Titus (Widescreen)

Every once in a while, a movie comes along which you feel was made just for you. I can understand why a lot of people might not like this film, but for certain people I think it might be just what they were looking for.

Taymor's production, instead of trying to somehow mitigate the remorseless violence and moral vacuum which characterized the much-maligned play, intentionally plays it up. The garishness of the plot is complimented by the garishness of the anachronistic costumes, the elaborate staging and the delerious, overdramatic acting. It gets right to the heart of what a revenge drama is, and what value can be found in Andronicus just as a pure visceral experience. A lot of great performances, and the images are brilliant. My only complaint is, given the pacing of a modern film, it's difficult to hear and understand all of the dialogue sometimes, since none of it was 'updated' from the original Shakespearean. Given the stylized nature of everything else, maybe some of the dialogue should have been simplified.

Writing this now, comparisons to Kill Bill are inevitable, and, while it can't quite claim to reach that pedestal, and lacks the ultimatley morally redeeming value of the complete KB, I recommend it to fans of the KB pt. 1 as a similiar experience.

Titus is based on Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus, which is an extremely bloody and terrifying tale of vengeance and its consequences. The cinematic adaptation that Julie Taymor wrote is set in a Roman Empire-like environment with crossings of ancient and modern as the mise-en-scene displays cars as well as tanks with soldiers in ancient armor. This creates a link between then and now, which could suggest that the displayed horror is timeless and possible even today. Taymor creates exaggerations in this cinematic environment with brilliant cinematography, grand directing, and mise-en-scene that amplify the abstract atmosphere as it elevates the unnatural doings of Titus Andronicus (Anthony Hopkins), Tamora (Jessica Lange), and Saturninus (Alan Cumming) among others. The Shakespearian violence that Taymor presents serves as the means to an end as the story plunges into a dark realm that most do not wish to visit, but must contemplate as it could have devastating effects on all.

The film opens with a scene where a young Lucius is sitting at the kitchen table, with a brown paper bag over his head, eating dinner while sadistically tearing the heads of his warrior dolls while violently smashing the items on the table and pouring ketchup over the "killed" dolls. This is followed by an explosion where Lucius dives bawling to the floor for protection. Lucius is a clear resemblance of his father Titus in the opening shot. The rest of the film is a carnival of hideous acts and morbid behavior that alll falls around Titus with a domino effect trigged by one wrong decision. Despite the distressing elements of Titus, the film offers a brilliant cinematic experience that devours the audience as it supplies several subplots and themes, which the audience should ponder under the light of human compassion and the word "consequences".

Titus Andronicus was always a powerful challenge for any director. Even, literally , this work has been often missunderstood. The young Shakespeare, still in his twenties , was just developing in this play, the future.
But what it's worth to state is the glorius stage the employement of a outstanding color effects to introduces us into the film.
The opening sequence in what we watch a child playing with toys a simple game like the war and the violence in a domestic and secure kitchen , inside a home placed surely in a protected neighborhood, and suddenly this child , like everybody of us are sent to the Roman Coliseum in just a second, since now it belongs to the story of the cinema.
The dazzling marche of the roman soldiers is spelling. And Titus emerging from the shadows with his twenty four died son, plus Hopkins giving that amazing speech make that film (with the wonderful exception of Touch of Evil (Orson Welles))be the overwheelming introduction fifteen minutes in many years in any other film of any genre.
I know this statement may be surprise to many people, but I think Anthony Hopkins has never been so comfortable in any past role. He is surrounded by his natural environment, like the shakeperian universe. And maybe Hopkins has never been so extraordinary well in any of his performing and powerful roles.I mean, we are talking about one of the three best world actors.
From the opening to the end Hopkins and Jessica Lange go ahead all the rest of the cast. And this is the primal strength and perhaps his its only sign of weakness.
Who can deny the no restiction violence in this play? And what's the trouble with it? That's precisely what the greek wanted when you went to a teatral play. It's what it has benn called the cathartic state. And believe or not, Julie Taymor could make it.
That's his the most relevant aspect to remark. All along the film you are in the presence of the most incredible feelings of revenge, cruelty, greed, ambition, betrayal, hunger of power and murder.
If you are able to say yes to the Shakespeare mood , come in to the movie. But if you still want to see just violence as simple entertaining , forget that film.
This work has another great virtue: Taymor made an adaptation which links brilliantly, past and present, because the clue is just to make us see that that story is not a horror tale in the perverse mind of a famous genius. We clearly can identify many characters and traslating without too much effort to the actual age.
This film is a ravishing gaze to the sordid but real facts that the human being, under certain circunstances may reach.
Don't miss this picture. Forget all the negative reviews you may listen or read. Experience by yourself this tragedy. Not only you'll be able to identify in Lavina a famous femenine character in his future works, but also another.
And consider it from now a classical movie.