TITUS
Who knew tragedy could be so much fun?

  Titus Andronicus, favorite play of the Gemini killer, was (at least according to my Complete Works Of...) Shakespeare's first, and it's been said that the bulk of his contribution consisted of touching up a couple of the characters.  How much came from the bard and how much didn't is a discussion best left elsewhere; I don't have these answers, and don't really care to look for them right now.  The movie's the thing.

You have to keep in mind that Gemini was a nut - and he was also fictitious.  I don't think the tragedy of Titus Andronicus is a favorite play of anybody; most everyone who's read a good portion of Shakespeare's plays seems to agree that this is one of his worst, possibly THE worst, and I'd agree (it's hard to work up much enthusiasm for Romeo & Juliet anymore and I'd sooner re-read Titus Andronicus any day, but I will concede that R&J is probably the superior work).  There's a good reason that only Shakespeare aficionados know anything about this one; sometimes, early efforts are just not very good, and the artist and/or fans just kinda pretend it didn't happen.  Or, to put it in a pop context, Titus Andronicus is Shakespeare's Y Kant Tori Read, his 1978 Thanksgiving Special, his Spanish-language gay softcore. (if you don't know what I'm talking about, you're better off for it)

So yes, Titus Andronicus was a pretty weak play; fiendishly enjoyable for its splat factor and an delightfully over-the-top villain in the form of Aaron the Moor (who, each time he's sentenced to death ? yeah, I said each time - complains only that he didn't do more villainy while he was alive), but not offering much else.  When's the last time you heard somebody quote this play the way they do the acknowledged greats?  (I can think of a few lines which deserve it)  Go figure that this (ahem) redheaded stepchild of a play would be adapted into the most fun (if not, of course, the best) Shakespeare film I've seen.

Anthony Hopkins, shortly before announcing that he was retiring from acting (like any of us believed it) plays Titus, who returns home to Rome from a victorious war against the Goths.  With captives in tow (including the Goth queen, her three sons, and Aaron [Harry J. Lennix]), he's given a hero's welcome, and at the burial of several of his sons (of which he claims to have had 21), ignores the pleas for mercy from the Goth queen Tamora (Jessica Lange) and has one of her sons gutted, dismembered, and his giblets thrown on a fire.

Soon, Titus is offered the Imperial throne, which is really big and appears to be made of aluminum, dooming any Emperor to a lifetime of poor posture and hemorrhoids.  Titus turns it down, suspecting Imperial rule to be not to his liking, and is asked to recommend another, of two brothers: Saturnius (Alan Cumming), who looks like Pee-Wee Herman with Hitler's hair, or Bassianus (James Frain), who is betrothed to Titus's daughter, Lavinia (Laura Fraser).  For whatever reason, Titus chooses Saturnius, who is given the throne, and proceeds to seriously piss off his brother when he takes Lavinia to be his bride. Bassianus, incensed, runs off with Lavinia with the aid of Titus' sons, one of whom Titus kills for his perceived treachery.  Saturnius is displeased, but being Emperor, he can pretty much pick and choose from all the women in Rome, and thus he picks Tamora, setting into motion a lengthy tennis match of revenge and counter-revenge.

Colm Feore is also here as Titus' brother Marcus, and Angus MacFadyen as Titus' son Lucius (and they're the only characters here who're all business; everyone else is either having fun or die before they can make an impression).  I found myself breathing a sigh of relief that, despite the comic tone of things, there were no wacky cameos from, say, Robin Williams or Billy Crystal.

Hopkins is wonderful here; the role of Titus is one that calls for him to violently chew scenery, overact outrageously, and still be sort of sympathetic and compelling, and he's better at that than just about anybody.  So he still gets to shine in quieter moments, such as when he's confronted with an unspeakable indignity that befalls one of his children, and scenes like these give him just enough humanity to make him the play's hero, of sorts, when really he's no better or worse than anyone else.

Cumming, as Saturnius, and Matthew Rhys and Jonathan Rhys-Meyers (no idea if they're related) as Tamora's surviving sons, are all played androgynously, which is weird since their roles require a degree of distinctly masculine menace.  Lange herself is fine in her role, nicely concealing her venom with only the slightest veneer, and frankly, she hasn't looked this good in ten years.  She has great fun here, particularly in one scene late in the film where she correctly judges Titus to be mad but gets the nature of his madness wrong entirely.  Threatening to steal the entire film is Lennix as Aaron; in the play, Aaron was an enjoyable villain but a cartoon; like Freddy Krueger before he got REALLY cheesy.  In the hands of Lennix, he's intense without being manic and beautifully balances menace, charisma and humor; when he says that he repents any good deed he might have done in his life, you believe it even as you're laughing.

The score by Elliot Goldenthal is wonderful, using orchestral, jazz and industrial (!) elements and somehow making it fit well into the same film.  Goldenthal last scored that awful psychic-link movie In Dreams, and his great music there was the only thing that kept me awake; I can only hope he keeps up this caliber of work instead of reverting back to that of, say, Batman & Robin.

But the most compelling reason for watching this movie is the astonishing production design by Dante "what the hell was I thinking with Meet Joe Black" Ferretti, and art direction by Domenico Sica, Massimo Razzi and Pier Luigi Basile. (confession: anyone who can tell me the difference between production design and art direction is invited to do so)  Incorporating elements from ancient Rome to the 1990's (and anything in between, World War II in particular), the world this film takes place in is a cheerfully anachronistic no-time setting of shotguns and crossbows, video games and mid-century automobiles, beer cans and ancient catacombs.

(additionally, I don't know exactly what ethnic extraction the Goths were really from, but here they're all blonde and tattooed.  I would've loved it if they'd all been pasty-faced, wore too much eye makeup and listened to The Cure.)

Whether or not you could really call it a tragedy is perhaps not a bad question; I guess the late sixteenth century had yet to coin the term "splatter epic".  It's hard to feel a sense of tragedy when there's so much nasty satisfaction in just about everything that's going on; even the saddest events are payoffs to enjoyable setups.  Titus, the movie, settles itself in a place closer to Theater Of Blood than to anything by Branagh, Olivier or Welles.

Adapted and directed by Julie Taymor, who made that Broadway production of The Lion King that everybody's raving about, Titus leaves the degree of tragedy to remain a variable in the audience's hands, and plays the savage, ghoulish black comedy to the hilt.  Hopkins taking an opportune moment to offer to sever a body part when others equally willing have run to fetch the axe, that's funny.  Seeing him prance around in a chef's uniform at the film's conclusion, that's freakin' hilarious.  Sometimes, the movie gets a little TOO cheeky; it threatens to break out into dance numbers no fewer than three times, and while I enjoyed the visual liberties taken with the material, I found myself quite relieved that Taymor didn't go THAT far.  Her film is incredibly self-indulgent, excessive, absurd, and totally enjoyable.

I'd heartily recommend this movie to anyone (with sufficient strength of stomach - the gore isn't as bad as you've heard, but the implications are ghastly) with a taste for Shakespeare treated with enthusiasm and adventure instead of mere reverence.  Titus makes me realize just how routine, say, Baz Luhrmann's Romeo & Juliet really was, or that all-female production of King Lear I saw a couple of years ago (understandably, they just called it Lear).  That's just Shakespeare with a gimmick; Titus is arguably Shakespeare with a LOT of gimmicks, but when your source material is a play whose chief appeal is a hilariously grotesque scene of blissfully ignorant cannibalism, maybe that's not inappropriate.  High-fives to all involved; Titus is a blast for 162 glorious minutes.  

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