Titus

Rating:
Summary: Some highs, some lows but ultimately a winner
Review: It was with mixed feelings that I bought Titus without having first seen it...I would like to give my bit of commentary.
Overall, this is a very brave attempt at producing a play others would not dream of touching. It handles some of the parts previously thought to have been impossible to show without seeming ridiculous with admirable dexterity, and for the most part they work ( for instance, there's enough dismembering to rival The Texas Chainsaw Massacre). Some will find this production "too much" in its outlandish mixture of styles and times, and yet some of the scenes are simply breathtaking.
On the negative side, I personally don't think the casting is the best. Jessica Lange (Tamora) just doesn't do it for me and some of the others are one-dimensional. I could easily skip over some of the antics of Tamora's sons.
On the plus side, however, Harry Lennix (Aaron) the only survivor of the stage production from which this production originated, is excellent. He actually makes you reassess the accusation made at Shakespeare that his having the black man as the devil incarnate was just the typically racist action of white man playing to the crowd. After listening carefully to Lennix's deliverance of the "...is black so base a hue?" speech, you begin to suspect that Shakespeare had an ulterior motive for having such a strong black character in his play.
As for Hopkins, well, he's simply magnificent. This dvd is worth buying for the "I'll tell my sorrow to the stones" scene alone. Crucially, from my point of view, this production is faithful to the text.
On the whole, this is probably not for the casual movie watcher or the first film that should be watched by someone introducing themselves to the Shakespearean film library. But for any serious patron of Shakespeare it is a must; to see how it works, how it doesn't and most of all for Hopkins's spellbinding performance. The extras (commentary's and documentary in particular) add to the experience and the education.

Rating:
Summary: Titus who?
Review: I am not a Shakespeare buff. I'm not even really an Anthony Hopkins buff. I got this video from a friend saying it was one of the best movies he'd ever seen. It took me about 30 minutes to catch on to the language, but after that I still had 2 hours of viewing pleasure. The cinematography is beautiful, acting superb, plot disturbing. And it's supposed to do that. I've read many reviews stating this to be an awful movie...But I'm dishing out the $... to buy this for one of MY friends. What more coaxing do you need?

Rating:
Summary: Pretentious Crud
Review: After reading the play Titus Andronicus and hearing so much good word of mouth about the movie I decided to pick it up. What a waste of my time. I should have known something was wrong the minute the movie opened, not in Rome but in "Rome" a neo-european farce of an empire. While its nice that Taymor tried to bring a modern feel to the film it just ruined the entire preceedings. As I saw people spitting out shakesperean lines while getting into their cadillacs. All together I have to say that Taymor could have had one of two things, a shakespearean movie with shakesperean language and A REAL ROME. Or a farce of rome and a farce of the language. But not a mix of the two. This is experimental to a fault, and totally ruined the film for me.

Rating:
Summary: Titus Notes
Review: The opening shots of stylised Roman soldiers and bandage bound corpses are darkly dramatic and effectively set the atmosphere for a grim, uncompromising story charting the tragic dynamics of nobility and corruption. Titus is a combination of violence, sexuality and comedy and shows Shakespeare was well aware of the dramatic appeal of these features four hundred years before Tarantino ever dreamed up Reservoir Dogs. Titus has all the early elements of Coriolanus and Richard the Third. A sense of a moral dilemma that is always with us; how do the good cope with the corruption of the powerful? Titus the character moves convincingly from the authority of an Othello to the madness of Lear. This is a fine production. Well edited and directed without being pretentious. It is successful because the issues the stage play raises are communicated well in film and the stylised dramatic features the director employs keep the production edgy, timeless and vivid.

Rating:
Summary: ESSENTIAL SHAKESPEARE
Review: This is the essence of Shakespeare stripped of soliloque and intellectual discourse. I do not believe this to be Shakespeare's worst play, on the contrary, this is one of his best, since it drives home the violence, the betrayal, the suffering and the consequences of the characters' actions that come from the business end of their motives. Unfortunately it takes graphic violence to bring it home, lest everyone dying on stage is an abstarct conclusion to two hours or so of tongue in cheek Shakespearean discourse.

Actually this is one of the more plausible plays that Shakespeare had written. Every action is probable in its historic content - from the capture of the Queen of the Goths to the sacrifice of one of her sons to her seduction of the Emperor to the eventual revenge and counter revenge. These events have happened historically, including the pivotal point where Titus abdicates his rule and suffers misfortune for it. Carry a mighty sword lest it be used on thee.

Anthony Hopkins is fundamentally Titus. He is a duty bound career military man who puts his loyalty to the Emperor above that of his family and because of that his family suffers. The cruelty of the Emnperor and the debauchery of the Princelings swallows his family and in this production there is no filter of the archaic speech to distance us from the impact. Contrary to Hopkins' other, on the basis of which he was chosen (his insanity as Hannibal Lector, his conventionalism as a Butler) in this role Hopkins actually endures adversity without going insane, though his optimism and composure make it seem the contrary.

The staging and the props, while anachronistic, are actually among one of the strengths of this film. It makes the imagery more vivid and truly adapts Shakespeare to cinema. The sets and actors are given contemporary look, and that removes the distance of time and period, making the actors our contemporaries, thus driving the violent action of the play home to the audience. The fact that the supporting characters are caricatures isolates the action further still and is quite effective, given the mass the negative reviews that the perceived violence of this film has generated. To those of you turned off by the violence film, I ask, are those other Shakespearean plays truly less violent or are you deluding yourself by getting lost in the Elizabethan language and long character speeches that separate instances of destruction?

Rating:
Summary: Pure Genius!!!!!!!
Review: This is one of the best films of all time. It just screams style and is very sexy too. It is not just a film but a work of Art. Taymor's fantastic casting and direction shows through the dark story. Anthony Hopkins is brilliant at a very sultry and mysterious role. Jessica Lange is suprisingly brilliant for the dark and sexy role of Tamora. But appart from the obvious leads the real star of this film is the young actor who plays Young Lucius the hope of the whole film. Osheen Jones is incredle in this role the best acting i have ever seen from a child actor. He plays the role with sesitivity and strong emotion which creates a fantastic moving atmosphere to all his scenes. An all together brialliant film. You must see it.

Rating:
Summary: Titus - by Taymor and Shakespeare, in that order
Review: The credit to William Shakespeare for this effort is quite underemphasized, being in the smallest print. My initial impression was that this would be unfair to Mr. Shakespeare, but having seen the movie I think Mr. Shakespeare might have requested the type be smaller still.

The play is indeed intended to shock, as is the movie, however, there is a discordance between the two that I found unappealing. The play intends to shock by its depictions of violence and most importantly, remorselessness. The movie intends to shock via corrupted sexuality as agression. If this were focused on the rape it would be powerful art. However, the viewer is assaulted by random gratuitous acts of obscenity - again, focus and thematic consistency would be art, but this borders on pornography. Every opportunity is made for the characters to greet each other with impudent kisses while sneering at each other, which even Hopkins does, albeit only to the Queen; male characters dress in women's underwear, characters use the slightest pretence of Shakespeare's innuendo to rub their genitals against each other, etc...

If you like the play, that is no reason to see this movie, as the visual scenes have hijacked Shakespeare's verbal content. However, if having read the previous reviews, you are interested and don't mind feasting on debauchery then go ahead, but I would rent this before buying.

Rating:
Summary: Violence sublimed into a great play and interpretation
Review: I was not familiar with 'Titus' as a play despite having seen most of the rest of the mainstream works. Primary reason to pick it up for me was to enjoy Hopkins who I consider one of the best actors today. I was drawn in into the play immediately and ended up seeing something (taken the restrictions of DVD media vs. theatre into account) that I consider now as one of the best plays and its interpretations. The play itself is timeless but touches today by unveiling very painfully the basic truth that violence in the western society has been perverted and 'hollywood-domesticated' to a degree that makes a natural and human reaction to it impossible. This is not a stupid chainsaw-massacre movie or an even more brainless 'shoot 'em 'up' Schwarzenegger idiocy. Violence is wrapped into a form artfull enough to not allow it to overshadow the deeper meaning of the plot, but each form and aspect of it is painfully diseccted in its origin, reverbations and place within conditio humana. The only structural weakness I detected was the omission of the fact that psychological violence can and often does substitue physical violence adequatly.

The director makes the actors fall into place believably and interprets some of the aspects of the play in modern settings which unwraps facets of the play that S. could impossibly have intended (such as relation of faschism to violence and its 'encoding' into architecture and symbols). Interview with the director in Columbia is almost as good as the movie itself BTW.

Overall, this is not light fare but a textured, chewy piece that is being done justice to by compenent director and actors.

Rating:
Summary: A Divine and Haunting DVD
Review: I myself have never been a big fan of Shakespeare. I find most of his work hard to follow and after having to read Romeo & Juliet so many times and watch almost all the videos adapted from it, I characterized all his works as horribly dull.

I soon stumbled upon Titus though, and it did look rather interesting. I read it was based on 'Titus Andronicus' another work by Shakespeare. So I read the work and found it very entertaining, so I decided to rent the DVD as well.

I watched it all the way through with my eyes glued to the screen, it was captivating. When I finished it, I wanted to watch it again. It was a powerful story made even more so with a amazing set and spectacular cast.

Anthony Hopkins portrays a perfect role of Titus. He is admirable in almost every movie he plays in, but in this role he was shocking. His descent into madness at the end was incredibly realistic. Jessica Lange did an equally amazing job herself, capturing the role of Tamora with stunning accuracy. Laura Fraser was the perfect women to play Lavinia, and I truly felt sympathy for her character in a way I never had when I had read the play. Alan Cumming in one of his better roles (I personally think) was the pompous and impressionable ruler Saturninus. He gives a lot of passion into the role and makes it incredibly convincing. Everyone else; the Rhys Brothers, James Frain, Angus MacFadyen, they all were equally talented and helped turn Shakespeare's "worst play" into a living work of art.

On the more negative side though, some of the images in this movie were rather disturbing and graphic, perhaps not for everyone. Also not everyone will find this movie entertaining, do to the fact of it's unique direction. Some will and have called it an 'artsy' film. Which I agree it definitely is. Not as odd as 'The Cell', but it's definitely a whole new look upon directing.

Rating:
Summary: Amazing
Review: Julia Taymor managed to take a terribly bloody and violent play and keep it watchable. This film could have been horribly gruesome, but it was not. The acting was supurb, Hopkins was as usual wonderful. I was pleasantly suprised with Jessica Lange, I have only seen her in "Tootsie" and "King Kong", both of which were pitiful; here she showed that she really does have talent. This is not one of Shakespeare's greatest plays, but I also believe it was his first; pretty damn good for a first attempt. The wonderful thing about plays and theatre is that the playwrite leaves everything except the words up to the imagination of the director and Taymor did an incredible job incorporating the past and present. The 20th century was a little unorthodox in this film, but why do films have to all be the same? Film can also be large and grandiose like Broadway, this was an extremely moving film and I will watch it over and over again!