- William Shakespeare(play "Titus Andronicus")
- Julie Taymor(screenplay)
- Stars
- William Shakespeare(play "Titus Andronicus")
- Julie Taymor(screenplay)
- Stars
- William Shakespeare(play "Titus Andronicus")
- Julie Taymor(screenplay)
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaWriter, producer, and director Julie Taymor used anachronistic props and clothes throughout this movie (chariots, tanks, swords, and machine guns) because she wanted to symbolically depict 2,000 years of warfare and violence.
- GoofsWhen Tamora leaves the party/orgy to join Aaron on the balcony, her hands are clasped across her chest. In the next shot she is holding a cigarette.
- Quotes
Titus: Oh villains, Chiron and Demetrius. Here stands the spring whom you have stained with mud, this goodly summer with your winter mixed. You killed her husband, and for that vile fault two of her brothers were condemned to death, my hand cut off and made a merry jest, both her sweet hands, her tongue, and that more dear than hands or tongue, her spotless chastity, inhuman traitors, you constrained and forced. What would you say if I should let you speak? Villains, for shame, you could not beg for grace. Hark, wretches, how I mean to martyr you. This one hand yet is left to cut your throats whilst that Lavinia, 'tween her stumps doth hold the basin that receives your guilty blood. You know, your mother means to feast with me and calls herself Revenge and thinks me mad. Hark, villains. I shall grind your bones to dust, and with your blood and it I shall make a paste, and of the paste a coffin I will rear and make two pastries of your shameful heads. And bid that strumpet, your unhallowed dam, like to the earth, swallow her own increase! This is the feast I have bid her to, and this the banquet she shall surfeit on... And now prepare your throats.
- ConnectionsFeatured in At the Movies: Simpatico/The Third Miracle/Titus (2000)
Shakespeare's tragedy Titus Andronicus is basically a formula for violence, in order for Shakespeare to gain popularity over his contemporaries. It also uses the overflow of violence to draw some pointed conclusions about the elegance and civilized society of ancient Rome. But never mind that, it's just needlessly violent...right? Of course it's violent - and "Titus" became perhaps his most popular play. But to criticize this film for being nothing but violent is to miss the point, and run the risk of hypocrisy. Feore was right in his little diatribe which I included above.
How many people were killed in Independence Day? Armageddon, anyone? Kill Bill? Kill Bill VOLUME TWO? Pulp Fiction? Batman? Hero? Spiderman? Catwoman? Just about any other Tarantino film? Gladiator? Die Hard? Terminator? Jurassic Park? Just about any big-budget film made since Gone With the Wind? There is needless violence in just about EVERY MOVIE MADE these days. And forget about television. The American Medical Association recently published a report claiming that children in the United States, living in a home with cable television or a VCR, typically witness around 32,000 murders and 40,000 attempted murders by the time they reach the age of 18.
How many of those deaths actually made us feel the desperateness and terror that would actually result from a violent death, of either someone we love or someone we just met moments before? How many of those films had a message that could not have been achieved without all the blood? For all the above films, the deaths involved were there to invigorate us because we've grown accustomed to watching violence, and our version of the Coloseum is now the "action" film genre. We think seeing someone torn in half by two dinosaurs (which were cloned from age-old DNA in order for all of to enjoy the violence as if there weren't enough instruments of violence still living) is really fun. We don't want to be repulsed by murder, which of course we ought to be, but we find it entertaining nonetheless. That's a little sick if you ask me, and THAT is the point of Julie Taymor's film version of "Titus."
"Titus" was directed by Julie Taymor, a brilliant stage director (and for whom this film is her first) worlds away from James Cameron, and about as far removed from Hollywood as you can get. Taymor is renowned for her stage direction, and based this film in part on her recent off-Broadway production of "Titus Andronicus. She also directed and designed the costumes for a musical you may have heard of, called "the Lion King," for which she she was awarded several Tony awards. So her unique and self-consciously absurd visual style, combining modern and ancient design elements in order to suggest that violence has been one of man's favorite past times throughout the ages, really shouldn't be that surprising.
But it is that style which points to the fact that this is not a typical Hollywood film. A typical Hollywood film would be a romantic comedy or a drama about drug abuse and sex. Producers have to take major risks on these films, because most people don't know that Shakespeare can be riveting, or even fun. It isn't better or more worthwhile than any other type of cinema, but it does happen to be one of the underdogs.
Taymor directed this picture with the obscenity of today's culture of violence firmly in mind. Why did the film begin with a deranged, yet oh-so-normal eight year old boy playing with menacing action figures, watching television and killing and destroying everything in sight? Seems out of place, right? Except his appetite for violence creates ratings for television producers which perpetuate the whole phenomenon. So in an abstract way, he conjured up the violence - which then becomes "Titus," and he's made an active participant for the remainder of the story. Perhaps if someone had taken Arnold Schwarzenegger into the Roman colloseum after he finished making "T2" he would've felt a little differently about his actions, too.
In other words, it's all fun and games until somebody gets hurt.
PS -
As for the ridiculous notion that Shakespeare "reads better than it sounds," any ounce of credibility left in the angry critique of "Titus" which inspired this message was pretty much wholly obliterated by that comment. I suppose we have been force-fed infantile dialogue with more expletives than adjectives for too long, and have now decided to hate and reject screenplays that appear to be smarter than we are. Or smarter than we have been led to think we are...shouldn't we welcome the challenge of deciphering more mature language?
- bkdement
- Dec 16, 2004
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- 2 hours 42 minutes
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