Titus

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.