Directed by Julie Taymor
Starring Anthony Hopkins as Titus Andronicus amd Jessica Lange as Tamora
Reviews:
Doctor Froese (boo_@hotmail.com) Calgary, AB, CANADA. Date: 23 February 2001
Summary:
Shakespeare's play: brought to a beautiful and other - worldly stage. 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.
Quoted from IMDB
Summary:
Not quite there Based on a Shakespeare play, namely the one that many consider his weakest, Titus is at best a fairly enjoyable tale about revenge and power, at worst an irritating mess. From what I saw and see, a movie that splits audiences: either you really like it or you really hate it. I'm pretty much in the middle (for one thing, don't trust anybody who says "you didn't get it", as every character's motivation is up front; subtle is hardly a keyword for this movie). I never quite bought the idea carried in the movie of mixing ancient and modern set pieces, for a simple reason that goes way beyond a simple matter of visual taste. It could have been quite an accomplishment to mix the two if there was an underlying meaning to the choice, i.e. the script could have carried references to what ancient Rome and Italy in the 1930s and 1940s (most of the 'modern' set elements seem to come outta this period, although more recent stuff can be seen) had in common. That is, the modern elements in what is a decaying roman empire wouldn't seem out of place, as long as there's a reason to embed them in it. I would probably be at a complete loss if I had to think of one to include the elements that were included here, but then again, so is the movie. It's pretty much anachronism for the sake of it. "Shakespeare is still valid today" is the statement? Whatever... I don't need some motorcycles for that... The movie makes extensive use of theatre-like visuals and language. Lighting sets and crowds that never exceed a few dozen people give it a surrealistic look, yet not always a satisfactory one, because it seldom feels like it's really into place. We are dealing with Shakespeare here, with a play that could -- and should -- have been much more satisfactory if adapted for the proper environment, the ancient Rome, without arsty modernism. The movie does, however, feature some good acting on the always reliable Anthony Hopkins part, and one almost-memorable scene (the sick but hilarious "cake" scene where Hopkins references his Hannibal Lecter character). On the other hand, Cumming was a mediocre Saturninus. All in all, Titus certainly didn't impress me.
Quoted from IMDB
Reviewer: tepi from Niiza, Japan TITUS. VHS. ASIN: 6305963126
In the endless torrent of mindless trash which floods out of Hollywood, a welter which seems to have been deliberately designed to thrust already degenerate moderns into an even deeper degeneracy, and to portray human love as mere animality and lust, rarely, very rarely, and seemingly as a result of some strange oversight or accident, a movie comes along which - wonder of wonders! - is actually worth seeing. Such a movie is TITUS, Julie Taymor's brilliant adaptation of Shakespeare's early tragedy, 'Titus Andronicus.'
I must admit that I found the opening scene puzzling, and at first was not too happy about the movie's mixing of ancient and modern elements, but the symbolic significance of the ketchup soon became apparent, and one quickly adjusts to the semi-contemporary costumes, automobiles, loudspeakers, automatic weapons, and motorbykes.
The semi-modernization of the settings, which may seem gimmicky at first, does, in other words, work, if you give it a chance. I guess its most important effect is to make the characters more real and believable, and thereby able to generate much more powerful emotional effects, than if they had all been running around dressed in togas. And since music can make or break a movie, a word should be added here about Elliot Goldenthal's impressive score.
The real pleasure of this movie, however, derives not so much from its settings, effective as they are, as from the superb performances given by all of the main actors, certainly by Harry Lennix as Aaron the Moor, and most especially by Anthony Hopkins as Titus, who gave a performance, particularly in the closing scenes, that was pure genius and could scarcely have been bettered even by an Olivier.
Hopkins' richly sonorous voice, and his pacing and shading of Shakespeare's marvelous lines - for example, in the kitchen scene - his finding of precisely the right rhythms and emphases and intonations, preparatory to his calm gutting of the degenerate and worthless offspring of Tamura, is a joy to behold : "Come, come, Lavinia ; look, thy foes are bound. . . . O villains, Chiron and Demetrius, / Here stands the spring whom you have stained with mud, / This goodly summer with your winter mixed. . . " (5.2.166-71). Hopkins here gives us acting at its very finest, and since everything in the modern world daily seems to become more and more shoddy and unreal, I begin to wonder if Hopkins may not be the last true actor we will ever see.
It is Anthony Hopkins great distinction as an actor that he is able to feel his way into the lives of tormented creatures such as the much-abused Roman General Titus Andronicus, or the psychopath of genius, Hannibal Lecter, and make their passions real to us. Hopkins' stunning performances draw us in, and make us actually feel the extreme passions that consume his characters, make us, in the words of the British poet Ted Hughes, feel "what a passion feels like to the one possessed of it" ('Tales from Ovid,' page ix).
What TITUS has to offer, then, is not Hollywood's usual fare - the lives of unreal dummies being acted out by equally unreal dummies - but men and women made seemingly real by Shakespeare's artistry, and whose reality, captured and projected by superior acting talent, becomes, for a time, our own felt reality. Don't miss this superb movie!
Quoted from Amazon Customer Reviews