Titus

[Pertinax]

by way of light relief we are having a look at the opening scenes of the DVD. I prophesy disaster! I liked the kettenrads leading Titus' chariot into the arena.What is general opinion on this movie?

[phil25]

I bought it cheap on video quite a long time ago, and watched it once.

 

It had some dramatic power, but the mixture of periods in the costuming, while imaginative and sometimes effective, irritated me.

 

Some quite good performances - I seem to remember thinking that Hopkin's Shakespearean roots (he was a very good Antony at the National Theatre years ago) are often overlooked.

 

Perhaps it is time to watch again.

 

Phil

[Pertinax]

Titus-well how to put this? It is yet another good play about power and morality , if Kurosawa had transplanted it to Japan ( Ran=King Lear) then the "exotic" change of location and period would seem wholly reasonable and rational.This performance jars on the European/American psyche a little but Hopkins is good-you believe he is Titus , the modern touches are perhaps too flash , but ravishingly done. Best to see if it looks like pretentious twaddle in 10 years time. Its about Romans and power but not especially so, anyone and power would do , Shakespeare just gave it a roman setting. therefore I dont suggest its a good Romanophile purchase as it has no real period feel (unless MP Cato thinks otherwise as regards the politics.....) .

[Pertinax]

A smalll note to add here-I do not understand why this is regarded as one of the Bard's lesser plays , if it were a Jacobean Tragedy, it would be set alongside the Duches of Malfi. Not quite as horribly good as that play, but a first class existential gore-fest in its own right. Hopkins is at his best in the preparation for the feast/revenge, an old soldier full of deadly moral certitude . I suggest my "japanese" context was actually a most appropriate idea.

[phil25]

Peter Brook did a production at Stratford in about 1958 with Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh. Frank Thring (Ben Hur, The Vikings) played Saturninus .

 

Olivier's performance transformed the play and made people look at it again.

 

Leigh's performance was NOT critically acclaimed - one observed that after being violently raped, having her tongue pulled out and her hands cut off, her experssion suggested she would have preferred a mattress!!

 

I think the play is only regarded as lesser (among the Bard's work) because it lacks the sophistication and exceptional writing of the great tragedies etc - Hamlet, Lear. But it was well thought of in its day, and is one of 9if not the only) play of Shakespeare's of which we have a drawing of a performance from his time.

 

I always think of it as similar to a martial arts filmscript written by an author who then goes on to win an Oscar for some deeply moving and psychologically penetrating screenplay about relationships.

 

The first might do better business at the box office than the latter.

 

But Hamlet ends up with almost as many corpses on stage at the final curtain as does Titus. So William did not entirely desert his roots!!

 

I wholly agree your idea of a Kurosawa Titus. That would have been amazing. Do you know his Throne of Blood (Macbeth, Samurai style)?

 

Phil

[Pertinax]

Throne of Blood I rate highly, like Seven Samurai and Yojimbo I suggest that the monochrome makes it a more gripping and direct film.

[Skarr]

As a fan of Shakespeare, I did like Titus, despite the gore and brutality, which is medieval in its ferocity, although I suspect that the 'barbarians' whom Romans detested were equally capable, if they were outraged in a similar fashion.

 

The most barbarous, heinous punishment is meted out by a vengeful Titus but no one who reads the play can really fault him or even reproach him in any way, as the violence itself is transformed by Shakespeare as a form of suffering, an expression of pain that does not satisfy but ultimately destroys. In most of Shakespeare's plays, there is a strong moral message and while 'corpses do pile up' (as someone pointed out) in say, Hamlet, the overall atmosphere is vastly different in both plays, mainly due to the manner in which the deaths occur.

 

Musings about death are very common in many Shakespearean tragedies, as he was quite the philosopher and ultimately, it is not dying itself which frightens many of his characters, but the manner in which death approaches them. Caesar himself, like Alexander before him and Achilles (the original hero who was much admired by all men) preferred a quick death, albeit a glorious one. To die in battle was the most honorable of all deaths that were sought by men from different cultures - from Greek, to Roman, to the Celts and even the Vikings, as well as other ancient cultures ( India, for example - in their great epic, The Mahabharata). Regardless of culture, language or other perceived differences, men universally admired a 'glorious' death in battle, a soldier's death and this yearning or desire persists to the present time.

 

In Titus, Shakespeare goes to the opposite extreme, to the worst form of death, which is to be devoured by wild animals or to be eaten or going to the specific circumstances of the play, cannibalism. This is a deep rooted fear in most men and this, coupled with the idea that it could occur and be legitimized, even when it goes to the very fundamental relationships (mother and sons), must have been an idea that fascinated Shakespeare and as a play, I think this is more philosophical musing, a desire to shock people out of conventional modes of thought, a device that he used in those times to jerk people out of their ordinary, mundane ways of thinking.

 

To most modern readers, you must remember that our minds have been shocked so many times already (from WWII or other atrocities like those in Cambodia, etc.) and a play like this would not really affect us in the way it did most people at the time. Such ideas expounded by Shakespeare must have been really radical and would have jolted people severely, especially those who live in a cocoon like sentimentality, guarded from atrocities by their power and wealth.

 

It is extremely difficult to therefore stage a satisfying production of Titus on stage and even more difficult to portray this in a film, as the character can easily be perceived as a monster by the end of the play, without retaining an iota of sympathy. The DVD of Titus was good but only so far as Anthony Hopkins' performance is concerned. I didn't care too much for the sets or the fancy touches. I think the play would have had a much stronger effect if the sets were stark, bare and white with almost a spartan flavor. The slighest hint of blackness or color would have stood out that much greatly, in my opinion.

 

Sorry for the longish post..

Edited July 6, 2006 by Skarr

[Pertinax]

Im glad you have said all of this , I personally , am stunned by the "kitchen scene" from whence my own message quote is derived. The line " come, let them hear what fearful words I speak " is delivered with such awful resignation and moral probity that it wounds the heart. Hopkins is masterful, like Burton , when given something of quality his voice is mesmeric. The other lines I recall clearly , such as " thy unhallowed dam, like to the Earth , swallow her own increase " are stunning, and "feel my knifes sharp spite" -two examples from many: how more forceful if the monochrome of the opening set had been used throughout, Phil 25 has commented before about the "gimmickry" of the sets and his point is most valid .

[M. Porcius Cato]

Its about Romans and power but not especially so, anyone and power would do , Shakespeare just gave it a roman setting. therefore I dont suggest its a good Romanophile purchase as it has no real period feel (unless MP Cato thinks otherwise as regards the politics.....) .

 

I do--Titus provides good dramatization of the principle that power corrupts and that absolute power corrupts absolutely. BTW, I liked the movie, and I hope someone does a movie of Coriolanus with Hopkins in the lead role. In my opinion, Coriolanus was Shakespeare's best.

[Kosmo]

It is a shocking play and, unfortunetly, a romanian theatre liked this extremes to much and made a play that was sickening brutal without the great acting of Antony Hopkins.

I used to love to go to theatre, but all this experiments made me change my mind.

Titus Andronicus by Kurosawa? No, let's make it with Quentin Tarantino!

[DecimusCaesar]

South Park made a modern version of the Titus Andronicus tale which had Cartman feeding a boy's parents to him as revenge, I think it was voted one of the best episodes. Either way it probably goes to show that it's a story that would work well under pretty much any era...Roman...feudal Japan or modern day comedy cartoon. I would have liked to see a Kurosawa version as well, just watched a lot of his Samurai movies recently.