Titus
I feel the need to clarify something I’ve whined about recently and here seems like the perfect place to do it, and it regards those movies that are nothing but technically impressive. The ones where the first thing you find yourself mentioning is how “beautifully shot” they are or how marvelous the visual effects were or how great the music was etc. I said that if you find yourself mentioning things like this before anything else, it’s probably not really a great movie. I guess that was a little harsh. What I should’ve said is, if you’re gonna make a movie like that, your name had better be Julie Taymor.
This is actually a lot more like Across the Universe than I remembered it, obviously not in story or anything, but inasmuch as its noble failings. The one shot I remembered from the first (and last) time I watched was of course that of Lavinia in the open plain following her disfigurement, the sticks on the end of her arms reaching out for her uncle as blood issues from her mouth over the camera. It’s still one of the most extraordinary images I’ve ever seen, and it’s not the only one to behold in these few hours.
After I’d first seen it, this scene and what follows made me think Laura Fraser’s performance was a lot better than it really is. In fact, it’s only as the mute that she really impresses me now – in the first half of the movie, her performance kind of collapses each time she opens her mouth, something in the way she delivers the Shakespeare lines that just gives away how lost she is amongst heavyweights like Hopkins and Lang.
And that’s kind of the movie’s problem too – luckily, the wobbly stuff here is mostly confined to the first half of the movie, prior to the scene where Lavinia is brought back to Titus. It’s also, it must be said, never quite as wobbly as the stuff in Across the Universe. The “everyplace, everytime” set-up jars about as often as it works – it’s at its best when the 20s jazz-style score sets up the travelling circus-like reveal of the heads of Titus’ sons, a moment that just about makes the many times it falls flat worth it. Alan Cumming jars almost every time he’s onscreen – but he’s Alan Cumming, so that too can be forgiven.
Ultimately, this is absolutely the movie to show disinterested kids to show them that Shakespeare’s anything but boring. Even I still now have to stop in places during this and ask myself, is this really Shakespeare, lol? Really? Reaaalllly?!?? The casting of Anthony Hopkins is almost cheeky; he of course is pretty much just Lecter again in the movie’s last hour or so. Do I care? Not a bit. This is one of the greatest revenge stories ever told – of course, I’d almost entirely forgotten the Sweeney Todd connection here, too, which extends far beyond meat pies – and Julie Taymor turned it into one of the greatest Shakespeare adaptations ever put onscreen. Right now, I think it’s second only to Branagh’s Hamlet in my mind.