Titus

A film made from Shakespeare's harshest play. Titus returns to Rome. He has fought for years, lost twenty-five sons, and comes back victorious. He has prisoners with him. Tamora, queen of the Goths, her three sons and Aaron. The first thing done is a rite. Titus sacrifices Tamora's eldest son for his own dead sons and does not listen to her pleading. From there the film is a chain of revenge. Tamora marries the emperor and takes all the power. What is done to Titus's daughter is at the centre. Lavinia is attacked and her tongue is cut out so she cannot speak. Then the answer comes. Titus makes a plan and a dinner is given in the last section. What the narrative is interested in is not revenge but the cycle: every move produces the next, and at the end the film shows the children watching it. Aaron is the narrative's most interesting figure. He owns his wickedness openly and protects only one thing: his own child. The design mixes periods. Roman armour with twentieth-century uniforms, chariots with motorcycles, and marble squares with a billiard hall are in the same film. That is deliberate. The director does not tie the events to a particular date and wants to show that the violence has no period. There are dream passages in between. The violent scenes are not shown directly; instead there are still images built like paintings. This is Julie Taymor's first feature; she worked in theatre before, and the film's staging shows it. It was shot in Rome and in Croatia; one section was filmed in a building left from the Mussolini era. Anthony Hopkins, Jessica Lange, Harry Lennix and Alan Cumming are in the cast. Julie Taymor adapted and directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes bold Shakespeare adaptations and strong visual design. Who it is not for: anyone who cannot take violence; the film runs close to three hours and the subject throughout is mutilation, rape and murder.