Titus Andronicus
1999: Julie Taymor

This is one of the most intense cinematic experiences one can have, and you will have to decide for yourself whether that’s a good thing or not. Julie Taymor, the brilliant director of film and Broadway plays (she did the stage version of The Lion King and a dazzling version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream), here goes for the Grand Guignol effect. Anthony Hopkins at the top of his form is Titus, and Jessica Lange plays Tamora as his opposite. Other parts are filled equally well. The film has some of the most grotesque and riveting imagery I can recall, and it’s definitely not for everyone. The film fully earned its R rating for violence, nudity, and overt sexual behavior, but the piece that puts it over the top is the almost lyrical portrayal of horrific physical disfigurement and abuse. Be warned: once you see it, you can’t un-see it. They say that Anthony Hopkins contemplated quitting acting entirely after he finished this film. I don’t know whether that’s true or not, and he certainly has made other films since, but I can see why one might want to turn one’s back on the whole affair.

That being said, it’s a masterful job. As anyone who has read very many of these reviews probably already knows, I am not an enthusiast for trendy presentations merely for the sake of trendiness. Political correctness (or its opposite) doesn’t thrill me. I like to see the play represented for what it is, not as an exhibition of how the director can splice an irrelevant agenda onto Shakespeare’s text. This is certainly rather edgy enough in its own terms, but I think it is meant to serve a higher purpose. Consistency of presentation is not so much ignored as ostentatiously transgressed. The actors are not costumed (really) as ancient Romans or as moderns, or even as Elizabethans. Taymor has chosen to fuse times and places to create a kind of lurid universality by way fusing opposites. Roman soldiers march in, covered with mud, and carrying spears. Others go by on motorcycles with guns. At one point, Tamora smokes a cigarette. Characters can be dressed in Roman armor, or in timeless costumes, or exaggeratedly haut-couture modern garb; buildings vary from the Colosseum to the Fascist architecture of Italy in the late 1930s. Through it all wanders a little boy playing with toy soldiers, who is not (need it be said?) in the script. And yet the effect is very powerful, and it’s certainly not just a by-the-book exhibition of political correctness for the sake of virtue-signaling. It elicits from the play some powerful questions about the way violence permeates our culture and all human culture. It doesn’t answer them, but leaves them out there for us to contemplate.

A casual brutality and sensual excess washes over everything, and even the scenes with nothing overtly objectionable to look at are somehow disturbing for their implicit view of the world. Is that what Shakespeare had in mind? Probably not, or not exactly. At the same time, it draws the viewer into its hazy contemplation of human evil and the costs of revenge, and creates an unforgettable (two-edged category though that is) experience. The acting is powerful, passionate, and largely over the top. The blandest piece is probably Aaron’s final admission that if he has done anything good, he repents it — itself chilling precisely for being so matter-of fact. Hopkins’ manic and gleeful self-presentation at the very end, while he’s serving Tamora and Saturninus pies made of Tamora’s sons, is one of those things you can’t look away from. You might want to. The slow-motion revelation of Lavinia’s disfigurement is surely one of the most arresting scenes ever filmed. I haven’s been able to shake it, try as I might.

This is almost certainly a great movie. Whether it’s one you want to see yourself, or want your kids to see, is another question entirely. There are other versions of this play that will get you a good deal closer to Shakespeare’s vision for it, and if you just want to get a sense of Taymor’s vision and theatrical powers, I’d recommend seeing The Lion King or A Midsummer Night’s Dream. For all that, however, some hardy souls will probably find this revelatory. I did. It leaves the question of my hardiness to one side. After twenty-some years of digesting the experience, I’m not sure whether I’m happy about having seen it.

Buy Titus from Amazon.