Titus Review
By Joe Lozito
Roman Ruin
It's amusing to imagine a young William Shakespeare in his Tarantino phase, pandering to the audience and realizing that violence and gore sell tickets. There's no better example than 'Titus Andronicus', one of his earliest and least-loved efforts. Shakespeare's 'Titus' is a revenge play from start to finish. There are very few other emotions or motivations present in the play except hatred. Over the years, various and sundry troupes of actors have found it necessary to pull the play out of moth-balls and give it a fresh new "treatment" - a different time period, authentic costuming, etc - attempting perhaps to prove that "it's Shakepeare, so it has to be good". It is possible, however, that even the world's greatest playwright had an off day. Regardless of the spin placed on the material, what remains is still the same bloody mess.
Taking the most recent crack at this Shakespearean black sheep, Julie Taymor, perhaps best known for directing "The Lion King" on Broadway, pulls out all the stops. Her "Titus" spans time-periods and anachronisms run rampant - at one point the characters are in a Roman coliseum, the next scene they are in some fascist Nazi-knock-off. The effect is at once mesmerizing and jarring to the point that the audience can never get comfortable in the film.
This complaint does not end at the visuals - it holds true of the performances as well. Anthony Hopkins plays the title character in a kind of Hannibal Lechter meets Hamlet performance that serves the play very well (the "Silence of the Lambs" comparison is apparent even before he cooks two characters into a meat pie). Also camping it up in style are Jessica Lange, fitting in nicely as the dread Queen of the Goths, Tamora, and a deliciously flamboyant Alan Cumming as the Roman Emperor (yes, the Roman Emperor) Saturnius. However, not all the characters in the film seem to have the appetite for scenery (which looks like it would be very tasty) that the text requires. Too often, characters brood quietly or scream their dialogue incoherently (the same problem which plagued the DiCaprio/Danes "Romeo & Juliet").
The plot is the same as ever, of course, with the added conceit of a young boy from the present day who comes along as a casual observer. The presence of the boy in most scenes in largely innocuous until it becomes clear that Ms. Taymor is going to use him to try to give some added meaning to the text. The text, however, does not require nor does it sustain much extra meaning. And, at two hours and 45 minutes, Ms. Taymor would have been better served to cut rather than add.
Ms. Taymor's visuals are stunning and well staged, but these are parts that do not combine to form a cohesive whole. Her "Titus" is easily the best interpretation of the play in recent memory, and it may - if all goes well - be the "definitive" version.
