Director: Julie Taymor

Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Jessica Lange, Alan Cumming, Colm Feore

Rating:

Julie Taymor has a signature style in all the movies she makes, the most remarkable of them was “Across The Universe”… she is quite a talented director I must say… so lets pause and rewind a bit to see what movies she has made before… “Titus” is one catching title indeed, you probably heard of the Shakespeare’s earliest tragedies Titus Andronicus, however, the title doesn’t say much. Then you’ll realize that Anthony Hopkins and Jessica Lange star in it… So you decide to watch it…

Romans, Heavy Machinery, Shakespearian Language, and delusional graphics are deliberately blended to create the movie… aiming at delivering contradictory feelings of confusion, excitement, wrath, & anxiety… making it worth while.

I believe that a person’s expectations should be set before watching the movie; at least timing to start with, as the movie is around three hours of pure Shakespearean conversation.

The movie flips between the ancient and modern life leaving a thousand questions in your head… which time are they actually in? When do the Romans use microphones to make announcement? Why do they drive cars and not ride horses? Why do they have arcade in their lounges? Why do they smoke cigarettes? Drink from beer cans? Kill with modern guns? All these questions will come to your head and raise doubts about the movie’s nature… a story about a delusional boy, time travel, or some freaking nightmare.

The movie starts in a modern kitchen with a boy playing with soldier toys then suddenly a bomb explodes and the boy is now in a medieval battle arena with an exotic march of soldiers pacing in a melodic rhythm towards the center of the arena when Titus Andronicus appears and the movie events start rolling. Moving along, the famous Shakespearean story will be played and as it is known, this story uncovers the seven sins of the human nature.

For sharing purposes, here are some thoughts that may come up all along:

• Opening scene: An action movie indeed, about a disturbed child maybe or some war’s aftermath…
• Battle arena Scene: Maybe it’s a delusion… the boy’s delusion, or maybe it’s too early to tell…
• “Titus” Uncovered: Still confusing… remarkable mood however!
• Plot Thickens: Heavy loads of drastic events, is it really the Shakespeare’s Titus after all… is there any twist I should look for…
• Out-of-Place Objects: newspapers, cars, cigarettes, etc… should I worry about this or should I continue to try to understand the very intense rush of events and verbal communication…
• The Boy Appears Again – That’s really confusing, it’s not his delusion anyway but still something doesn’t look right…
• Closing scene – So theatrical and artistic that you can actually here the audience’s applause…
• Closing credits – One Big Fat Question Mark…

It takes you a while to figure out what you’ve just learnt… maybe longer. Meanwhile, you will be loathing the three hours you spent un-puzzling what’s puzzled. Soon enough, the obvious clears up and the message is eventually revealed.

Julie Taymor was trying to deliver a lesson that is always taught but never learnt; the despicable nature of the human being. Since the dawn of history we’ve learnt how cruel, ruthless, and savage a human can be… the same message was delivered over and over since the early teachings of Shakespeare’s Work; no matter how brutal Titus’s experiences were, yet his son Lucius took over his father’s legacy undeniably thinking that he is glorifying his father’s wisdom. This did not only stop there, it got carried from one generation to another until it reached the grand son of Lucius who is portrayed as the young boy who keeps appearing in the movie… proving only one point; we are still the same and we teach only one lesson… the key to immortality is through surrendering to our deadly sins.

We hate, then we grow to know how to make use of hatred… not how to kill it. The reasons behind the occasional occurrence of modernized objects in an ancient story is a proof that speedy cars, sophisticated machinery, and digitized entertainment doesn’t make us any better then Titus’s heir…

The movie’s moral is deeper than what we happen to realize… it is that no matter how evolved we become… we only develop our means and not our pursuit of viewing life differently…

It is quite heavy to digest… however; I can’t but say a must watch…

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