Titus (1999) User Reviews

A brilliant film and in my opinion better than the play

[TheLittleSongbird · 10/10 · 11 September 2012]

The play I have never considered one of Shakespeare's best, I give you that there is enough wit and poetry to make Shakespeare's style distinctive and Aaron is the most interesting character, but the story is not the most focused or developed like Shakespeare's later plays. I was worried about the film version Titus, I know that Julie Taymor is an imaginative director, both on film and on stage, but it was whether the film could do anything with the material. Not only does it absolutely do that, but it also improves on the play. The film is perhaps too long, but the story is actually compelling even with some very disturbing moments(then again the idea of men in a pie is that in the play) that doesn't rely heavily on shock value. And the characters especially Titus and Aaron are interesting. Taymor's direction is creative and doesn't swamp the dialogue too much, while the costumes, sets and various sequences are jaw-dropping. The music is rousing and haunting, and the dialogue flows naturally and has the poignant intensity you'd expect from Shakespeare. Titus is not Anthony Hopkins' best role, my favourite is between Frederick Treves(The Elephant Man), CS Lewis(Shadowlands) and Stevens(The Remains of the Day) though Hannibal Lector(The Silence of the Lambs) is probably his most iconic. His turn here is still very authoritative and moving though. Jessica Lange oozes sex appeal and evil and Harry Lennix is radiantly malevolent. Alan Cumming is somewhat off-the-wall but in an endearing way, while Matthew Rhys and Jonathan Rhys Meyers are good as Demetrius and Chiron. All in all, I found this film to be brilliant and while any Shakespeare is worth watching and reading this is the first time that a Shakespearen film adaptation has been better than the play it's based on. 9.5/10 Bethany Cox

Titus the Caterer

[bkoganbing · 9/10 · 18 August 2008]

Titus is Julie Traynor's adaption of one of Shakespeare's bloodier works, Titus Andronicus. It's set in a surreal land where ancient idiom is mixed with modern dress and customs. It's not normally a form I like because I prefer my Shakespeare traditional. However in the case of Titus Andronicus though the setting is that of ancient Rome, the characters and plot incidents are an amalgamation of several stories out of Rome, so there is no real history for it to compete with. It's not like doing Julius Caesar in this kind of setting.

Titus Andronicus is a Roman general whose legions can make or break the next emperor. Rather than claim the crown himself he says give it to the eldest son of the last emperor Saturninus. He soon wishes he hadn't been that magnanimous.

The other strand of the plot involves Titus in insisting a blood sacrifice be made to the Roman Gods of the eldest son of the captured Queen of Goths Tamora. She begs and pleads for her kid's life, but to no avail. After that she starts planning revenge and she's got two other sons and a Moorish man toy named Aaron to both help her out and pour gasoline on her fires for revenge.

Watching Titus Andronicus I thought of Hamlet which also about what turns out to be a bloody quest for vengeance where nearly every principal character winds up dead in the end. But in Hamlet's case the deaths were by sword except in the case of the father of Hamlet, already dead by poison. This one is a whole matter.

And how singularly appropriate that the man who won an Academy Award for playing Hannibal the Cannibal plays Titus Andronicus. We've got rape, mutilation, throat cutting, decapitation, being buried alive, and finally what the play is most noted for, the serving of up of a tasty meat pie with the flesh of two of the characters.

Anthony Hopkins of course is the caterer and he's magnificent in the title role. He goes almost as mad as Hannibal the Cannibal in Titus. From a man who generously gave a crown away, to a blood crazed animal, Hopkins deterioration in character is truly something to behold.

He's matched every step of the way by Jessica Lange as Tamora. Lady MacBeth has nothing on this woman, she makes Lady MacBeth look like Mary Poppins. Lange brings some real passion to this part, in some ways it's a more substantial role than the title character. I would venture to say it is one of the best roles for a woman that the Bard ever wrote.

Titus Andronicus is one of Shakespeare's lesser known plays. Quite frankly it's too bloody for most tastes. I doubt it will ever make a high school English syllabus. But it's a fascinating tale of revenge, just taking hold of people until that's all they live for.

stagey Shakespearian movie

[SnoopyStyle · 6/10 · 28 January 2015]

It's a mix of Ancient Rome and modern fascist Italy. General Titus Andronicus (Anthony Hopkins) returns from his campaign with hostages, Queen of the Goths Tamora (Jessica Lange) and her sons. Titus sacrifices her oldest son. Saturninus (Alan Cumming) and Bassianus (James Frain) compete over the empty throne. Senator Marcus Andronicus (Colm Feore) nominates his brother Titus for the crown. Prideful Saturninus is angered and Bassianus is supportive. Titus relinquishes the honor to Saturninus who claims Titus' daughter Lavinia (Laura Fraser) despite the fact that she's already betrothed to Bassianus. To everyone's shock, Saturninus frees Tamora and her sons. Bassianus flees with Lavinia with the help of Titus' sons. Duty bound Titus even kills one of his own sons to try to stop them. Saturninus takes Tamora as his replacement bride as she plots her revenge on Titus.

Director Julie Taymor has put as much costumes, great actors, dressed up sets as she can but it's still very stagey. It can't escape from being a play. It's interesting for a little while but it wears thin. There are not enough people and not enough grandeur. The dialog is still Shakespearian. It is a brutal violent play. The actors do a great job but this is a play, not a movie.

inspired adaptation

[Kirpianuscus · 24 July 2016]

for me, Titus Andronicus remains the most shocking, provocative, cruel, ferocious, sarcastic, horror text of European literature. the perfect example of the fight of Shakespeare against his public. the film is a loyal adaptation. and fascinating for the science to explore the essence of play. impressive inn scenes, fragments from Satyricon by Fellini, Anthony Hopkins, the inspired introduction and end. the irony about the glory of Rome, Alan Cumming as the perfect Saturninus, the force of each scene,a Lavinia who, in strange manner, reminds Ophelia and an Aron useful for new nuances of Othello. a great show who seems be perfect because the large, eccentric throne under the huge head of wolf of Saturninus , the electoral campaign, the stones of way, all are Shakespeare in the most impressive manner. a film who impress for each detail- costumes,kitsch, choreography, landscapes, camera angle.

Blue in the face.

[lee_eisenberg · 6/10 · 26 February 2006]

I will admit that I'd never heard of Shakespeare's play "Titus Andronicus" until the movie "Titus" came out - it was one of ol' Bill's lesser known works. This may be one of the harder Shakespeare plays to understand, but it basically has Emperor Titus (Anthony Hopkins) returning from battle only to find doom back home. The opening scene of the boy playing with things was a little confusing itself (I'm assuming that the original play didn't feature that). A particularly interesting thing was that the movie got released in Portland around the same time that "Gladiator" came out, so there were two Rome-related flicks in theaters. Fairly interesting.

An impressive retelling of Shakespeare's infamously brutal 'Titus Andronicus'

[Tweekums · 9/10 · 8 February 2020]

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.

faithful to the source but original in interpretation through the medium, Titus is quite a sight

[Quinoa1984 · 8/10 · 6 November 2007]

Titus, Julie Taymor's first film as director (and possibly her best), is a scathing indictment of the vicious chain of violence- or circle, take your pick. First examined by the Bard himself, Shakespeare's play was- from all accounts I've heard- super violent and without too many redeeming qualities (one friend described it as Shakespeare's I Spit on Your Grave, not the highest endorsement). Taymor's take is to give it a vivacious quality, one that pulls together strands of time periods together: it's not just Roman armor, but trench-coats and motorcycles and cars and shotguns and modern cook-wear and even some modern jazz music thrown in. It's disorienting at first, especially with the opening scene just showing a kid at a table playing with toys (more accurately, if one's looking for symbolism, the early affects of violence on the young), then suddenly whisked away to a Roman amphitheater. But if you're ready to give up any sense of the usual, of the constrictive or stuffy environments held by the classic adapters of Shakespeare, it's bound to provide some unexpected thrills and style.

And style, by the way, as a means of expressing the harshness of the subject matter. This is far from one of the Bard's light affairs, and any tries at humor are probably gallows humor, or based around some of its talent. Anthony Hopkins takes the title role, a general who was loyal for so long to the Emperor (flamboyant as possible, which means a lot, via Alan Cumming) that he's repaid by allowing his new step-sons via new Empress (Jessica Lange, sultry and dangerous) to cut off his daughter's hands and her tongue and rape her and leave her for dead. But Titus tries to stay strong and true even through this, and cuts off one of his hands in exchange for the lives of his brothers sons. They're dead too. Then starts the cycle of revenge, leading to a table scene that might have been prep-work for Hopkins, in part, for his stint as Hannibal two years later. But all of this, including a subplot with the Moor Aaron (tremendous actor, can't recall the name), is presented in a form that's alive and energetic, insistent on making us pay attention, even if not every single work sticks to our consciousness (it IS Shakespeare, of course, a few words might slip by in his poetic prose).

While Taymor's and her crew have one of the most lavish and awe-inspiring productions of 1999, and the cast has their fun chewing up said scenery as anger boils and madness comes to a head, and a sort of odd flaw continues onward with the boy's character (maybe more a fault of the writer than Taymor, albeit with one of the worst closing shots I've ever seen in any movie), it's still Shakespeare's show. It might not be his best work, but be it known that it is, thou interested reader, his most disturbing (maybe not bleakest, that would go to King Lear). There's death circling all around these characters, from those that were made slaves and then slaves of the Imperial ego like Lange's character and her two sons, to the Moor who has every reason to fight to stay alive as he will go to kill the innocent maid, and finally to Titus himself who has gone so long killing and pillaging he can take barbaric glee in stomping out a fly. And Hopkins is there to compliment the cringe-inducing moments, as he sits in the bathtub or creates the meat-pies, in a performance so staggering it should be counted as his bravest in the last ten years. Even if going in you already don't like the play, it'll be worth it for his turn.

Interesting Concept

[Gordon-11 · 9 March 2003]

At first I thought the film was a mess. I was so confused, a kid in the modern world get kidnapped into the past? And in ancient Rome they have modern buildings and even jeeps? These anachronisms really annoyed me. The pace was slow and I thought I would have a hard time to endure the 2.5 hours. Then as the film progressed I liked the film. The obvious anachronisms were probably deliberate (eg using machine guns for execution), and I thought this was an interesting idea. However, I think the directing can improve a bit. Especially the scene when Aaron was standing at the balcony facing the camera for a speech. That looked like some kind of a travel show, with the host standing still in front of a scenic background. If the camera was not static I would have liked this scene more.

Mama Vision needs Rhythm

[tedg · 28 August 2000]

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.

Worst Shakespeare adaptation ever!

[preppy-3 · 3/10 · 24 January 2000]

LONGGGG (almost 3 hours), repititous, boring adaptation of what is considered Shakespeare's worst play. No one likes the play, so naturally Hollywood does a movie of it. Smart move (sarcasm). The movie is basically just murder, mutilation, rape, cannabilism, etc. etc. shoved down the viewers' throats. Also they (unwisely) stuck to the original play text. Shakespeare reads a lot better than he plays. The same points are made over again and again and AGAIN in the movie until you could scream. The costumes and sets are (putting it mildly) WAY over the top, but it does keep you awake. The acting...wellllll.. Hopkins has been better--he looks totally lost here. Lange is obviously enjoying her role and she is very good. Her outfits though, are ridiculous (and humiliating). Her husband played by Cumming takes the movie way too seriously and turns in a dull, unfunny performance. Rhys and Rhys-Meyers are REAL annoying as Langes' sons. They scream and shout EVERY line at the top of their lungs. That's not acting guys! Every time they show up you cringe. The rest of the cast is OK. But altogether this is boring, overdone and unpleasant. Who thought this would be a good idea?

Powerful, incredible, compelling...an antidote to Shakespeare in Love

[safenoe · 8/10 · 19 September 2016]

I haven't seen many Shakespeare movies. I've seen Macbeth - the one with Jon Finch and I saw Shakespeare in Love with Gwyneth Paltrow. I thought Macbeth was gruesome in some respects, but it has nothing on Titus, which is a level 11 (to paraphrase This is Spinal Tap) on the gore level. And this was centuries before Nightmare on Elm Street.

I liked the merging of modern day settings in this, e.g. the army tanks, the SS stormtrooper type garb, the modern kitchen ware. The finale was quite innovative, where the dining table scene transfers to a modern stadium with onlookers. I wonder where that was filmed? Croatia or one of the Yugoslavian republics? Jessica Lange was superb in Titus. Interestingly, in New Zealand Lange is pronounced "Longy" - one of its Prime Ministers was David Lange and that's how he pronounced it.

I wonder what the stage play would be like. I haven't seen it and I heard some patrons fainted during a performance at the Globe in London not so long ago. Can you imagine a high school putting on Titus instead of High School Musical?

The Bard doth rolleth in his grave.

[=G= · 6/10 · 15 August 2000]

"Titus", a psychotic makeover of Shakespear's epic tragedy, is so surreal as to make it laughable. Hopkins gives a powerful performance but even his mesmerizing portrayal of the title character could not keep us from being distracted by the explosion in props and costumes, a creative staff on LSD, or whatever it was that turned a powerful drama into a joke. The ubiquitous and always vocal pious aficionados who think everything atypical is creative will applaud this flick as inspired genius. However, the purists will more likely loathe it. Some things don't need Hollywood glomming them up. Shakespeare is one of them.

gripping, absurdist view of Shakespeare

[Buddy-51 · 17 August 2000]

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.

Shakespeare's Tao

[chaos-rampant · 22 November 2013]

This is a handsome, sorrowful, flourishing, heavyhanded retelling of Shakespeare. I went for a walk afterwards and it felt cleansing to breathe in the cool night air after all the despair and hate of this. Much of it comes down to the play itself. It is bloody and mad, heavyhanded itself. A gloried general who puts Rome above his sons. A vengeful mother and queen who will not return pity when she was given scorn. A pathetic king, a monstrous moor, and various sons and daughters as playthings for the mad.

It is clumsy in spots. The whole ruse in the forest with slain Bassianus must have felt far fetched to even Shakespeare. And a Roman general who slips out and returns against Rome with an army of the Goths he helped vanquish a few months ago? But overall it is powerful, gripping stuff because it's in the right hands here.

The question how to visualize Shakespeare must be as old as the medium. The filmmaker here made a simple concession. Keep the original language. This means she can't film the metaphor, which would make a superb film of itself. Her brilliant choice was to create a modern stage for it. A Roman orgy plays out like a party from the roaring 20s. Cars and cigarettes coexist with tunics and armor. But the main thrust is still cthonic and medean.

We don't have a calligraphic weave where character urges appear as encounter. But she has managed to address another, equally difficult problem of cinematic narrative. So many films are a passive exchange. What she has done in this odd way is carve a vital space for the story that avoids the pitfalls of both the usual period piece and on the opposite end the arbitrary imagination of something like the Cremaster films.

It jars for a while but settles as a coherent world that is different enough to demand attention to it. It feels alive, freed from a historic stage, neither realistic nor without reality, puzzling the logical thought (why cars?) yet remaining implicitly recognizable for the eye.

And yet it's all that rich, image-based language of the original that I find myself drawn to.

In Shakespeare's time, plays were apparently performed with only bare essentials of stage craft. I know very little about him and the time, but this film surprised me enough to want to change that. Anyway, the word carried the cinematic stitch, the visual horizons. Here we have both word and stream of images, which may dampen the impact of the first.

Yet I urge you to really pay attention to the word here, always in conjunction with the story. On the top dramatic layer we have sin and madness. Deep down, though, it is all about realizing what is truly vital and matters in life: intuition, not structure.

It is not the loss of queendom for her, nor for Titus the loss of prestige that truly hurt. What Titus deprives of the Goth queen and is turn torn from him tenfold is this human background of connection to loved ones that we often take for granted as we plot careers, this being love. Not the same as passion, it is exactly the sense I have when I feel happy, the spontaneous assurance provided by things, the deep anchorage in the world that can only come from caring about things other than myself.

This is not poetry, but mechanics of awareness. Being happy and whole entails a sense of rootedness in the world around me.

The play is stitched throughout with metaphors about exactly this: the earth accepting rain, trees blowing in the wind, gnats flying in front of the sun, rivers overflowing their banks, branches, deer, earth, rain. Wonderful, wonderful cinematic flows in words. It is not the word itself that appeals, the literary quality. The word carries the insight, capacity for horizon. All cull from nature the same observation, the same motif. Transient, violent motion yet always anchored in the world with capacity to bear it.

My world is Taoist, out of personal choice, worlds apart from Shakespeare. I am always riveted by his work but need that cleansing walk afterwards that restores things. And yet here I find him drawn to the same realization as the Chinese masters in their meditation, that of a (perceptive) field beyond suffering and nonsuffering where things hold each other in place by virtue of being what they are.

Shakespeare's Tao.

A very abstract and violent rendition of one of Shakespeare's most violent plays

[The-Sarkologist · 10/10 · 9 February 2012]

This is an incredibly gruesome movie, but then again the play upon which it was based is also incredibly gruesome. Titus Andronicus, the Shakespearian play upon which this movie is based is actually one of his least popular ones, so when I discovered that somebody actually made a movie of it I was thrilled, and it thrilled me even more when I saw it and was absolutely astounded by it. Anthony Hopkins plays the role of Titus Andronicus absolutely beautifully.

The play is set in Imperial Rome, though the actual period is very speculative. It is suggested that it could be at its height as Titus has returned from a successful campaign against the Goths, and it could be near the end as the movie finishes with an invasion of the Goths. However I would be hesitant to call it an invasion simply because Lucius is asked to go to the Goths and raise an army to help Titus seek revenge for the crimes committed against him and his family. The story itself is fictional, however it is not something that Shakespeare created himself (The Tempest is his only original work). There are also numerous references to Greek mythology, particularly the cannibalistic meal at the conclusion.

Titus is a movie about vengeance, and it is more so than Hamlet because most of the characters have a bone to pick with at least one of the other characters. In fact it is about how being consumed with hatred and vengeance is a vicious circle with is constantly descending until there are no survivors. The Emperor Saturninus is vengeful because he has been denied the woman that he wants, simply because she loves his brother, but because he has been denied, he takes it out on Titus, a loyal and faithful general. The Goth Queen seeks vengeance because Titus sacrificed her older son despite her pleas, and when she exacts her revenge upon the Adronici, she earns Titus' wrath.

The play seems to shift about halfway through, and I believe the cinematography captures this brilliantly. The movie does not set the action in a set time or place, it is the modern world, but it is a world torn apart by violence and anger. It is still Rome, but it is a Rome of the imagination, and the movie is bookended by scenes of the action taking place in a Colosseum, which places the film clearly into the realm of the imagination. This is good as it is further distancing ourselves from the violence erupting within the film. It has also been said, by the director, that the entire film is seen through the eyes of a child. In the play the child plays a minor role, but in the film, he is ever present. It opens with the child playing with toys, but the play becomes ever more violent, and in fact the entire room in which the child is explodes in a ball of fire, indicating the violence that is about to swallow the lives of the Andronici.

The centre piece of the play is where Titus is pleading for the lives of his sons. He has previously killed a son, has seen his daughter raped and mutilated, and then watches with helplessness as two of his sons are lead off to be executed. It is all apart of the Queen's plan to destroy Titus' life. In this scene his brother, Marcus, is encouraging Titus to slay himself, this was common in the Roman Empire when somebody had been dishonoured and his life had been destroy. However Titus is strong in will, and will not desert those who have been wronged. He knows that he has been dishonoured, but he knows that to kill himself is to give up, and especially leave his beloved daughter unavenged.

There seems to be no redeeming features in any of the characters, though none of them are strictly villains. Even Aaron, the Moor and the Queen's lover, is motivated by jealousy in that his lover has been stolen from him. However he considers himself a wicked man, and when he faces execution he is more that willing to spill his guts that to remain loyal. However, when he is finally given his punishment, he even repents of any good deed that he may have done. I don't sympathise, or even empathise with any of the characters. True, Titus has shown nothing but loyalty to his emperor, but has only been a victim of circumstance, or so it seems. The key here is the sacrifice of the Queen's son. Granted, human sacrifice was not tolerated in Rome, at all, that is one of the reasons they went to war with Carthage, so it is tempted to believe that Titus went overboard, until we consider the play. Titus is convinced that it is something that he needs to do, and he cannot back out of it, though I still cannot help thinking that maybe, just maybe, the sacrifice of a human was not necessary.

One of the most entertaining and extravagant Shakespeare interpretations on film

[howard.schumann · 9/10 · 14 April 2008]

Though William Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus is full of gratuitous and grisly violence, most scholars believe that its images of dismemberment are metaphorical in nature. This does not prevent some critics from dumping on Titus as a second-rate play and questioning Shakespeare's "Quentin Tarantino moment". Titus Andronicus seems anything but second rate, however, in the skilled hands of director Julie Taymor whose 1999 film Titus is one of the most entertaining and extravagant Shakespeare interpretations on film. Anthony Hopkins is terrific as the head of the excellent ensemble cast that provides some depth to the thin characters and Taymor is able to extract humor from the grim proceedings while providing dazzling imagery and an adrenaline rush.

A special mention should also be given to Harry Lennix as Tamora's servant Aaron, one of the few black characters in Shakespeare. Aaron is a complex character, both diabolical and attractive for his fierce love of his child. Irreligious and rebellious, he is the model for the motif of the outsider and the precursor of Shylock, Malvolio, and Othello.

Though Titus is generally believed to have been written in 1593 (it was published anonymously in 1594), Ben Jonson's comment in 1614 that the play has held the stage for twenty-five or thirty years (dismissed as an exaggeration) might bring the date of composition closer to the period of 1584-1589. Since Titus, like Macbeth, was doubtless influenced by the barbarous Wars of Religion during the late 16th century, there is speculation that an earlier version might have been written around 1576 at the time of the war between the Spanish Catholics and the Dutch Protestants known as the Spanish Fury with Saturninus representing Philip of Spain and Livonia representing the rape of Antwerp.

Titus deals with themes that run throughout the canon: the problem of succession – who has the rightful claim to rule, revenge, and the idea of banishment (exile) and return, and the play is reminiscent of King Lear in its obsession with insanity induced by loss. Expressing his alienation through the figures of the fool, the bastard, and the king without a crown, Shakespeare's heroes are demonic, men who live on the edge, appearing at times like a monster in the guise of Caliban, Bottom, and Edgar and other times like Prospero, a philosopher king. Caliban is his base ambition, but Prospero is his higher self.

Though proximity to the center of power drives Titus close to madness and the play seems to be saying that madness is the only escape from suffering, the ending brings a restoration of moral sanity and hopes for an era of peace. Oxfordians note that the severed hand metaphor may indicate that the author was severed from his writings but the text still bears the "hand" of their creator. In the phrase of author Charles Beauclerk, "Divorced from his works and cut off from the wellspring of his creativity, his unconscious inundates the plays and his emotional pain overwhelms the text." Taymor meshes three time periods in the film: ancient Rome, fascism in the 1930's and the modern era. The plot, which is completely fictional, is set in the late Roman Imperial era as the Empire attempts to hold off barbarian Gothic invaders. As Titus opens, a modern day energetic young boy (Osheen Jones) has decided to smash up his kitchen while playing with action figures. He is then seized by a clown and dragged into the world of fifth century Rome where he takes on the role of Titus' grandson. Similar to Romeo and Juliet in its theme of conflict between families, the play begins with competing authorities as both Saturninus (Alan Cumming) and Bassanius (James Frain) both claim the throne. A robotic procession of soldiers in ancient Rome is led by aging General Titus Andronicus (Anthony Hopkins) who is returning to Rome after a victorious battle against the Goths.

Andronicus brings with him prisoners Queen Tamora (Jessica Lange), Aaron (Harry Lennix) and her sons Chiron (Jonathan Rhys Myers) and Demetrius (Matthew Rhys). Titus is offered the crown vacated by the death of Caesar but refuses it, designating instead the flamboyant Saturninus as Emperor. When Tamora's eldest son Alarbus is murdered by Andronicus as a human sacrifice to the gods, she is able to use the weak-willed Saturnine as her vehicle for revenge, crying "O cruel, irreligious piety".

When Titus' daughter Lavinia (Laura Fraser), the wife chosen by Saturnine, is abducted by Bassianus, Saturnine chooses Tamora as his wife, setting off a bloody sequence of events that include mutilation, rape and murder, and an orgy of death in which a mother eats her son's remains baked in a pie, mirroring Book VI of Ovid's "Metamorphosis". That this could be entertaining is a tribute to Taymor's audacity and, of course, the obsessive brilliance of Shakespeare.

A Story of Honor

[BaronBl00d · 3 September 2000]

Much has been said about the pros and cons of this decidedly ambitious film. The film is inventive, creative, and visionary. It is also fragmentary with regards to plot(Shakespeare's problem too), coarse, and pandering(to the taste of a small, but seemingly relevant slice of the public). That being said, I wholeheartedly enjoyed the film. It is one of those films that gains your attention early on and holds it till the last shot. The director, Julie Taymor, definitely has some talent as she shows signs of brilliance. The story is simple enough. It is about honor, honor to one's leige, one's parents, and finally one's principles. The titular character Titus is Titus Andronicus, a leader of the Roman Legions. He is revered in Rome for his allegiance and prowess as a soldier. He is offered the crown, but refuses, and in so doing sows his own misfortune. The rest of the story concerns itself with the revenge of Queen Tamora on Titus and his family for killing her son, and then on Titus turning the tide and avenging himself. Titus is a tragic figure. He is a man that causes much of his misfortune through his undying, unyielding pride and code of honor. Anthony Hopkins is marvelous as Titus, conveying many different emotions with credibility. The rest of the cast, for the most part, is pretty good. Jessica Lange really stands out in her role as the vengeful queen. Lange has rarely been lovlier and she exudes sex and evil with great relish. The film follows the play for the most part, and in doing so, is very VERY bloody. Hands, heads are lopped off here and there. A tongue is also excised from a girls head, and two men are baked into a pie for the purpose of unwittingly quenching their mother's appetite.

Taymor: One of the Most Insightful and Creative People To Ever Direct a Movie

[jzappa · 9/10 · 4 August 2008]

Some very open-minded critics like Roger Ebert say that Taymor understood the lavish sensationalism of Titus Andronicus and treated it as a connection to modern-day exploitation films and video games. Taymor, however, argues in a Charlie Rose interview that she sees an honest theme in the play, that of questions like, What makes a person violent? What drives one to unforgivable acts? This is what makes Titus an exemplary film experience. It, in Taymor's overachieving Dionysian way, drains the resources of the film medium on a completely uninhibited vision of a highly ambiguous, much-argued-over work of the most important writer in the English language and has, in one sense, captured it in a way so perceptively faithful that it is just as ambiguous as its source material, and in another sense, a passionate work of mystique, something that transcends so many bounds and perceptions of what cinema can do and especially what Shakespearean adaptations have done.

The final shot, though its meaning is well understood, leaves an odd taste in one's mouth by negating the atmosphere of the rest of the film and taking on an almost 1980s-style freeze frame fade-out accompanied by synthesized music, and also the shot runs a gratuitous length that goes beyond the length by which we come to understand it and by which it satisfies the film's pace.

Nevertheless, Anthony Hopkins and Jessica Lange are great, if unlikely, enemies. Hopkins relishes his opportunity as a lead in a Shakespeare production as Lange asserts herself in a manner that feels more contemporary, making them suitable counterparts in the context of Taymor's intentions with the adaptation to eschew the standard Shakespeare film anachronisms for a jolting merger of several different time periods, as Shakespeare himself merged periods himself.

"I ate Chiron and Demetrius with a side of Fava beans and a fine Ciante."

[JoeB131 · 9/10 · 17 November 2007]

Sorry, but I'll be that's what you thought, too! Hannibal the Cannibal meets Shakespeare.

I always find it amusing that people who denounce violence and sex in movies don't realize that Shakespeare was far worse in some of his plays. This play had thirteen murders, a rape, multiple limbs being hacked off, and caps it all off with matriarchal cannibalism. This would never get by the MPAA if it wasn't Shakespeare.

This was a fairly stylish adaptation of the Bard's work, with Ancient Rome set in a modernistic world with cars, radio and rock music. I think that it works unlike other "updated" Shakespeare, like that awful movie with MacBeth as crime gangs. It's an alternative universe, and you just accept that.

Hopkins is pretty good in this as Titus Andronicus, and Jessica Lange shines as the conniving Tamora. The actor who played Aaron the Moor was pretty good, as well. They all do a lot to give the characters real life, not just reading dry script as some Shakespeare adaptations do.

A Yankee pastiche of a lesser known bard story

[Chris_Docker · 5/10 · 29 August 2000]

Oh dear - the things Americans do when they go wild with Shakespeare! On the plusses, this film brings a lesser-known story (Titus Andronicus) to a wider audience, has some stunning scenery and imagery, and is haunting enough to want to watch till the end. On the downside, the actors, for me, all seemed to be standing there "reciting Shakespeare" (with theatrical flourishes) and some of the time not even understanding what the words meant. This means that it lacks the power to suspend disbelief as well as it might and the gory, terrifying scenes are less shocking because of the inherent stage-iness. The constant flirtations with modern props (such as machine guns) whilst maintaining the classical settings will irritate many, especially as the justifications are flimsy and, as with the surreal sequences, barely beyond the level of playing with the toys accessible to filmmakers. Sadly, special effects are woefully lacking in basic areas, such as when Titus' (Anthony Hopkins)' hand is chopped off and he wanders around with it laughably stuffed up his jacket sleeve and a "bloody stump" sewn onto the end of the same sleeve. Audience titters at the UK premiere were also apparent at the unconvincing hand which the mutilated girl picks up between her teeth. If you liked Shakespeare as portrayed in productions such as Prospero's Books you will probably like this as well. If you prefer either the authentic bard (such as in Branagh's full-length Hamlet) or films that use the medium to enforce realism (such as Polanski's Macbeth) or make the meaning accessible in modern day terms (such as Baz Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet) then you may be disappointed by Titus.

Violence Of The Hams

[slokes · 4/10 · 5 January 2005]

Julie Taymor worked very hard to bring one of Shakespeare's most problematic "problem plays" to the big screen, and you'll work nearly as hard trying to follow what on earth is going on, in this phantasmagoric feast of the senseless.

Anthony Hopkins is a general named Titus Andronicus who bewilderingly allows a very unstable and spiteful rival of his named Saturninus to be made emperor. Saturninus says thanks first by taking Titus's already-betrothed daughter as his wife, then spurning her for a captive barbarian queen named Tamora who Titus made his enemy by killing her son. Now empress, she plots her revenge with the help of her two remaining sons and her adulterous lover.

When William Shakespeare wrote "Titus Andronicus," he set it in a specific place and time, ancient Rome. Taymor's adaptation skitters from ancient to modern and back again, sometimes combining diverse elements in single settings. Senators wear togas with ties. The soldiers dress like Romans, only with triangular codpieces and colorful mud-paint splashed about their faces. The punkboy princelings prance about shirtless in vinyl pants.

Stylization isn't a crime. Some of it in "Titus" is very arresting and thoughtful. The real mix-up comes with the bent of the story. Is it a tragedy? On paper it is, but there are some wacky moments, too, enough that critics like Roger Ebert praise it as a clever send up. Take the scene when a father bids his armless daughter pick up his severed hand with her mouth. Are we supposed to be moved by the sad pathos of this, or chuckling at its goofy panache? I don't know. I don't think Taymor does, either.

Shakespeare is primarily at fault for the storyline, an obvious attempt to furnish the audiences of his day with the blood and nastiness they desired. But he was young and needed the work. Taymor is the real problem. She can't seem to trim a line in this overlong adaptation, and allows every scene to be weighted with excess portent. She's very strong on visuals, but there are times when her focus should be more straightforward. Instead you get a wash of odd Felliniesque nonsense.

Hopkins has good scenes, but excess moments, too. A scene at the end is played by him as an obvious homage to his earlier "Silence Of The Lambs," and Taymor should have hosed him down instead of abetting his grandstanding. Titus is a sloppily written character, but Hopkins's unsteadiness in playing him only worsens matters.

Jessica Lange is great as Queen Tamora, very sexy and teeth-gnashingly evil in a way that serves the story more than herself. Harry J. Lennix does justice to the best role in the play, the nihilistic Moor Aaron, who mourns the idea that, sometime in his misspent life, he may have done a good deed. The rest of the cast is decidedly minor.

"Titus" is like an acid trip. There are good acid trips and bad acid trips, and sometimes one can turn into the other. Very few of them go on for three hours, though. So caveat viewer, as the Romans might say. Let the viewer beware.

Interesting take on an old story

[Agent10 · 8/10 · 14 May 2002]

Talk about a whole new experience! Typically, Shakespearean films tend to follow the styles and settings of the time they depict, but Titus seemed to take on a different approach which took me by surprise. The art design was tremendous, and the neo-futuristic wasteland-style settings were awesome. This film was creepy, so dark, that it the postmodern aesthetic it was attempting to portray was an axiom based on a time we have yet to see. While the acting proved to be nonplus in some areas, considering they were trying very hard to keep to the speaking style. In my opinion, they should have used a more modern set of dialogue, one which reflects the state of society they were depicting.

Here's hoping this is Julie Taymor's last work.

[Spleen · 1/10 · 31 May 2001]

Maybe her stock theatrical gimmicks work on the stage - let's give her the benefit of the doubt - but she doesn't have the foggiest idea how to make a movie.

Not that I think this nonsense would work on stage. "Titus Andronicus" is CLEARLY set in Ancient Rome - would it be TOO MUCH TO ASK to have a production that respects this fact? I'm sick of leather jackets and motorcycles and arcade games and all the other paraphernalia from The Compendium of Tiresome Postmodern Clichés - for once I'd like to see a creative rendition of the era in which the action is supposed to take place, and DOES take place, whatever efforts the director may make to suggest otherwise. In what kind of simple-minded fashion does Taymor expect us to think? "Look, a microphone. Why, that's a modern invention! I guess this means Shakespeare IS a relevant kind of dude, after all!" Please, don't tell me modern audiences are so stupid.

Making it all the more embarrassing is the film's clumsy use of music. Whenever twentieth-century artefacts make a "surprise" appearance, Taymor asks her poor captive composer Elliot Goldenthal to underline the point with a saxophone riff. Wow, a saxophone! That's almost only a hundred years old - I guess Shakespeare IS a relevant kind of dude, after all.

Taymor's affectations undermine an already weak story in too many ways to count. Take the scene where Titus is begging the tribunes to spare his sons' lives. Do we have any sense that it matters? No, because the whole production is so dadaist, and we have so little sense of what can and can't happen in this universe, that none of it seems real - it would be in keeping with the rest of the production for his sons to spring back to life after being executed, so why worry about them? Or take the scene at the Goth's camp outside Rome, which takes place in a quarry with high tension power lines running overhead. Yes, Julie, very Brechtian, but if you'd remove your theoretically-tinted spectacles for just a second, you'd realise that it just looks clumsy. Power lines almost always look clumsy. In this case they not only make it impossible to think of these Aryan extras as being an army of Goths, they make it impossible to think of them as being an army at all. What is Lucius planning to do, follow the pylons? In any case, the last thing this scene needs is the visual suggestion that the army has just passed Rome's power plant (without disabling it), and will shortly come across the arterial highway.

It's bad enough for Taymor to assemble such ludicrous costumes, sets and locations; it's unforgivable for her to think that all she need do is assemble them, without giving any thought to how they'd look on film. It's tragic, really. Taymor's many lame ideas are ALL visual - none of them have to do with story or character or theme - yet because she was concerned with what things look like in the flesh, not how they would end up looking on film, even these are half-lost. You'll struggle to find one arresting image in the entire two-and-a-half hours. And the acting and music fall just as flat as the images do. It's Shakespeare's, rather than Taymor's, fault that the language also falls flat; but she knew this was Shakespeare's weakest play, so she knew what she was letting herself in for. Even so Shakespeare's poetry is all the film has to recommend itself. If, in the last half hour, the film picks up just a little from the aimless drizzle it was at first, Shakespeare alone can take credit.

Show me someone who praises "Titus", and I'll show you someone whose critical judgment is clouded. The film is so dismal and flabby that one is surprised to discover it's even in focus (that is, when it IS in focus). For two hours Taymor does nothing but wave her avant-garde credentials in our faces, and of course, the world is full of people intellectually insecure enough to accept them.

Truly Memorable Screen Adaptation of Shakespeare's First and Bloodiest Tragedy:

[Galina_movie_fan · 9/10 · 7 February 2007]

"Titus" is an unforgettable and timeless work of a a very talented director. It is a stylish, visually stunning, energetic and truly memorable adaptation of the bloodiest parade of horrors which the first tragedy of the young Shakespeare is. More of the horror show than powerful and poetic later Bard's tragedies, "Titus Andronicus" offers betrayal, murders, tortures, rape, and cannibalism for which Julie Taymor's vision was just perfect in transferring this blood fest to the screen. If it is not enough, the movie has one of the greatest performances in Shakespeare's tragedies I've seen and it is Harry J. Lennix as Aaron. Never have I seen an actor who was able to combine both, noble Othello and the embodiment of evil, Iago in one character so convincingly with such power. Anthony Hopkins, Jessica Lange, Alan Cumming, and Colin Feore all give terrific performances.

One of the very best Shakespeare adaptations on film

[JuguAbraham · 9/10 · 12 August 2006]

Why did I like the film? I applaud any director making his or her initial film who chooses to film a complex subject like Shakespeare's least known tragedy, probably the mother of all his well- known tragic plays "King Lear," "Othello," "Macbeth," "Hamlet," and "Julius Caesar" that literature critics have dubbed a "problem play." It is true that each of the later Shakespeare tragedies borrowed strands from "Titus Andronicus." Shakespeare staging "Titus Andronicus" was in a way similar to Julie Taymor's effort to film the play. Shakespeare wanted to establish his name. Some even suggest that Shakespeare did not write it but borrowed the source material. Yet no one can dispute that even in Elizabethan times, the play went down well with audiences. And Shakespeare went on to write and stage more plays. But for years the play was a problem to put on stage and it is well-known that few directors chose to stage or film it, due to its gory and dark contents.

I applaud Julie Taymor's decision to pick up the play to film. Titus, the play, is relevant today even more than it was in Elizabethan days. Titus is replayed almost each day in the Middle East, in Darfur, and till recently in former Yugoslavia, in Rwanda, and in Ireland. I am delighted that Taymor chose to rework the play mixing the past Roman glory with those of Mussolini's Italy, which underlines the relevance of the play today—irrespective of whether the conquering heroes ride horses or Rolls Royces.

I congratulate Taymor's decision to create a modern "chorus" distilled in the personality of a young boy, who plays like an adult but is "shaken and stirred" by events outside, who seems to realize as the play unfolds the importance of forgiveness, tolerance and love for all. For the Greeks and even for Shakespeare, the chorus had to be old and blind (as in Macbeth) but for Taymor it's the young who have eyes to see the dawn after the dark night.

There are more facets to the film that make the film extraordinary. Jessica Lange's Tamora presents a range of emotions—crying for pity, yelling for revenge, smiling to seduce and aroused by a kiss of her mortal foe Titus. The short kiss of the aging Titus and Tamora is a highlight of the film, the kiss between conqueror and former slave, a kiss between a queen and a demented subject—all highlighted by the facial expression of Ms Lange choreographed by Taymor. This brief shot cries for our attention, as throughout the film (and play) Titus seems to be celibate. (There is no mention of Titus's wife or lover). I thought Taymor brought out the best in Ms Lange, even exceeding her range of emotion in "Frances." While Anthony Hopkins might not have enjoyed making this film, Taymor brought out his finest performance to date here in this film. It was almost like watching a mellow Richard Burton rendering the lines of the Bard. Taymor and cinematographer Luciano Tavoli, who is often arresting, is able to get a shot of Titus crying on the stony paths, with his face and eyes inches from the stones, signifying the lowest of the low the character has been hewn down to the terra firma.

A third commanding performance was that of Alan Cumming as Saturinus, second only to his mesmerizing role in "Eyes Wide Shut" as a gay front office clerk. If you reflect on the film, the casting was superb.

The only flaw in the "absurdist" treatment was the introduction of the Royal Bengal tiger—which could have been replaced by a leopard or a lioness. This I thought was taking the theater of the "absurd" too far. Perhaps Taymor wanted to glamorize Tamara to be more attractive as the tiger than any other great cat. That was one decision I thought did not work well in the movie.

The film's strengths are not restricted to the screenplay, the direction and acting. The film grips you with the music and choreographed title sequence and the overall production design. You want more. You get more, if the viewer is able to think while watching the film and think laterally. This is not "Gladiator" or "Spartacus." It challenges the senses, beyond the gore and sex. Why do people behave as they do? Is the bias of many of us limited to race and color? These are questions that Terence Mallick asked in "The Thin Red Line." To appreciate Taymor's "Titus" multiple viewings will help, preferably with a thinking cap. I rate this film as third best Shakespeare film ever made—the first two being the Russian black and white films "Korol Lir" (King Lear) and "Gamlet" (Hamlet) directed by Grigory Kozintsev, some 40 years ago.

Finally, like Orson Welles and Terrence Mallick, Julie Taymor appears to be little appreciated within the US but more lauded elsewhere. But that should not dampen the brilliance of this talented lady and her spouse the music composer Elliot Goldenthal.