User Reviews

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.

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

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.

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.

Following a victorious campaign against the Goths, General Titus Andronicus returns to Rome with prisoners; Tamora, Queen of the Goths, her three sons and Aaron, her Moorish adviser. He sacrifices her eldest son to the gods. At the same time the old emperor has died and Titus is proposed to take his place; however he declines and gives the position to Saturninus, the old emperor's son. He states that he intends to take Titus's daughter, Lavinia, as his bride; knowing she is betrothed to his brother Bassianus. She flees with Bassianus and Saturninus states that he will marry Tamora... soon she is plotting her revenge against Titus and his family. Soon things are spiralling towards an inevitably bloody conclusion.

This is a classic tale of revenge played out between Titus and Tamara that will destroy most people close to them. There is murder, rape and mutilation... not to mention the infamous finale which I won't spoil on the off chance that one hasn't heard what happens. People often complain that modern stories are too violent but this was written over four hundred years ago and contains material that wouldn't look out of place in 'Game of Thrones'... indeed the scene I alluded to earlier was copied to great effect in that series.

Many versions of Shakespeare plays are set in eras other than that of the original play; this manages to be set in what appears to be a combination of eras simultaneously; we have Roman soldiers, some traditionally armed others carrying shotguns; '30s cars and costumes with a camp fascist look and modern punk inspired clothing for others. This hodgepodge could be a mess but it is strangely effective; emphasising how the central story is timeless. The cast does a fine job; most notably Anthony Hopkins who is on great form as the tormented eponymous Titus; Laura Fraser, as the poor Lavinia; Alan Cumming, as the somewhat camp Saturninus and Jessica Lange, as the vengeful Tamora. Director Julie Taymor does a great job bringing the story to the screen. Overall I'd definitely recommend this to fans of films based on Shakespeare if the can handle the subject matter. To others I'd say don't be put off by the Elizabethan language; after a few minutes one gets used to it.

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

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.

"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?

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.

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.

The play I have never considered one of Shakespeare's best, I give you that there is enough wit and poetry to make Shakespeare's style distinctive and Aaron is the most interesting character, but the story is not the most focused or developed like Shakespeare's later plays. I was worried about the film version Titus, I know that Julie Taymor is an imaginative director, both on film and on stage, but it was whether the film could do anything with the material. Not only does it absolutely do that, but it also improves on the play. The film is perhaps too long, but the story is actually compelling even with some very disturbing moments(then again the idea of men in a pie is that in the play) that doesn't rely heavily on shock value. And the characters especially Titus and Aaron are interesting. Taymor's direction is creative and doesn't swamp the dialogue too much, while the costumes, sets and various sequences are jaw-dropping. The music is rousing and haunting, and the dialogue flows naturally and has the poignant intensity you'd expect from Shakespeare. Titus is not Anthony Hopkins' best role, my favourite is between Frederick Treves(The Elephant Man), CS Lewis(Shadowlands) and Stevens(The Remains of the Day) though Hannibal Lector(The Silence of the Lambs) is probably his most iconic. His turn here is still very authoritative and moving though. Jessica Lange oozes sex appeal and evil and Harry Lennix is radiantly malevolent. Alan Cumming is somewhat off-the-wall but in an endearing way, while Matthew Rhys and Jonathan Rhys Meyers are good as Demetrius and Chiron. All in all, I found this film to be brilliant and while any Shakespeare is worth watching and reading this is the first time that a Shakespearen film adaptation has been better than the play it's based on. 9.5/10 Bethany Cox

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.

What a bang this starts with! Once again, someone with vision and ambition takes on Shakespeare. This first-time filmmaker takes on Shakespeare's first play, possibly a wise choice because the richer the play, the harder to translate to film. That is, the less poetry (mind's eye richness) the more room for eye's eye richness.

Titus is very early and shows at least an immature dramatist and even less so poet. Probably, his actor buddies drove much of the action, and the purpose was either to out gross or parodize Marlowe. The play is unpopular not because it is violent, but because it is clumsy. All the promising parts reappear in much better form in later works. (T S Eliot: "one of the stupidest and most uninspiring plays ever written.")

What's good:

One of Taymor's apparent goals is to build on and reference the film work of others. I'm not sufficiently knowledgable to get all the film allusions, but the most incidental brushes seem artificial. More solidly, three films form the visual background -- all are Shakespeare films. The basic structure is from Stoppard's Rosencrantz where the whole Shakespeare play is a vision. The framing with the kid, captured by the clown is part of that. Also, in the middle, the clown reappears with a junior version of Dreyfuss' carriage to deliver heads and hand. (What did Taymor tell that redhead girl to get such an attitude?). Stoppard's layers of viewing are amplified here with layers of anachronism, which I must say are more effective.

A second major root is Welles' Othello, which is primarily an architectural film. This is also. Watch it once just looking at the environments, (The baby's "cage" at the end is a copy of Welles' central device.) Very smart, including some clever false perspectives. The third influence is clearly Greenaway's Prospero's Books, which she must have studied for her own contemporaneous Tempest film. Lots of painterly framing and references. (No numbers though.)

What's bad:

Hopkins just doesn't have what it takes, and it is no wonder he swore to retire after this. I think the problem is that he is a screen actor, a face actor. He doesn't create an internal character, but a sequence of mannerisms. He has not studied acting and does not appear to be deeply introspective about the art. He just emotes and has developed the ability to appear emotionally vacant. None of that is valuable here, and one can imagine his crisis when he discovers this. (Lange is just the opposite, constantly monitoring, aware, internal.)

Taymor has problems with pacing. Another filmmaker might create rewards in their laconic sections. Here, they are just slow uninspired periods because she is considers the "script" inviolable.

Taymor's grounding in the popular theater works against her in a commitment to story-telling. Drama is not story; even an apprentice Shakespeare knew this. She is tied too much to showing us everything. A little less worrying about making sense would give the images room to breath and increase the dramatic possibilities.

She understands film architecture, and framing of shots. But she has no sense of moving the camera. On a third watching, you begin to feel constrained by perspective, and see a real flaw here. Where are we the audience? Scorcese doesn't know much, but he knows this, how to make the audience dance -- I assume it is something you have or don't.

These last three points speak to a lack of style in editing. The first part until Titus allows his son to be buried are easy: bam bam bam. That's when the underlying rhythm of the thing should have emerged. She's got vision, but no rhythm.

Sum:

Broken but worthwhile. Even the flaws are fascinating. Hope she learns. Hope she continues.

I first saw Titus when it came out in 1999, and I thought it was fantastic, although it was so horrific that it was difficult to sit through. I recently watched it again on DVD, and found it to be even better. And now I didn't find it hard to sit through; instead, I was thoroughly absorbed, and on several occasions crying freely with empathy for Lavinia and Titus. This is surely the greatest film version of a Shakespeare tragedy ever created. Words from Hamlet reverberate in my mind when I attempt to describe Taymor's Titus. It's a work about the thousand shocks that flesh is heir to. It does such bitter business as the day quakes to look on. It drowns the stage in tears and amazes indeed the very faculty of eyes and ears. This is the kind of drama that Shakespeare lived for.

The film is a directorial work which follows Shakespeare's greatest Roman melodrama to the very top of its bent, and demonstrates that, although it is grotesque and crammed with horrors, it still works as tasteful, meaningful and supremely moving theater. What a pity that it wasn't a commercial success; I'll bet that posterity's evaluation of this film will improve enormously in the years to come. Its genius require recognition! 10 out of 10.

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.

I liked this movie a lot. Shakespeare is the only profound person I've ever come across and this movie did him justice.

If you like Shakespeare and aren't hung up on the need of Shakespeare plays / movies to use English accents, then watch this movie.

Brilliant acting, brilliant production. This isn't the typical low budget Shakespeare movie that hurts the eyes. It's an unsettling movie which is good because it's an unsettling play. The movie did a good job of expressing the feeling that is hidden within the text.

Anthony Hopkins is an amazing actor, backed up by other actors who are almost as impressive.

First time I saw this film was in Nepal. In a hotel in Kathmandu. It was filmed inside the cinema; the picture was corny, the sound was phony, and the show was cheap...-)

However it left me in such a state of exaltation that I had a hard time leaving the hotel back room. And I was not to be found withing myself for hours thereafter.

Not that it is necessary, but I had already read Shakespeare's first play (titus andronicus) from which this film hath been made. However, I never liked the story, never found its beauty. T'was about Rome and a Roman war hero returning home to find politics going awry; also, it is Shakespeare's most brutal play. But it never got to me. No beauty, only random killing; I liked his later works much better.

Until I saw this film!

Directed by a very able woman, Julie Taymor, the pictures are intense in colours and framing, and the acting is equally intense (Jessica Lange and Anthony Hopkins against each other). Furthermore the film is BEAUTIFUL while projecting the malice of a - in many ways - vanquished father.

At one point Lavinia, the daughter, stands in a ...... No - Better you see it for yourself! There is so much horror, yet so much beauty in this film that you would never believe it came from Hollywood.

Hair rising from the back of my neck while walking from my seat.

Lumps of saliva unable to be swallowed.

And adrenalin still surging through my mind for days thereafter although I was placed in beautiful landscapes.

I bought this film as soon as I got home from Nepal. Right away..!

I rate this film 10+. And I would do so 4 times again, if I was able to. It's a must-see for those not yet dulled by the hollywoodification of common film standards. Especially if you fancy horrific beauty.

Gilbert Ipp, DenMarque

Though William Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus is full of gratuitous and grisly violence, most scholars believe that its images of dismemberment are metaphorical in nature. This does not prevent some critics from dumping on Titus as a second-rate play and questioning Shakespeare's "Quentin Tarantino moment". Titus Andronicus seems anything but second rate, however, in the skilled hands of director Julie Taymor whose 1999 film Titus is one of the most entertaining and extravagant Shakespeare interpretations on film. Anthony Hopkins is terrific as the head of the excellent ensemble cast that provides some depth to the thin characters and Taymor is able to extract humor from the grim proceedings while providing dazzling imagery and an adrenaline rush.

A special mention should also be given to Harry Lennix as Tamora's servant Aaron, one of the few black characters in Shakespeare. Aaron is a complex character, both diabolical and attractive for his fierce love of his child. Irreligious and rebellious, he is the model for the motif of the outsider and the precursor of Shylock, Malvolio, and Othello.

Though Titus is generally believed to have been written in 1593 (it was published anonymously in 1594), Ben Jonson's comment in 1614 that the play has held the stage for twenty-five or thirty years (dismissed as an exaggeration) might bring the date of composition closer to the period of 1584-1589. Since Titus, like Macbeth, was doubtless influenced by the barbarous Wars of Religion during the late 16th century, there is speculation that an earlier version might have been written around 1576 at the time of the war between the Spanish Catholics and the Dutch Protestants known as the Spanish Fury with Saturninus representing Philip of Spain and Livonia representing the rape of Antwerp.

Titus deals with themes that run throughout the canon: the problem of succession – who has the rightful claim to rule, revenge, and the idea of banishment (exile) and return, and the play is reminiscent of King Lear in its obsession with insanity induced by loss. Expressing his alienation through the figures of the fool, the bastard, and the king without a crown, Shakespeare's heroes are demonic, men who live on the edge, appearing at times like a monster in the guise of Caliban, Bottom, and Edgar and other times like Prospero, a philosopher king. Caliban is his base ambition, but Prospero is his higher self.

Though proximity to the center of power drives Titus close to madness and the play seems to be saying that madness is the only escape from suffering, the ending brings a restoration of moral sanity and hopes for an era of peace. Oxfordians note that the severed hand metaphor may indicate that the author was severed from his writings but the text still bears the "hand" of their creator. In the phrase of author Charles Beauclerk, "Divorced from his works and cut off from the wellspring of his creativity, his unconscious inundates the plays and his emotional pain overwhelms the text." Taymor meshes three time periods in the film: ancient Rome, fascism in the 1930's and the modern era. The plot, which is completely fictional, is set in the late Roman Imperial era as the Empire attempts to hold off barbarian Gothic invaders. As Titus opens, a modern day energetic young boy (Osheen Jones) has decided to smash up his kitchen while playing with action figures. He is then seized by a clown and dragged into the world of fifth century Rome where he takes on the role of Titus' grandson. Similar to Romeo and Juliet in its theme of conflict between families, the play begins with competing authorities as both Saturninus (Alan Cumming) and Bassanius (James Frain) both claim the throne. A robotic procession of soldiers in ancient Rome is led by aging General Titus Andronicus (Anthony Hopkins) who is returning to Rome after a victorious battle against the Goths.

Andronicus brings with him prisoners Queen Tamora (Jessica Lange), Aaron (Harry Lennix) and her sons Chiron (Jonathan Rhys Myers) and Demetrius (Matthew Rhys). Titus is offered the crown vacated by the death of Caesar but refuses it, designating instead the flamboyant Saturninus as Emperor. When Tamora's eldest son Alarbus is murdered by Andronicus as a human sacrifice to the gods, she is able to use the weak-willed Saturnine as her vehicle for revenge, crying "O cruel, irreligious piety".

When Titus' daughter Lavinia (Laura Fraser), the wife chosen by Saturnine, is abducted by Bassianus, Saturnine chooses Tamora as his wife, setting off a bloody sequence of events that include mutilation, rape and murder, and an orgy of death in which a mother eats her son's remains baked in a pie, mirroring Book VI of Ovid's "Metamorphosis". That this could be entertaining is a tribute to Taymor's audacity and, of course, the obsessive brilliance of Shakespeare.

Usually dismissed as Shakespeare's worst play (has anybody read King John?), this over-the-top revenge tragedy shows a young playwright bursting with talent strutting his stuff. Julie Taymor (who did Lion King on Broadway) does him justice by unleashing this stunning phantasmagoria. I don't know how Jessica Lange and Anthony Hopkins could be better (though, given the plot, the latter comes a bit too close to Hannibal the Cannibal in Silence of the Lambs). The opening sequence of Roman soldiers choreographed in the Colosseum is so overwhelming, visually and aurally, that it makes Ridley Scott's much-vaunted classical pageant The Gladiator look like the computer game it is.

'Titus': The cold style of revenge as primitive therapy for all the unquiet spirits of a cruel age. The ritual purging, or exorcism, of horror, grief, and rage. The inevitable meeting, in this Arena of Cruelty, of sadistic cynicism - represented by the Moor - with malicious seductiveness - represented by the Goth Queen - has for its equally inevitable issue the Child of Darkness and of Blood: This child is Man, of course, surviving alone in a damaged Universe, and about to be penetrated by the first shafts of daylight's painful disillusionment. But life that lacks an illusionistic carapace is far too tender to exist, as this drama relentlessly exposes.

For the ritual, stylized, excess, of what is presented to us as the nightmare obsession of a psychologically damaged child, will conduct us through the dream-like anaesthesia of self-defensive shock - just the degree of brutalization that enables our humanity to survive the hallucinatory trauma of being in a mad world.

No accident (surely) that the film's visual experience is grounded in the ancient Roman ruins of the former Yugoslavia's dismembered body-politic; nor that it is also grounded in the terminally Roman decadence of Mussolini's operatically-gesturing Fascist fantasies, but as those already overblown fantasies were subsequently replayed in the sinister parodies thereof provided in Antonioni's, or in Fellini's work.

The disembodied phantoms who finally appear to have been silently attending to all that (seemingly) has passed before our own eyes, in the insistent image of the Stadium of Death, which is the Arena of Taymore's Shakespeare-mediated Senecan spectacle, are themselves - like their representative, Lavinia, - mute witnesses to the scenes relentlessly paraded before us in that Circus of Horror, which signifies nothing less than the very Orbit that circumscribes this World of Suffering.

Having discovered so much contemporary - that is to say, eternal, - sense in the ancient spectacle of Senecan tragedy - the smallest symbolic details of the poetic language of which are brilliantly transferred into the film's visual imagery, and consistently re-worked in the retro-modern, comic-book pastiche of the Savagery that was Ancient Rome - , Julie Taymor achieves the unnervingly sublime poetry of excess and horror better than perhaps any creative intelligence since Thomas Lovell Beddoes, or Ken Russell - even proving a match for old Seneca himself.

Indeed, thanks to this film, at last a modern audience can understand the disturbing Senecan vision. The ostensibly wooden characters of this grand-guignol type of tragedy provide that reductio-ad-absurdum of human beings who are abruptly shorn of all that signifies their humanity: Lavinia's truncated gestures are eked out in wooden trimmings, her hands a puppet's dumb-show, her tongue a stick scratching in the dirt's dusty eloquence like an epigraphy of some ancient grievance, long since past remedy.

Sick humour comes as the final parodic relief: Titus has a splendid jest with Death, indulging to the full the satisfying conceit of making the murderous mother of such murdering and murdered offspring of her womb the grave of these her own children. Thus all partake of the ultimate communion with Death.

Such sinister hospitality provides the totally negative resolution of the tragedy - at least, as Shakespeare wrote it, having opened this dark Senecan vein, - for it brings no saving reconciliation whatever, but only the savagely cathartic perversion and total annhilation of all that was human.

That is why we recognise nothing living or human in such a completely unreal spectacle.

That is why we are forced to recognise ourselves for the surreal spectacle to which we have been reduced by our insane history.

This is how the outraged sensibility is healed: By madness - by a term in Hell. Such nightmares are the pain of the mind as it tries to heal itself.

This process of purgative disillusion is what Taymor is about, here. The ending is another birth - in terms of personal symbolism, a re-birth. And this is, very particularly, a female artist's determined resistance to the general mayhem of a largely male-dominated world: Incomprehensibly far beyond all the destructive logic of the unending abuse of nature, She continues to entrust her innocent flesh and blood to another incalculable day.

This remarkably profound and intelligent film is also graced by astonishing technical finesse in every department, from costumes to cinematography.

Next to 'Titus', the splendidly macho 'Gladiator' seems like just another Hollywood action movie (which of course it is).