Thanks, noble Titus

A theatre blog just wouldn't be a real theatre blog without a good number of posts about Shakespeare, right? Don't worry, I'm not here to analyze texts for you —that's what a $1,000 course at your local university is for. I prefer talking about adaptations of Shakespeare's work, both on stage and on screen, and how they contribute to the ongoing dialogue about the Bard. I've already discussed an incredibly successful stage adaptation of Macbeth, entitled Matchbox Macbeth. Today I want to rhapsodize upon Julie Taymor's 1999 film adaptation of Titus Andronicus, called (super creatively) Titus.

Starring Academy Award winners Sir Anthony Hopkins and Jessica Lange, old favourites Colm Feore and Alan Cumming, and a young Jonathan Rhys Meyers, this film could easily have been a faithful but unimaginative star-vehicle. But under a director whose first love is theatre, Titus swells into a spectacle of theatre-without-limits. Taymor exploits the medium of film in ways that theatre directors can only dream of, from Titus' multitude of huge, ambitious settings to its realistic gore and nightmarishly surreal video-collage sequences.

I hope that you aren't some sort of psychoanalyst, imaginary reader, because this play about betrayal, barbarism, mutilation, lust, and death is my favourite Shakespearean work. And when beloved boyfriend agreed to watch Taymor's film, well I was just tickled pink. Thank goodness he really enjoyed it, too —otherwise I might have felt like some kind of freak.

There is one thing that keeps Titus from being one of my absolute favourite films: it is SO. FREAKING. 90s! It is unapologetically anachronistic (chariots and bowmen share space with motorcades and video game machines in "ancient" Rome) and I like that for the most part, but the rave music and weird hairdos can be a little much at times. Anachronism is one thing, but such blatantly identifiable anachronism is jarring. I have seen it three times, and each time it has seemed more and more dated. Ultimately the performances and visuals win over my cynicism and incredulity, but it is still something I have to get over.

STILL, I highly recommend that you watch this movie. It's a long, dark, and gory one —but it is a fine example of how theatre and film, too often cast in a hierarchy and defined by their differences, can inform and improve upon one another.