

You can tell that this film has been made by a Tony-award winning director. You have to admire the effects she manages to wrench from a limited budget (the crowds, or lack thereof, gave it away!), achieving an epic perspective through noise, business and monumentality. But these are strictly theatrical effects, a visual sense communicated through set-design, colour etc., rather than mediated through the camera. However, it is an energetic kind of theatre, so we shouldn't mind too much.

'Titus Andronicus' is one of Shakespeare's lesser plays, so despised by highbrow fans that they tried to deny he wrote it. The play is a catalogue of horrors - an old man enters Rome with 21 dead sons; orders the dismemberment and burning of an enemy; kills a disobedient son; his son-in-law is murdered, his daughter raped with her hands and tongue cut off; he cuts his own hand off to bail two sons whose decapitated heads are sent back; his revenge involves killing the culprits and handing them back to their mother in a curiously Greenaway ritual, before a climactic orgy of massacring.

This sounds grisly, and I felt nauseous on a number of occasions reading it. In truth, this kind of shock horror was very popular at the time Shakespeare wrote it (notable peers include Marlowe's 'Jew of Malta' and Kyd's 'Spanish Tragedy'), so it isn't really an aberration. As a film, 'Titus' isn't very violent; perhaps because films are generally more violent today than we expect literary classics to be. Or, as is more likely, because of the way Traymor films it. 'Titus Andronicus' is a very short and quick play, with its multiple horrors piled on at a bewildering speed. Traymor paces her film in true epic style (the film is nearly three hours long), and so the horrors seem less gratuituous, and therefore less shocking.

There is one big problem for any producer adapting 'Titus' today, and that is tone. There is so much violence in the play, that it risks seeming comic, and indeed the previously wailing Titus, faced with the peak of murderous brutality, responds with grim laughter. Despite some gruesome puns, Shakespeare's 'Titus' is largely gloomy and earnest, but slightly ridiculous.

Traymor isn't quite sure, and veers between epic solemnity and wild black comedy. Some of the latter is effective, the burlesquerie of the heads' return, for instance. But it skips over the play's main absence, Lavinia's rape. In the play, we know it's happening, but we never see it - there is a powerfully misogynistic euphemism in the dank forest pit where her dead husband lies bleeding. When we see the result of the rape, this maimed mannequin, the beautiful soliloquy of her uncle seems woefully inadequate.

But Traymor does exactly the same thing. As a woman and in a more visual and culturally liberated medium, Traymor has a chance to reclaim Lavinia's rape, to free it from aestheticism and return it to her body, but it is elided at the time, and a later flashback is a series of 'poetic' images that takes the body out of the rape, just as surely as her script takes the politic out of the body politic dialectics. It's difficult to see how anyone could do it without being exploitative, though.

People like to defend violent movies by saying that Shakespeare's plays were just as bloodthirsty - Traymor herself seems to suggest this in the pre-credit sequence. Yes, but how many slashers have Shakespeare's depths of theme and language, is the usual response. Traymor altars Shakespeare's structure, which is an intricately symmetrical pattern holding the chaotically bloody events. The play opens with a discussion of different kinds of government (democracy vs. hereditary rule) with Titus entering in a public ritual before attending to personal matters. Traymor is not interested in politics, as you would expect from an American film, and opens with the personal moving onto the public, which makes for a very different work.

I've no problem with this - faithfulness is death; adapters must make any source their own, just as Shakespeare did. But if you dismantle Shakespeare's precise structure and rhythm, you must substitute one of your own, and a cinematic one at that (this is why Welles' films are the greatest Shakespeare adaptations, because they are pure Welles). Traymor does not, and so her film, for all its inventiveness, feels lopsided, moments of power alternating with more ponderous ones, dramatic effect diluted.

Similarly, Shakespeare's rich imagery - of the body, reading and writing, surface and underground etc. - is largely forsaken, but nothing very systematic put in its place. I don't mean to carp - most people who go to these filmed plays won't have time to read the play, and so the words will fly over them (as they usually do for me). Visual impact is all, and this is infinitely more preferable to Branagh. The conflation of different periods, costumes, locations - classical, fascist, modern, Hollywood etc. - is pure Shakespeare, and offers some startling effects, especially the toy soldiers beginning.

The acting is fine, even if, snob that I am, the American voice jars among the rest. Once again, as throughout the play's history, the relatively secondary role of Aaron steals it, with Traymor mercifully not trying, through misguided political correctness, to sanitise his gleeful evil. Elliot Goldenstahl's score is a remarkable work of pastiche.

Beautiful adaptation

[katht · 10/10 · 12 January 2000]

This film demonstrates how a stage director can combine the unique atmosphere of theater with the stark realism--and fantastic effects-- of film and make a beautiful, moving masterpiece. The words are Shakespeare, the staging is fabulous, the costumes and sets are remarkable and memorable. Jessica Lange and Anthony Hopkins and Alan Cummings radiate. Seeing Titus leaves one exhausted and exhilarated, believing one has seen true, gifted, timeless film making.

Titus is one of Shakespeare's little-known, earlier works, and it is a violent, disturbing tragedy. The producer and director took incredible risks to bring this remarkable experience to you. I know you will be moved.

Director Taymor takes Unnecessary Risks

[Bologna King · 6/10 · 12 September 2000]

Titus Andronicus is not Shakespeare's worst play (try Pericles) but after being one of his most popular on the Elizabethan stage, its stock has fallen badly due to its ruthless brutality, violence and non-stop action. Betting that these qualities may have come back into vogue is not a bad risk.

That doesn't make this a great play--there are dramatic problems that a director needs to solve. Aaron is a method actor's nightmare, a man with no motivation except a desire to be bad. A good director has to find a reason for his bitterness. Titus has the most ambivalent attitude toward his children; at the beginning of the play he seems to regret having sacrificed them to the wars, he is devastated when two of his sons are sentenced to death, but he himself stabs and kills not only one of his sons for protecting his daughter's honour, but the daughter to boot. The scenes of Marcus discovering the mute Lavinia and the frame-up of Titus's sons by Aaron are quite unconvincing without directorial help.

Instead of tackling these problems, Julie Taymor seems to say "Don't worry if it isn't believable--it's all a dream, or a fantasy, or an allegory, or something, so we don't have to believe it." This is a cop-out. And because it's a cop-out, the attempts to introduce imagery which makes the movie look like a dream, fantasy, allegory, or something don't work. Rather than reinforcing the movement of the drama they try to distract us from it.

The smart approach to this blood-and-guts thriller would be to keep the story moving at breakneck speed, cutting the text and providing graphic and concrete images in an easily assimilated setting (rather like what Zeffirelli did to Hamlet). Instead we get the exact opposite. The ending, instead of thrilling climax, has the action slowed to a dead stop as we watch the same image for three minutes. Sure, it moves, but so does your screen saver.

Even if we admit the legitimacy of using symbolical or allegorical images in a story like this, they have to build up to a pattern to be effective. We start off with a kid wearing a paper bag on his head making a mess with war toys and his lunch. Is what follows his war-play seen from the toys' perspective? Is it a dream-lesson to reprove him for his pointless destruction? Is it a foreshadowing of Titus' revenge on Tamora? We never find out because we never see the kitchen table, the war toys, or the paper bag again.

Don't fault the actors for the director's problems; with the exception of Tamora's sons, the acting is fine, particularly Hopkins (who has forgotten more Shakespeare than Taymor will ever know), Lange, Laura Fraser, and Harry J. Lennix. Lennix gets the chance to step out of Aaron's cardboard cut-out Snidely Whiplash persona when the nurse brings him his child; what follows is the best scene in the film.

Presenting a little-known play is a risk. Presenting odd-ball Shakespeare is also a risk. Using anachronisms and other dream-like or fantastic imagery in a movie is a risk as well. These things wouldn't be risky if the chances of failure and the amount of effort required for success weren't greater than usual. Sadly, although Taymor was prepared to take the risks, she was not prepared to make the extra effort.

For the performances of the actors, the bravery of the attempt, the Stomp performance during the opening titles, and one or two shining scenes this deserves 6 out of 10

pretentious garbage

[matt43-2 · 1/10 · 28 December 2000]

I rented Titus last night. I figured a Shakespeare movie starring Anthony Hopkins - hey, it can't be all bad.

Oh boy was I wrong.

Like Leo Dicaprio's Romeo & Juliet, the movie retained the original Shakespeare dialog but was set in a modern time. Well, kind of. It was a cross between ancient rome and the 1940's, with some more modern items thrown in here & there. Some people were dressed like roman legions fighting with swords, others wearing 40's style clothes & riding 40's style motorcycles, etc.

When I first realized this, I told myself to keep an open mind, that maybe they'll do something interesting with it. Although my usual thoughts on that whole subject are that, dammit, movies based on Shakespeare plays should be set when & where the play was set - don't dumb everything down so that the public can "relate". Or, even worse, for the sake of "Art"

Well, they didn't do anything interesting with it. The anachronistic setting nonsense only added to the gargantuan suckage of this movie. But that wasn't the precise reason why the movie sucked - It sucked because it was pretentious, unwatchable wannabe-artistic crap. (Containing, of course, the requisite amount of homoerotic overtones for pretentious, unwatchable wannabe-artistic crap. As if you couldn't guess that.)

I can just see the idiots behind this whole thing - "Ooh, we'll mix up the ancient Roman setting with modern elements! That will SHOCK everyone! People won't know what to do! What Artists we are! And we'll make everything ultra-graphic! That will SHOCK everyone! People won't know what to do! What Artists we are! And we'll make everyone seem gay! That will SHOCK everyone! People won't know what to do! What Artists we are! And we'll use insultingly obvious symbolism - because that's what Artists do! Aren't we clever to do that in a Shakespeare movie! What Artists we are! The rabble out there will hate this movie because we're so avant-garde! People won't know what to do! Hooray for us! Take that, Mister Establishment!"

Damn what a piece of crap. I want my money back.

Freakishly beautiful and the best villains in Shakespeare

[hoversj · 10/10 · 23 May 2004]

The production in this movie is wonderful - particularly if you're able to accept the strange cross-genre world the movie is set in. Much like the world of Tim Burton's Batman was sort of the 40s and sort of the future, this takes modern day and mixes it with touches from ancient Rome, to make a weird fantasy realm where anything can happen. A DARK fantasy realm.

This serves a couple of really good purposes - first, some of the touches are inherently humorous, thus lightening a play which could be called "the Texas Chainsaw Massacre of Shakespeare." Far more importantly, however, is the visual cues which it gives a modern audience.

The average person, even someone fairly versed in Shakespeare like myself, sees two guys walk into the Roman senate, dressed in togas, and orating, and there is NOT A SINGLE visual cue to tell me who these guys are. I don't know toga styles! On the other hand if one of them (Bassianus) is progressing to the senate, chilling in the back of his convertible, wearing a leather jacket, addressing his followers with a bullhorn, and his brother Saturninus is encased in a full-on pope-mobile with a leather greatcoat and a greased-down forelock - that tells me something about these guys!!!

OK, the plot - nearly everybody dies. I would call this a spoiler, but anyone who knows that (a) this is Shakespeare and (b) this is considered a tragedy, then knows that - by definition - nearly everybody dies. The cool thing is the plots and counter-plots as the various characters try to take down, take out, or take on the others.

The basic premise is, however, that Titus Andronicus is a great general who has just returned from war with captives, including defeated Queen Tamora, her three sons, and her servant Aaron (ooh, is he evil!!). Despite the queen's desperate pleas for mercy, Titus sacrifices Tamora's oldest son to the gods, as a thank you for victory, and thus starts the chain of back and forth murdering which goes on for the rest of the film.

Two things which will probably be of interest to no one but myself, but I have to express are the theme of the play/film and Titus' fatal flaw.

First, in screenplay classes you work hard to get "theme" - some concept which is not necessarily brought out in the plot, but is supposed to be woven throughout your movie and generally never is, or is something really simplistic and obvious. However, the theme of Titus is actually exquisitely done, and was in the original play, which makes me wonder quite why people generally regard it as a throw-away piece among Shakespeare's works.

The theme I see is "what we do for our children", which seems an odd one for such a bloody play, but it is the killing of Tamora's son which sets off the maelstrom. When her sons attack and mutilate Titus' daughter Lavinia, he gets his revenge, and then does for Lavinia the greatest, most honorable thing he can - kills her. The two sons of the recently deceased emperor, the aforementioned Bassianus and Saturninus, have no father to look out for them, and he didn't name a successor before his death, which is what leads them astray, and finally, Aaron, despite being a self-proclaimed villain (and who tricks Titus into cutting off his OWN FREAKING HAND - now THAT'S a villain!), kills whoever he has to in order to protect his own progeny.

Now for the fatal flaw - again, a fascinating concept which struck me like a ton of bricks when I "got it". (For those how don't know, each of Shakespeare's tragic heroes is fatally flawed in some way, and when I was in high school our teacher made us always write essays on these, which is why I look in the first place - Hamlet's, for instance, is indecision, while Macbeth's is being "wife-"whipped.)

Titus's fascinating flaw is "Tradition". Every decision he makes, until he goes mad (or pretends to), is entirely dictated by tradition, and every decision is a bad one. He is offered the job of emperor and turns it down, then selects Saturninus to take the job - on the grounds that he is the dead emperor's eldest son, despite the fact that he is obviously going to be a petty despot. Then, when Saturninus asks for Titus' daughter in marriage, Titus agrees, even though she's already betrothed to (and in love with) the younger son, and when her brothers "rescue" her so she can run off with her true love? Titus kills one of his own sons - executing him as a traitor.

Time after time, tradition and "the right thing to do" is Titus' downfall. By the end of the story, he deliberately turns his own flaw back on himself by asking Saturninus what should happen to a woman who has been dishonored and damaged - should she be killed, as set forth in historical precedent? When the emperor flippantly agrees, Titus kills his own daughter, right there at the dinner table. To her, it is a mercy, but to everyone else, it's a real eye-opener!!!

OK, enough ranting. THIS time...

A Good Movie, But Thank Shakespeare For That

[diffusionx · 7/10 · 17 February 2001]

Whether or not "Titus Andronicus" was Shakespeare's first play, it is still captivating. Sure, it may not be as brilliant as his later plays (and make no mistake about it - it is not), but it is still a fine story and it is well written. This is something that this movie does show. It is a very entertaining film, and it is a lot of fun to watch. While it starts off a bit slow, it quickly manages to pick up steam and stays watchable throughout. The acting is pretty excellent - the people in this movie obviously have a very strong grip on Shakespeare and show it.

Thankfully, the storyline here in "Titus" stays extremely close to the original story. However, I have a real problem with the whole "A Julie Taymor Film" bit. Put simply, she really did her part to damage the story. While the movie is beautiful visually, why is there such an odd mishmash of new and old? Now, I have absolutely no problem with placing a Shakespeare play in different periods of time, but "Titus" really stumbles with its mixture. I dont know why there is a mishmash of different time periods (there are cars and chariots mixed together throughout), but it does not work. It's actually quite jarring - it's impossible to fully immerse oneself in a movie which jumps back and forth in setting so much. The mix of old and new just doesn't work right - it never feels whole or solid, it always feels shaky and unsure - as if Taymor and the crew didn't know what anachronisms to work in where.

This is the biggest flaw in the movie, but its hardly the only one. There also seems to be a great deal of pretention involved, as there are quite a bit of self-indulgent camera tricks or sequences which seem to serve no purpose other than for Taymor showing herself what an imagination she has. Yea, a lot of the staging is very good, and the movie does flow pretty well, but there is too much... extra stuff going on. And it seems to get worse as the movie goes on - guns enter the film near the end.

Still, the shaky direction and pretentiousness of the film does not hurt the story, primarily because it is so entertaining. Sure, "Titus" is a film with some serious flaws, but it's also a film with a very good story and one that is, ultimately, worth watching. But don't thank Taymor for this - it's all Shakespeare's doing.

Here's hoping this is Julie Taymor's last work.

[Spleen · 1/10 · 31 May 2001]

Maybe her stock theatrical gimmicks work on the stage - let's give her the benefit of the doubt - but she doesn't have the foggiest idea how to make a movie.

Not that I think this nonsense would work on stage. "Titus Andronicus" is CLEARLY set in Ancient Rome - would it be TOO MUCH TO ASK to have a production that respects this fact? I'm sick of leather jackets and motorcycles and arcade games and all the other paraphernalia from The Compendium of Tiresome Postmodern Clichés - for once I'd like to see a creative rendition of the era in which the action is supposed to take place, and DOES take place, whatever efforts the director may make to suggest otherwise. In what kind of simple-minded fashion does Taymor expect us to think? "Look, a microphone. Why, that's a modern invention! I guess this means Shakespeare IS a relevant kind of dude, after all!" Please, don't tell me modern audiences are so stupid.

Making it all the more embarrassing is the film's clumsy use of music. Whenever twentieth-century artefacts make a "surprise" appearance, Taymor asks her poor captive composer Elliot Goldenthal to underline the point with a saxophone riff. Wow, a saxophone! That's almost only a hundred years old - I guess Shakespeare IS a relevant kind of dude, after all.

Taymor's affectations undermine an already weak story in too many ways to count. Take the scene where Titus is begging the tribunes to spare his sons' lives. Do we have any sense that it matters? No, because the whole production is so dadaist, and we have so little sense of what can and can't happen in this universe, that none of it seems real - it would be in keeping with the rest of the production for his sons to spring back to life after being executed, so why worry about them? Or take the scene at the Goth's camp outside Rome, which takes place in a quarry with high tension power lines running overhead. Yes, Julie, very Brechtian, but if you'd remove your theoretically-tinted spectacles for just a second, you'd realise that it just looks clumsy. Power lines almost always look clumsy. In this case they not only make it impossible to think of these Aryan extras as being an army of Goths, they make it impossible to think of them as being an army at all. What is Lucius planning to do, follow the pylons? In any case, the last thing this scene needs is the visual suggestion that the army has just passed Rome's power plant (without disabling it), and will shortly come across the arterial highway.

It's bad enough for Taymor to assemble such ludicrous costumes, sets and locations; it's unforgivable for her to think that all she need do is assemble them, without giving any thought to how they'd look on film. It's tragic, really. Taymor's many lame ideas are ALL visual - none of them have to do with story or character or theme - yet because she was concerned with what things look like in the flesh, not how they would end up looking on film, even these are half-lost. You'll struggle to find one arresting image in the entire two-and-a-half hours. And the acting and music fall just as flat as the images do. It's Shakespeare's, rather than Taymor's, fault that the language also falls flat; but she knew this was Shakespeare's weakest play, so she knew what she was letting herself in for. Even so Shakespeare's poetry is all the film has to recommend itself. If, in the last half hour, the film picks up just a little from the aimless drizzle it was at first, Shakespeare alone can take credit.

Show me someone who praises "Titus", and I'll show you someone whose critical judgment is clouded. The film is so dismal and flabby that one is surprised to discover it's even in focus (that is, when it IS in focus). For two hours Taymor does nothing but wave her avant-garde credentials in our faces, and of course, the world is full of people intellectually insecure enough to accept them.

Possibly the most faithfully recreated Shakespeare play ever

[Ex0dus · 27 November 2004]

Taken from the Shakespeare play 'Titus Andronicus', A very dark humored and brutal work originally, Julie Taymor isolates and drives upon the very force that brought William Shakespeare to his immortal success: Shock your audience.

A Roman General(Titus) after loosing many of his sons as soldiers in battle returns to a war-hungry Rome days after the death of Julius Ceasar. You're introduced to the story as the two sons of the Emperor petition to succeed their Father. Superficially this story is an all-out-tragedy. Underneath, however, it's a causticly ironic tale to see a man forge the tools of his own suffering through his own arrogant and selfish misdoings, then to eventually find shame and humility.

This movie is so packed with metaphor most viewers find it intimidating. It's an amazingly seamless telling of a story using time-specific visual references to outline the characters and events. i.e. the nazi-esque motorcade, biker costumes appear similar to the Italian fascist movement, evident paranoia. While the rival motorcade appears symbolic of John Kennedy and symbiotic trust.

The costume design is fabulous, obvious 1960's Glam/GlamRock design influences carefully illustrate the vanity and narcissism of Roman culture at the time using flashy wool-lined synthetics. I openly covet the cape Titus wears. Shakespeare took particular pleasure mocking a society with conveniently and easily deniable Gods, such that the Gods themselves treat their fates as tragic playthings.

And I digress... my main point is Shakespeare built his fame on being what has always been considered taboo and edgy: sex, violence, death and profanity. Julie Taymor having not missed a beat with the visuals, which are terrible and powerful at times, only seek to punctuate tragedy, much unlike its 1999 counterpart 'Titus Andronicus' which focused more on hate and revenge making for very unreasonable 1 dimensional characters.

My advice: Watch this movie more than once. Every time I do I glean more from it. Tony Hopkins and Alan Cumming both give some of the best performances of their careers, Moreover one of the best directed films ever IMHO.

One of the best Shakespeare adaptations i have seen. Actors are comfortable in the material. **** (out of four)

[Movie-12 · 9/10 · 11 April 2001]

TITUS / (1999) **** (out of four)

By Blake French:

"Titus Andronicus" proves Shakespeare had a dirty, violent mind. The original tragedy, one of Shakespeare's lesser known, plays like a 90's slasher film, with enough blood, guts, decapitations, amputations, murders, and missing limbs for several modern day horror romps. When director Julie Taymor adapted the play to the screen, she proved what a brave, gutsy filmmaker we have working here. It's like watching an on-screen play, with all the guts and glory of Shakespeare; the script does not even feel as if it was rewritten for the screen, but left for a modern dramatization of theater. Her film "Titus," starring veteran actors Anthony Hopkins and Jessica Lang, is one of the most bizarre updates of William Shakespeare's work I can remember-and that is a very good thing.

Anthony Hopkins plays general Titus Andronicus, at the heart of the story, who, as the movie opens, returns from conquering the Goths. Ignoring the motives of his mother, Tamora (Lang), and her two lasting sons, Chiron (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers), and Demetrius (Matthew Rhys), Titus ceremoniously sacrifices one of the apprehended enemies and supports the scandalous Saturninus (Alan Cumming) who is soon to be emperor.

Saturninus chooses Titus' daughter, Lavinia (Laura Fraser), to be his wife, despite the fact that she has already been plighted to Saturninus own brother (James Frain). The young couple flee after hearing the decision, causing Titus to murder one of his own disputing sons. Saturninus then chooses Tamora as his new bridal choice.

What follows is a series of memorable events that begin as a simple revenge scheme against Titus and his daughter, led by Tamora and her sons, and her secret lover, the sadistic Moor Aaron (Harry Lennix). From that point on, Titus rebels against his alliances and joins his family, including younger brother Lucius (Colm Feore), in a battle against his enemies to seek ever so sweet revenge.

Unlike the modern update of "Romeo & Juliet" in 1996, the actors in "Titus" feel very comfortable with the Shakespearean language. They all do an exceptionally convincing job bringing the beautiful language to life inside their artistic characters. Anthony Hopkins is right at home here, delivering a challenging, particularly involving, and gripping performance. Alan Cumming is perfectly cast as a sleazy slime ball. Jessica Lang takes advantage of capturing such a juicy, extravagant character and is not afraid to overact when necessary.

It is the tone, however, and the atmosphere, that makes the production so captivating. Some scenes feel as if we are in some zany, demented comedy of bleak proportions, often seized by the engaging, although unusual, sound track. In one scene, we feel uncomfortable with the sight of several young men listening to heavy rock music and playing video games in a Shakespearean movie. It is also continuously unique and entertaining. There is an absolutely stunning sequence in an orgy, and the throat slitting, cannibalistic finale seems like something Hannibal Lector would concoct.

"Titus" is a very strange, peculiar picture, often disturbing and cringe-inducing. It is not a movie for everyone. Although the film is made in a way in which I think most intelligent audiences could at least somewhat understand, it is also extremely graphic in its violence and sexual content; it is R-rated and intended for mature audiences only. "Titus" will captivate forbearing fans of its unique genre, but disgust those looking for passionate and a happy ending. I found myself reluctant at first, but once I gave myself over to the characters, story, and motives, I was simply enthralled by the dazzling filmmaking here. "Titus" is one of the year's best films.

Powerful story, stupendous acting, weird directing

[FlickJunkie-2 · 7/10 · 4 September 2000]

`Titus' is yet another vain attempt to `update' Shakespeare for consumption by the masses. Like others before it, this film maintains the original verse intact, while providing imagery that is artsy and hip with no real relationship to the original story. The good news is that the acting was potent and delivered a forceful rendition of Shakespeare's most disturbing play. The bad news is that the dark and bizarre imagery was at best distracting and at worst detracting.

Julie Taymor's imagery was somewhere between nightmarish and hallucinogenic. It was typical of a style I call Noir Bizarre, where dark themes are augmented by weird and disjointed images, replete with gruesome scenes and morbid undertones. Tim Burton's work is illustrative of this style. Taymor conjures a surreal version of ancient Rome with contrived retro/futuristic costumes, and modern period props such as motorcycles, automatic weapons and arcade games interspersed with horse drawn chariots and swords. Tamora's (Jessica Lange's) costumes were particularly outlandish.

It is invariably mentioned by the directors that make these Shakespearean updates that they provide an opportunity to bring Shakespeare to a new generation. They hope that adulterating his work by repackaging it with pop culture imagery will somehow make it more appealing to the masses. The irony is that just about all of them have been abysmal commercial failures. As soon as the masses discover that the Old English verse has been preserved, they steer clear. The only people who ultimately see these films are the people who liked Shakespeare in the first place, and they generally resent the visual perversion.

Despite my disdain for Taymor's strangely fantastic vision, the film was effective mostly due to the superlative acting of Anthony Hopkins, Jessica Lange, Alan Cumming, and Harry Lennix. Hopkins' sophisticated and wieldy presence provided a dominating force that bolstered the entire cast. Jessica Lange was maniacal as the evil seductress intent on revenge upon Titus and his family for the death of her son. Harry Lennix gave an absolutely demonic performance of Aaron, the malevolent moor whose only repentance was for the good deeds he had done in his life. Alan Cumming was also excellent as the sniveling Emperor being manipulated like a puppet by powerful forces on all sides.

In the final analysis, the peculiarity of Taymor's vision distorted but did not negate the excellence of the acting and the power of the play. I rated it a 7/10. I recommend that Shakespeare lovers not be driven away by the avant-garde presentation and allow themselves the opportunity to enjoy the awesome performance of a terrific cast.

Simple excellence

[Ackbar-2 · 10/10 · 13 January 2004]

No spoilers here.

This is a Shakespeare play, and this one is no comedy, I must say. Shakespeare liked the Rome background, and exploited it quite, though with some anachronysms, and, in this one, a victorious general, Titus, returns to Rome amidst the succession dispute following the death of the Caesar. Soon he will be entangled in a vicious plot.

Yes, Titus is the early, sensational, Shakespeare play, but, it displays to us what can be most dreadful in human nature. A story of vengeance like I've never seen, I felt myself tossed to the pits of utter filth when I first read it. It's violent, violent, violent and simple, yet, not cheesy. It's a kind of violence that you wouldn't ever see in action-packed movies with bullets afly.

The movie can hold you to your seat if you have watched other Shakespeare play based movies previously, for it is intense. The background and costumes are not genuine Rome, they were modified to something that resembles the movie "Dune", but nothing is ridiculously anachronic, like I thought of that DiCaprio "Romeo & Juliet", which made me leave the seat in the very beginning (the "Sword" scene). This movie Titus doesn't try to be historical or actual, it's more surreal-like, with original, abridged, text. The violence is quite explicit, so have your stomach ready.

Alas, the acting is great! Totally recommended, this story is the Centaurs' Feast! Our journey shall be a very long and ominous journey, but you shall part on it with me.

one of the most volatile, gripping, films i have ever seen.

[donweiss · 7/10 · 25 August 2000]

the one thing that would have made this film a 10 would be if they included a libretto with it. i only understood half of the dialog. hopkins was masterful. the screenplay was magnificent. the period flashbacks made the film most captivating.

Shakespeare's play: brought to a beautiful and other - worldly stage.

[DrChills · 10/10 · 23 February 2001]

This is something that I just cannot seem to express. First: There is a love for the artistic sense of the movie. Does that outdo William Shakespeare's wonderful scripts? Perhaps (?).

It is one of my favourite things. To sit down and watch a movie, that wants to express so much more through the characters and their surroundings, than simply what they have to say through word and expression. When they themselves are an expression. For me, it feels like a `perfectionist's movie'. I get the sense that every person's face was chosen for their look and how it could help the character's personality that they are meant to portray. While still taking into consideration the competence of the actor or actress.

Every scene is constructed meticulously. Of course, I cannot envy quite so completely, the full out patience and exacting eye that it took to look at the creative genius of each idea. For every room, each building, each camera angle of the few rundown humble city sidewalks, made to contrast the elegance of the royalty, or to add to it's persona. These things are created like any other movie must create its sets. But for me it seems that they may have found the perfect camera angle to film whichever character's scene it was.

Perhaps I delve too deeply into these things, like some attempt at creating meaning for an accidental painting, but I cannot say that this was an accident. Nor should it be compared to one.

The director, Julie Taymor, found perfection in this movie. Although the idea of bringing a Shakespearean play up to date, is definitely not unheard of, this was still a first for me. The artistic beauty of it, was in finding the plot come to life on a surreal and ambiguous stage. Set in no time and no space. We are first presented with an unwatched child, reeking havoc on a cluttered kitchen table, covered in toys and particular action-figures that we will later realize, slightly resemble a portion of our soon-to-be-introduced cast. An explosion abruptly interrupts the child, and a man comes inside, smudged dirty and looking like something that reminded me of a `troglodyte' from the French film `The Delicatessen'. He bundles the young boy into his arms, and takes him down an unrealistically long flight of stairs, into an expansive old Roman coliseum, where our play then begins. You are left pondering the happenings of the film, and I myself thought at one point, that perhaps the entire thing was happening inside of this child's head.

Whatever the case, it was brilliantly done. The unthought-of effect, is perhaps merely the setting of the stage: bringing us from our world, to another. So that we might witness the story completely, out of ourselves.

I will say nothing of the plot. Accept simply, that it is far more gruesome than what you would general expect of William Shakespeare's plays. The gore was somewhat unexpected , and my love for the movie would falter here, if not for the shockingly horrific scenes maintaining that perfect form throughout, that I was so drawn to. I could enjoy both the visually stimulating scenes, and the stimulating script, as completely separate things. Put together they held me in an even more profound state of wonder and. celebration, for sight and sound.

An absolutely fantastic movie. Very well done. Well envisioned and well realized, well filmed, well acted. yes, very well done. Quite artful.

Top Ten Strangest Movies Ever Listed

[LBytes · 7/10 · 10 February 2002]

As you can read here many go on and on about the modernization of a Shakespeare play. It is a dark, dark movie and I don't mean the cinematography. Truly evil deeds are done by and against every major character. In the end I saw a bit of Hannibal Lecter emerge, and maybe that's why Hopkins played the part, because he is so good at being unashamedly twisted. But for most of the movie he is a victim. This movie has sometimes stunning, sometimes disturbing imagery, but in the end you can see why many consider this to be a weak play. It is just so relentlessly nasty, you just get sick of it.

Simply horrible

[tromatical · 1/10 · 9 July 2001]

This movie is, perhaps, the second worst that I have ever seen in my lifetime of watching movies. The director is entirely unskilled at making movies, and furthermore seems to have an enormous amount of personal vanity, this based on the interview segments of the DVD. The main problem with the story, however, is the setting. It is set in the modern age, with guns, cars, and bombs, in the country of Rome. Apparently the screenwriter was too stupid to notice that Rome is no longer a nation. The film tries very hard to be entertaining, to tell a coherent story, and fails. If it failed in a spectacular way it would at least be funny, something to laugh at, but it does not do this. This is easily the worst adaptation of Shakespeare that i have ever seen, worse even than all of Branaugh's attempts to ruin the works. Not worth the almost three hours it takes to watch. I hate this movie.

Titus the Caterer

[bkoganbing · 9/10 · 18 August 2008]

Titus is Julie Traynor's adaption of one of Shakespeare's bloodier works, Titus Andronicus. It's set in a surreal land where ancient idiom is mixed with modern dress and customs. It's not normally a form I like because I prefer my Shakespeare traditional. However in the case of Titus Andronicus though the setting is that of ancient Rome, the characters and plot incidents are an amalgamation of several stories out of Rome, so there is no real history for it to compete with. It's not like doing Julius Caesar in this kind of setting.

Titus Andronicus is a Roman general whose legions can make or break the next emperor. Rather than claim the crown himself he says give it to the eldest son of the last emperor Saturninus. He soon wishes he hadn't been that magnanimous.

The other strand of the plot involves Titus in insisting a blood sacrifice be made to the Roman Gods of the eldest son of the captured Queen of Goths Tamora. She begs and pleads for her kid's life, but to no avail. After that she starts planning revenge and she's got two other sons and a Moorish man toy named Aaron to both help her out and pour gasoline on her fires for revenge.

Watching Titus Andronicus I thought of Hamlet which also about what turns out to be a bloody quest for vengeance where nearly every principal character winds up dead in the end. But in Hamlet's case the deaths were by sword except in the case of the father of Hamlet, already dead by poison. This one is a whole matter.

And how singularly appropriate that the man who won an Academy Award for playing Hannibal the Cannibal plays Titus Andronicus. We've got rape, mutilation, throat cutting, decapitation, being buried alive, and finally what the play is most noted for, the serving of up of a tasty meat pie with the flesh of two of the characters.

Anthony Hopkins of course is the caterer and he's magnificent in the title role. He goes almost as mad as Hannibal the Cannibal in Titus. From a man who generously gave a crown away, to a blood crazed animal, Hopkins deterioration in character is truly something to behold.

He's matched every step of the way by Jessica Lange as Tamora. Lady MacBeth has nothing on this woman, she makes Lady MacBeth look like Mary Poppins. Lange brings some real passion to this part, in some ways it's a more substantial role than the title character. I would venture to say it is one of the best roles for a woman that the Bard ever wrote.

Titus Andronicus is one of Shakespeare's lesser known plays. Quite frankly it's too bloody for most tastes. I doubt it will ever make a high school English syllabus. But it's a fascinating tale of revenge, just taking hold of people until that's all they live for.

The Bard doth rolleth in his grave.

[=G= · 6/10 · 15 August 2000]

"Titus", a psychotic makeover of Shakespear's epic tragedy, is so surreal as to make it laughable. Hopkins gives a powerful performance but even his mesmerizing portrayal of the title character could not keep us from being distracted by the explosion in props and costumes, a creative staff on LSD, or whatever it was that turned a powerful drama into a joke. The ubiquitous and always vocal pious aficionados who think everything atypical is creative will applaud this flick as inspired genius. However, the purists will more likely loathe it. Some things don't need Hollywood glomming them up. Shakespeare is one of them.

Dreadfully Pretentious

[squill · 1/10 · 14 January 2000]

Julie Taymor's lack of a cohesive directorial vision is the problem this film cannot overcome. This film, which hopefully will be Miss Taymor's last, is a pretentious hodgepodge of cinematic cliches served up amidst a mishmash of visual styles and settings, that not even the fine performances of Mr. Hopkins and, especially, Miss Lange can save. It's 3 agonizing hours of embarrassment as you are forced to witness the catastrophe of this classic becoming "tragically hip". This is Julie Taymor's "Showgirls" - not bad enough to be good, just plain bad. Don't believe the positive reviews. Don't waste your time or money. Dreadful.