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Titus
Exercise your eyes beforehand... you’ll be rolling them plenty!
1999
Director: Julie Taymor
Starring: Anthony Hopkins, Jessica Lange, Osheen Jones
If you must watch the movie at all, this may be your only option.
THE SETUP:
Adaptation of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus.
DISCUSSION:
As this film entered it's third hour, after I had been stifling my groans and rolling my eyes every few minutes at this incredibly overwrought and clueless adaptation, a character says the line "O heavens, can you hear a good man groan and not lament or compassion him?"
YES, HOW CAN YOU!?!? I wanted to shout.
Taymor's version of Titus Andronicus is 3% Inspired, 70% Banal, and 27% Outright Stupid. There is so many horrible things about it I can only hit the highlights here.
It's not a good play to begin with. I read in the New York Times that Taymor wants to help reverse the play's bad reputation with this film. I can assure you that any person who sees this film will never, ever read the play or want to see another production of it. I read the play in preparation for the film, and found that a lot of the structure and imagery of the play were revealed in watching a performance of it, but sadly THIS version strays so far off into music video land and pure silliness that those qualities do not outweigh the burden of having to sit through it.
The film begins quite promisingly in one respect and quite horribly in another. The good part is these Roman soldiers marching in time--the noise, the music... it's all very exciting and makes you eager to see the rest of the movie. There are several exciting visual elements to this film, and for the first half I was thinking: "Okay, so there are some very uneven parts, but the visual excitement will carry through them." Well, as the film begins coasting into its third hour you begin to resent Taymor's indulgences, especially as the visual elements have less and less to do with telling the story (or telling the story in an interesting way). Witness the first sight of the raped Lavinia and Titus' dream bath. We'll get to those later.
The bad part about this film's opening is this little prologue in which the World's Most Precious and Annoying Kid is playing violent games with soldiers (this gets filed under "Shakespeare's Relevance to Modern Society"). Suddenly he's transported back to ancient Rome, where we hope he will soon disappear. He doesn't. He keeps hanging around, posing and preening insufferably as only a long-haired child actor named "Osheen" can. One has to question Taymor's personal aesthetic that she thinks darling little Osheen is just the sweetest little boy (more on THAT later), but let me tell you, Osheen here is well on his way to becoming the Jar-Jar Binks of Shakespearean film. And if you despise the overly precious and canned "thoughtful" tone of NPR, give this film a wide berth, because that is EXACTLY where it's coming from.
I would venture to say that the amount of time you spend in upscale gourmet food stores like Whole Foods is directly proportionate to how much you'll enjoy this film.
The film alternates between ancient Rome and Fascist Germany (See "Shakespeare's Relevance to Modern Society") in a way that is... BANAL.
But at least the film has the sense to equate jazz music with the height of evil.
The film often flies off into surrealistic flights of fancy which sometimes work (Titus and Tamora's face-off before a wall of flames) and OFTEN don't. For example: [here follow some SPOILERS, but as has been observed, the play has been around for 400 years] when Lavina is first found after being raped and mutilated, she's found doing a little mystical Alanis Morrissette dance on a stump in the middle of a field. Why? Because it would look cool. Later, there's even a line about how Titus' brother found her darting about in a clearing, trying to hide herself... No, she was doing a mystical dance on a stump in the middle of a field! And then there's Lavina's banal "visions" of tigers as she writes the names of her rapists (tigers=predators, get it?). This is of course after her filthy and pointless near-fellation of an extremely phallic staff. And Tamora's two sons? They are incessantly cavorting around screaming at the top of their lungs and acting as though they are the Red Hot Chili Peppers in a music video. This adds NOTHING to the story and wastes YOUR time... which begins to annoy as you are basically wasting three hours of your life here. There's more, and you might hope that some of it makes sense or adds to the telling-- but much of it is simply stupid. Yes, STUPID.
For instance, at one point Tamora comes in disguise to Titus, who we see here drawing with his own blood in a bathtub. Tamora assumes Titus is crazy, but he's not. It's important for the audience to know that, but here we are explicitly led to believe that he IS crazy because he's having strange visions (overlapping images of himself) and hearing voices (Tamora...who IS literally outside, but is presented here as a vision). Then he goes outside, sees the real Tamora, and lo, he's NOT crazy. Maybe Taymor does this stuff just to keep the viewer's interest, but it becomes more and more insipid and pointless as the film wears interminably on.
Okay then, at the climax, at THE most tense and emotional moment in the story, when Titus is just about to get his revenge, what do we get? Another music-video segment, complete with heavy metal music, which effectively kills any tension or interest you may have inadvertently built up. The film ends with the world's most unbearably pretentious walk into a sunrise (The dawn of a new day! Rebirth! Renewal!). Then, you puke.
This film made me hate Taymor as a PERSON. I already had my reservations, based on that disgusting American Express ad she did in which she basically says that the reason she's so creative is that she has an American Express card, but her precious and preening aesthetic (see NPR note here) is just unpleasant, and she seems more interested in her Really Cool Visuals than she is in telling a story. It's not that she doesn't have ideas, it's that she has BANAL ideas.
If you want to see this film, because it's Shakespeare, or because it's Julie Taymor, or because of Anthony Hopkins or Jessica Lange, I would really think twice. You can also leave after the first two hours and not miss much of anything (provided you've read the play). There's always video... and there's always OTHER movies. I would suggest that Taymor not direct another film in the future.
SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?
Under no circumstances.
