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The Don't-Follow Leaders Blues Anthony Hopkins and director Julie Taymor team up for a brilliant rendition of Shakespeare |
"Titus" Reviewed by John Orr (Click on the images to see larger version and credits.) It's a droll tragedy that Shakespeare the greatest populist writer of all time is so often ignored by most film fans. Our average citizen snored through "Julius Caesar" in high school, and thereafter skipped every chance to dip into the greatest well ever of capitivating storytelling, fanciful phrasing and human understanding. Such people tend to think that old Will is only for literati, a view shared by some academics the sort who have their noses buried so deep in books they have lost touch with actual human beings. Shakespeare never lost touch with human beings. His writing can reach us all. A case in point is "Titus Andronicus," a play that went out of academic fashion a few hundred years ago. As late as 1968, G. B. Harrison wrote "The horrors in 'Titus Andronicus' are too much; if ever presented on a modern stage they would move the audience not to shudders but to guffaws." Of course, that was before "Alien" popped out of John Hurt's stomach, before Linda Blair ravaged herself in "The Exoricist" and before Steven Spielberg showed us a soldier picking up the torn-off end of his own arm in "Saving Private Ryan." Not to mention the tasteless excesses of such meaningless films as "Scream" and "Nightmare on Elm Street."
In her hands, and with the help of the great Anthony Hopkins, Jessica Lange and an overall excellent cast, the play reviled by academics as Shakespeare's worst becomes one of the greatest films of the Bard's work. It can grab even today's jaded filmgoers and shake them powerfully with an overwhelming story filled with irony, wit and tragedy.
Titus is offered the emperorship but refuses it, giving his support instead to Saturninus, son of the late emperor. Saturninus has been in bitter political fights with his own brother, Bassianus, and the first thing he does when crowned is demand Bassianus' betrothed, Lavinia, as his empress. Lavinia is Titus' daughter. Bassianus takes her away, with the help of Titus's surviving sons, which outrages the old general, who believes in the Roman emperoracy. He slays one of his own sons while trying to get his daughter back. Amused by that, Saturninus dismisses Lavinia and marries Queen Tamora instead.
Then things get even more twisted and violent, as Tamora begins to extract deadly revenge on Titus and his progeny, with the help of her Moor lover, Aaron. The horrors are considerable. "Don't follow leaders," Bob Dylan would write about 450 years after Shakespeare wrote "Titus," but it's the same lesson, and one Titus learns only bitterly in this powerful revenge roundelay.
When Titus' mud-covered army, looking like toy soldiers come alive, marches into a coliseum, they are joined by motorcycle troops in Nazi coal-bucket helmets. When Tamora's evil surviving sons are idle, they play pool and video games, listening to heavy metal.
Theater or Video?
See cast, credit and other details about "Titus" at Internet Movie Data Base. |