Titus (1999) REVISIT

Titus Andronicus is popularly considered one of Shakespeare's most brutal plays and is often seen as a lessor of his works. While I understand it had fallen out of favour to be produced for hundreds of years, there has been a bit of a resurgence in popularity recently as adaptations exploit some of its weaknesses. Perhaps in the age of Tarantino and Scorsese, brutal bleak story telling like this can find an audience. Perhaps it was director Julie Taymor's bold, uncompromising vision manifesting itself in this film which is partially responsible for us seeing it in a new light.

Taymor takes the story and quite faithfully adapts it while still framing it in ways that make it far more watchable than the play tends to be. I use "watchable" trepidatiously here as the film is vicious, not shying away from the horrible violence of the story. She sets her story in a visually striking, anachronistic world that is part ancient Greece, part art deco modernist metropolis, and part complete fantasy. Titus is one of the most identifiably visual films I have ever seen and when it isn't showing us horrors it is gorgeous to the extreme.

But it is horrific and those horrors are intense. The film doesn't shy away from the play's violence. It leans in truly. Because Taymor has made this a comment on violence. She introduces the story in a modern setting with a child playing violent games and being pulled into a world of people acting terribly. She is holding up a mirror showing us the way we justify our bad actions to each other and it is an ugly image. She shines a spotlight on our hypocrisy of seeking justice against those who have wronged us with further wrongs.

She creates a film critical of the assumptions and honestly the world which allows this sort of violence. I think one of the best illustrations of this is her treatment of Aaron the villain who is also a moor. He is considered one of the most purely evil characters (perhaps along with Iago which creates an interesting symmetry along racial lines) yet here he is presented as far more sympathetic than I have seen him presented in other productions. Taymor shows how he is reacting quite rationally to a european world that is violent to him and his child, and her optimism at the end of the children saving us is striking in contrast to the pessimism of the rest of the film.

Hopkins gives the sort of performance he is known for, rich and complex and unflinching. But for me it is Lange who steals the show, even among such a strong cast. Her Tamora is a force of nature, withstanding some horrible pain but also capable of inflicting some terrible evil in her own right. I find Cumming's Saturninus does a bit more scenery chewing than I normally respond to but in this fantastic world his cartoony performance isn't too much. Taymor has created a world for her story where nothing is too much.

Titus is gorgeous film making and brave story telling and the work of a singular film maker who is always fascinating to watch. She takes one of the Bard's lessor works and makes something unforgettable out of it.

Titus
Starring: Anthony Hopkins, Jessica Lange, Alan Cumming, Harry Lennix, Colm Feore, James Frain, Laura Fraser, Angus Macfadyen, Matthew Rhys, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Osheen Jones
Director: Julie Taymor
Writers: William Shakespeare, Julie Taymor