Titus
Rated
R
Opens Friday,
June 16
Cinema
21
616 NW
21st Ave., 223-4515
7 pm Friday-Thursday,
additional shows 9:55 pm Friday, 12:30, 3:45 and 9:55 pm
Saturday, 12:30 and 3:45 pm Sunday, June 16-22
$6
Julie Taymor became a household name by taking a mediocre
animated flick from Disney, The Lion King, and transforming
it into a brilliant theatrical event. At base, the dull
sing-along score of Elton John and Tim Rice still worms
its way through the tired bedtime story. But Taymor's audacious
direction and the costumes and set designs (aided by Portlander
Michael Curry) have reanimated moribund material. Now, Taymor
turns the tables by taking a shoddy Elizabethan revenge
drama and transferring it to the screen. Again, the result
is spectacular, but to what end? As with The Lion King,
one striking image falls upon another, but it's a tarting-up
job to deflect from the piece's lack of substance. It's
"sound and fury, signifying nothing."
Even to those who cling to the myth that a country hick
named Shakespeare wrote the plays that bear his name, there's
discomfort over attributing Titus Andronicus to the
genius of Hamlet. "It's the most incorrect and indigested
piece in all his works," playwright Edward Ravenscroft wrote
in 1687. "It seems rather a heap of rubbish than a structure."
In the story, the Roman general Titus (Anthony Hopkins)
returns home from a war with the Goths having captured their
queen, Tamora (Jessica Lange), along with her three sons
and Moorish lover Aaron (Harry Lennix). Titus' sons demand
the right to ritually slaughter Tamora's eldest son to appease
their dead brothers' spirits. Tamora's pleas for clemency
fall on deaf ears, and her butchered son's guts are fed
to a fire before her. Tamora swears revenge, and doesn't
have to wait long for an opportunity as one of Titus' enemies,
the Roman emperor Saturninus (Alan Cumming), proclaims Tamora
his empress. From this place of power, Tamora's wrath falls
on Titus like hot stones. His daughter Lavinia (Laura Fraser)
is captured by Tamora's surviving sons, who top their rape
of her by hacking off her hands and tongue. Two of Titus'
sons are framed for murder and executed, while the raving
Titus cuts off one of his own hands as expiation for their
crime. These are only the first dribbles of a bloodbath
that soon becomes a ludicrous cartoon.
As a first film, Taymor's Titus has drive and confidence,
but also shows too many signs of mimicry--a dash of Peter
Greenaway here, a dose of Oliver Stone there. She fails
to out-Satyricon Fellini with forced bacchanals,
and she annoyingly presents Tamora's sons as refugees from
Baz Luhrmann's speedball Romeo + Juliet. Yet there
are some powerful moments: The bloodied Lavinia lost in
a bog with her stumps crammed with twigs; the collapse of
Titus on the way to his son's trial; and Lavinia refitted
with puppet hands (a superb Taymor touch).
Lange gives a forceful performance as the cold-fury queen.
Her handling of the text is one of the film's greatest pleasures.
Cumming's Saturninus is expertly weasely, and Lennix is
equally accomplished as Aaron.
Still, this is dazzling talent poured into a worthless
project: a verdict for all of Taymor's recent work.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Willamette Week | originally
published May 10,
2000
|
