Titus is a 1999 film adaptation of Shakespeare's revenge tragedy Titus Andronicus, about the downfall of a Roman general. It was the first film of the play (aside from TV productions). The film was made by Overseas Filmgroup and Clear Blue Sky Productions and released by Fox Searchlight Pictures. It was the film directorial debut of Julie Taymor who co-produced and wrote the screenplay. It was produced by Jody Patton, Conchita Airoldi and executive produced by Paul G. Allen. The film was not successful at the box office.

Plot[link]

A boy eating at a table surrounded by his toys plays war; a bomb blast frightens him but he is rescued and taken to an Amphitheatre, where an invisible audience cheers. An army resembling the Terracotta Army enter; Romans under the command of Titus Andronicus (Anthony Hopkins), the general at the center of the play, return victorious from war. They bring back as spoils Tamora, Queen of the Goths (Jessica Lange), her sons (Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Matthew Rhys, and Raz Degan), and Aaron the Moor (Harry Lennix). Titus sacrifices Tamora’s eldest son, Alarbus, so that the spirits of his 21 dead sons might be appeased. Tamora begs for the life of Alarbus, but Titus refuses.

The Emperor of Rome has died and his sons Saturninus and Bassianus are squabbling over who will succeed him. The Tribune of the People, Marcus Andronicus, announces that the people's choice for new emperor is his brother, Titus, but he refuses the throne in favour of the late emperor's eldest son Saturninus, much to the latter's delight. The new emperor takes Lavinia, Titus' daughter, as his bride much to Titus's, his family's and Bassianus's chagrin, since Bassianus was previously betrothed to the girl. Titus's surviving sons help them escape and run for the Pantheon, where they are to marry. In the fighting, Titus kills his son Mutius. Titus is angry with his sons because in his eyes they are disloyal to Rome. The new emperor, Saturninus, dishonours Titus and marries Tamora instead. Tamora persuades the Emperor to feign forgiveness to Bassianus, Titus and his family and postpone punishment to a later day, thereby revealing her intention to avenge herself on all the Andronici.

During a hunting party the next day, Tamora's lover, Aaron the Moor, meets Tamora's sons Chiron and Demetrius. The two are arguing over which should take sexual advantage of the newly-wed Lavinia. They are easily persuaded by Aaron to ambush Bassianus and kill him in the presence of Tamora and Lavinia, in order to have their way with her. Lavinia begs Tamora to stop her sons, but Tamora refuses. Chiron and Demetrius throw Bassianus's body in a pit, as Aaron had directed them, then take Lavinia away and rape her. To keep her from revealing what she has seen and endured, they cut out her tongue as well as her hands, replacing them with tree branches. One of the film's most effective -- and most terrifying -- scenes features Lavinia, post-rape and in pain, balancing helplessly on a tree stump in the middle of a field of them, wearing only her petticoat. When Marcus discovers her, he begs her to reveal the identity of her assailants; Lavinia leans towards the camera and opens her bloodied mouth in a silent scream.

Aaron then brings Titus' sons Martius (Colin Wells) and Quintus (Kenny Doughty) and frames them for the murder of Bassianus with a forged letter outlining their plan to kill him. Angry, the Emperor arrests them.

Later on, Marcus takes Lavinia to her father, who is overcome with grief. He and his remaining son Lucius have begged for the lives of Martius and Quintus, but the two are found guilty and are marched off to execution. Aaron enters, and tells Titus, Lucius, and Marcus that the emperor will spare the prisoners if one of the three sacrifices a hand. Each demands the right to do so, but it is Titus who has Aaron cut off his (Titus's) left hand and take it to the emperor. However, Aaron's story is revealed to have been false, as a messenger brings Titus the heads of his sons and his own severed hand. In Renaissance semiotics, the hand is a representation of political and personal agency. With his hand chopped off, Titus has truly lost power.^[1] Desperate for revenge, Titus orders Lucius to flee Rome and raise an army among their former enemy, the Goths.

Later, Titus's grandson (Lucius's son), who has been helping Titus read to Lavinia, complains that she will not leave his books alone. In the book, she indicates to Titus and Marcus the story of Philomela, in which a similarly mute victim "wrote" the name of her wrongdoer. Marcus gives her a stick to hold with her mouth and stumps and she writes the names of her attackers on the ground. Titus vows revenge. Feigning madness, he ties written prayers for justice to arrows and commands his kinsmen to aim them at the sky so they may reach the gods, understanding the method in Titus's "madness", Marcus directs the arrows to land inside the palace of Saturninus, who is enraged by this added to the fact that Lucius is at the gates of Rome with an army of Goths.

Tamora delivers a mixed-race child, fathered by Aaron. To hide his affair from the Emperor, Aaron kills the nurse and flees with the baby. Later, Lucius, marching on Rome with an army, captures Aaron and threatens to hang the infant. To save the baby, Aaron reveals the entire plot to Lucius, relishing in every murder, rape and dismemberment.

Tamora, convinced of Titus's madness, approaches him along with her two sons, dressed as the spirits of Revenge, Murder, and Rape. She tells Titus that she (as a supernatural spirit) will grant him revenge if he will convince Lucius to stop attacking Rome. Titus agrees, sending Marcus to invite Lucius to a feast. "Revenge" offers to invite the Emperor and Tamora and is about to leave, but Titus insists that "Rape" and "Murder" stay with him. She agrees. When she is gone Titus's servants bind Chiron and Demetrius, and Titus cuts their throats, while Lavinia holds a basin in her stumps to catch their blood. He plans to cook them into a pie for their mother.

The next day, during the feast at his house, Lavinia enters the dining room, as Titus asks Saturninus whether a father should kill his daughter if she has been raped. When the Emperor agrees, Titus kills his daughter, to the horror of the dinner guests, and tells Saturninus what Tamora's sons had done, and when he demands Chiron and Demetrius be brought before him, Titus reveals that they were in the pie Tamora has just been enjoying, and then kills Tamora. Saturninus then kills Titus after which Lucius kills Saturninus to avenge his father's death.

The scene dissolves back to the Roman Arena where Lucius tells his family's story to the people and is proclaimed Emperor. He orders that Saturninus be given a proper burial, that Tamora's body be thrown to the wild beasts, and that Aaron be buried chest-deep and left to die of thirst and starvation. Aaron, however, is unrepentant to the end. Young Lucius picks up Aaron's child and carries him away into the sunrise.

Cast[link]

• Anthony Hopkins as Titus Andronicus, victorious Roman General who declines a nomination for Emperor upon his return to Rome. Following a post-war ritual of executing the proudest warrior of his enemy, the vanquished Goths, Titus draws the ire of Tamora, unaware of her inevitable appointment as the Queen of Rome.
• Jessica Lange as Tamora, defeated Queen of the Goths, who swears revenge against Titus and the Andronicus family for the atrocities visited upon her eldest son, an executed prisoner of war, using her newly-claimed powers as Queen of Rome
• Jonathan Rhys-Meyers as Chiron, one of Tamora's sons.
• Matthew Rhys as Demetrius, one of Tamora's sons.
• James Frain as Bassianus, one of the deceased emperors sons and brother to Saturninus.
• Laura Fraser as Lavinia, daughter of Titus and fiancee of Bassianus
• Harry Lennix as Aaron, servant and illicit lover to Tamora, and the chief architect of her vengeful plans against the Andronicus family
• Alan Cumming as Saturninus, brother to Bassianus and newly-crowned Emperor of Rome. Spurned by his attempts at claiming Lavinia as his new bride, he forsakes the Andronicus family and turns instead to Tamora as his new bride.
• Colm Feore as Marcus Andronicus, Roman Senator and staunch ally of his brother, the ailing Titus.
• Osheen Jones as Young Lucius, Titus's grandson and a key-character in the sense that he observes most of the key events.
• Angus Macfadyen as Lucius, Titus's eldest son and loyal soldier. Following his failed attempts at freeing his condemned brothers, Lucius is banished from Rome and defects to the Goths, where he rallies a sizeable army to challenge Saturninus.
• Kenny Doughty as Quintus, one of Titus's sons.
• Blake Ritson as Mutius, one of Titus's sons.
• Colin Wells as Martius, another of Titus's sons.
• Raz Degan as Alarbus, Tamora's eldest son who is sacrificed, setting the events of the play into motion.
• Geraldine McEwan as the Nurse, who brings Aaron his son

Background and production[link]

Director Julie Taymor took Shakespeare's script, added various linking scenes without dialogue (while cutting some of the text) and set the play in an anachronistic fantasy world that uses locations, costumes and imagery from many periods of history, including Ancient Rome and Mussolini's Italy, to give the impression of a Roman Empire that survived into the modern era. The opening scenes commence with a heavily choreographed triumphal march of the Roman troops, complete with motorcycle outriders. The selection of music is similarly diverse.^[2]

Apart from the deliberate anachronisms, the film follows the play quite closely. One of the experimental concepts in the film was that the character of Young Lucius (Titus' grandson) is initially introduced as a boy from the present who finds himself transported to the fantastical reality of the film. At the beginning of the film his toy soldiers turn into Titus' Roman army. At the end, when Titus' son Lucius avenges his father by condemning the villainous Aaron to a painful death, the boy takes pity on Aaron's infant son, carrying him away from the violence as he walks slowly into the sunrise. This ending is perhaps more positive than the ending of other productions of the play, including Taymor's stage production, in which Young Lucius is fixated upon the "tiny black coffin" holding the dead infant.^[3]

The film was shot at the Cinecittà studios in Rome and on location at various historic monuments. The arena that appears at the beginning and ending of the film is the Arena in Pula, Croatia. The Emperor's palace is represented by the 1930s Esposizione Universale Roma building in Rome. Some shots of underground tunnels and ruins were filmed at Hadrian's Villa in Rome. The forest scenes were shot at Manziana, near Rome. Titus's house is represented by an old house near an aqueduct in Rome, and the streets where he rounds up his conspirators are the Roman Ghetto.^[4]

Although the film did not do well at the box office, it was praised for its visual effects, design and attention to symbolism.

Soundtrack[link]

The score to the film was created by Taymor's long-time friend and partner Elliot Goldenthal and is a typical Goldenthal soundtrack with an epic, inventive and dissonant feel.

Reception[link]

The film received mixed reviews^[5] and, as of August 2011, has a 68% fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes.^[6] Nevertheless it received a "Critics Pick" from the New York Times.^[7]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Titus at the Internet Movie Database
• Titus at AllRovi
• Titus at Box Office Mojo
• Titus at Rotten Tomatoes
• Titus at Metacritic
• Boston Review article about the film
• BBC - Films - review - Titus
• Empire: Film Reviews, Movie News and Interviews