Titus (film)

Last updated

Titus
Titus ver1.jpg
Theatrical release poster
Directed by Julie Taymor
Screenplay byJulie Taymor
Based on Titus Andronicus
by William Shakespeare
Produced by
Starring
Cinematography Luciano Tovoli
Edited by Françoise Bonnot
Music by Elliot Goldenthal
Production
companies
  • Clear Blue Sky Productions
  • Overseas Filmgroup
  • Urania Pictures
  • NDF International
Distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures (North America)
Buena Vista International (United Kingdom and Ireland)
Medusa Distribuzione (Italy)
Release dates
  • 24 December 1999 (1999-12-24)(Los Angeles)
  • 11 February 2000 (2000-02-11)(United States)
  • 29 September 2000 (2000-09-29)(United Kingdom)
Running time
162 minutes [1]
Countries
  • Italy
  • United Kingdom
  • United States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$18 million
Box office$2.92 million [2]

Titus is a 1999 epic surrealist historical drama film written, co-produced, and directed by Julie Taymor in her feature directorial debut, based on William Shakespeare's tragedy Titus Andronicus . A co-production between Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States, the film stars Anthony Hopkins in the title role of Titus Andronicus, the Roman army general, chronicling his downfall following a victorious return from war. It was produced by Overseas Filmgroup and Clear Blue Sky Productions and released by Fox Searchlight Pictures.

Contents

The film received mixed reviews from critics and grossed approximately $2.9 million worldwide against a budget of $18 million, becoming a box-office bomb, although it was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Costume Design.

Plot

A boy eating lunch in a 1950s-style kitchen plays war with his surrounding toys. A bomb blast outside the window frightens him under the table from where he is rescued and taken to an Amphitheatre, where an invisible audience cheers. The boy finds himself in the role of Young Lucius and watches as an army resembling the Terracotta Army enters; Romans under the command of Titus Andronicus, the general at the center of the play, return victorious from war. They bring back as spoils Tamora, Queen of the Goths, her sons, and Aaron the Moor. Titus sacrifices Tamora's eldest son, Alarbus, so the spirits of his 21 dead sons might be appeased. Tamora eloquently begs for the life of Alarbus, but Titus refuses her plea.

Caesar, the Emperor of Rome, dies. His sons Saturninus and Bassianus squabble over who will succeed him. The Tribune of the People, Marcus Andronicus, announces the people's choice for new emperor is his brother, Titus. He refuses the throne and hands it to the late emperor's eldest son Saturninus, much to the latter's delight. The new emperor states he will take Lavinia, Titus' daughter, as his bride, to honor and elevate the family. She is already betrothed to Saturninus' brother, Bassianus, who steals her away. Titus' surviving sons aid in the couple's run for the Pantheon, where they are to marry. Titus, angry with his sons because in his eyes they're being disloyal to Rome, kills his son Mutius as he defends the escape. The new emperor, Saturninus, dishonors 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 remaining sons, the sadistic Chiron and Demetrius. The two argue over which should take sexual advantage of the newly-wed Lavinia. Aaron easily persuades them 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' body in a pit, as Aaron directed them, then take Lavinia away and rape her. To keep her from revealing what she saw and endured, they cut out her tongue as well as her hands, replacing them with tree branches. 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 frames Titus' sons Martius and Quintus 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 beg 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. Titus has Aaron cut off his (Titus's) left hand and take it to the emperor. 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. [3] Desperate for revenge, Titus orders Lucius to flee Rome and raise an army among their former enemy, the Goths.

Titus' grandson (Lucius' son and the boy from the opening), who helped Titus read to Lavinia, complains 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. 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' "madness", Marcus directs the arrows to land inside the palace of Saturninus, who is enraged by this added to the fact 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. Lucius, marching on Rome with an army of Goths, captures Aaron and threatens to hang the infant. To save the baby, Aaron reveals the entire plot to Lucius, relishing every murder, rape and dismemberment.

Tamora, convinced of Titus' madness, approaches him along with her two sons, dressed as the spirits of Revenge, Murder, and Rape. She tells Titus 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 "Rape" and "Murder" stay with him. She agrees. When she leaves, Titus' servants bind Chiron and Demetrius. Titus cuts their throats, while Lavinia holds a basin with 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. Titus asks Saturninus whether a father should kill his daughter if she is raped. When the Emperor agrees, Titus snaps Lavinia's neck, to the horror of the dinner guests, and tells Saturninus what Tamora's sons did. When Saturninus demands Chiron and Demetrius be brought before him, Titus reveals they were in the pie Tamora enjoyed, and kills Tamora. Saturninus kills Titus after which Lucius kills Saturninus to avenge his father's death.

Back in the Roman Arena, Lucius tells his family's story to the people and is proclaimed Emperor. He orders his father Titus and sister Lavinia to be buried in the family monuments, Saturninus be given a proper burial, Tamora's body to be thrown to the wild beasts, and Aaron be buried chest-deep and left to die of thirst and starvation. Aaron is unrepentant to the end. Young Lucius, who appears to have lost his taste for violence after witnessing the bloody cycle of revenge, picks up Aaron's child and carries him away into the sunrise.

Cast

Differences from the original text

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. [5]

Production

Development

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. [6]

Filming

Principal photography took place 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 Fascist Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana in Rome. Some shots of tunnels and ruins were filmed at Hadrian's Villa in Rome. The forest scenes were shot at Manziana, near Rome. Titus' 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. [7]

Soundtrack

The score for Titus was composed by Elliot Goldenthal, Taymor's longtime friend and partner, and is a typical Goldenthal soundtrack with an epic, inventive, and dissonant feel.

Reception

Box office

Titus was a box office bomb, earning only $22,313 on its opening weekend due to its limited release in only two theaters, ranking number 57 in the box office. [8] Its widest release in the US was only in 35 theaters, causing the film to earn only $2,007,290 in North America. Overseas, it grossed $252,390 in Chile, Mexico, and Spain, [9] culminating in a worldwide total of $2,920,616. [2]

Critical response

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes , 69% of 77 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6.6/10.The website's consensus reads: "The movie stretches too long to be entertaining despite a strong cast." [10] Metacritic , which uses a weighted average , assigned the film a score of 57 out of 100, based on 29 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews. [11]

Stephen Holden of The New York Times gave the film a positive review, making it a "Critic's Pick". [12] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times also praised Titus and gave it three and a half out of four stars, referring to the source material as "the least of Shakespeare's tragedies" and concluding, "Anyone who doesn't enjoy this film for what it is must explain: How could it be more? This is the film Shakespeare's play deserves, and perhaps even a little more." [13]

Scott Tobias of The A.V. Club wrote that "Titus strikes a near-impossible balance between magnificently cracked high camp and a more serious statement about corruption and the cycle of violence" and that "[Taymor's] forceful adaptation builds to a glorious payoff and Cumming's flamboyant performance alone—he's a sort of fascist Pee-wee Herman—seems enough to ensure Titus lasting cult status." [14]

Robin Askew wrote in a 2016 article for Bristol24-7 that the film is "brilliant and daring if under-appreciated."[ citation needed ]

Accolades

AwardCategoryNominee(s)ResultRef.
Academy Awards Best Costume Design Milena Canonero Nominated [15]
ADG Excellence in Production Design Awards Excellence in Production Design for a Feature Film Dante Ferretti Nominated
Chlotrudis Awards Best Director Julie Taymor Nominated
Best Supporting Actor Harry Lennix Nominated
Best Adapted ScreenplayJulie TaymorNominated
Best Cinematography Luciano Tovoli Nominated
Edgar Awards Best Motion Picture Screenplay
Nominated
Golden Satellite Awards Best Actor in a Supporting Role – Drama Harry LennixWon
Best Actress in a Supporting Role – Drama Jessica Lange Nominated
Best Screenplay – Adapted Julie TaymorNominated
Best Art Direction and Production Design Dante FerrettiNominated
Best Costume Design Milena CanoneroNominated
Best Visual Effects Kyle Cooper Nominated
London Film Critics Circle Awards British Actor of the Year Anthony Hopkins Nominated
Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards Best Production Design Dante FerrettiRunner-up
Nastro d'Argento Awards Best Production DesignDante Ferretti (also for Bringing Out the Dead )Won
Santa Barbara International Film Festival Modern Master AwardAnthony HopkinsWon

See also

Related Research Articles

<i>Titus Andronicus</i> Play by Shakespeare

The Lamentable Tragedy of Titus Andronicus, often shortened to Titus Andronicus, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1588 and 1593. It is thought to be Shakespeare's first tragedy and is often seen as his attempt to emulate the violent and bloody revenge plays of his contemporaries, which were extremely popular with audiences throughout the 16th century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tereus</span> Thracian king

In Greek mythology, Tereus was a Thracian king, the son of Ares and the naiad Bistonis. He was the brother of Dryas. Tereus was the husband of the Athenian princess Procne and the father of Itys.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Verginia</span> 5th-century BC Roman heroine

Verginia, or Virginia, was the subject of an ancient Roman story recounted in Roman historian Livy's text Ab Urbe Condita. Upon threat to her virtue, Verginia was killed by her father Verginius. Livy directly links Verginia's death to the overthrow of the decemviri and the re-establishment of the Roman Republic.

<i>The Rape of Lucrece</i> Poem by William Shakespeare

The Rape of Lucrece (1594) is a narrative poem by William Shakespeare about the legendary Roman noblewoman Lucretia. In his previous narrative poem, Venus and Adonis (1593), Shakespeare had included a dedicatory letter to his patron, the Earl of Southampton, in which he promised to compose a "graver labour". Accordingly, The Rape of Lucrece has a serious tone throughout.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Revenge play</span>

The revenge tragedy, or revenge play, is a dramatic genre in which the protagonist seeks revenge for an imagined or actual injury. The term revenge tragedy was first introduced in 1900 by A. H. Thorndike to label a class of plays written in the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean eras.

Revenge tragedy is a theatrical genre, in which the principal theme is revenge and revenge's fatal consequences. Formally established by American educator Ashley H. Thorndike in his 1902 article "The Relations of Hamlet to Contemporary Revenge Plays," a revenge tragedy documents the progress of the protagonist's revenge plot and often leads to the demise of both the murderers and the avenger himself.

Saturninus may refer to:

Chiron is a centaur from Greek mythology.

Quintus Volusius Saturninus was a Roman Senator who lived in the Roman Empire during the Principate. He was consul in the year 56 with Publius Cornelius Scipio as his colleague.

<i>Titus</i> (soundtrack) 2000 soundtrack album by Elliot Goldenthal

Titus is the original soundtrack to the 1999 motion picture Titus. Elliot Goldenthal wrote the score for the film, an adaptation of Shakespeare's first, and bloodiest, tragedy Titus Andronicus; written and directed by Julie Taymor, Goldenthal's long-time friend and partner. The only non-Goldenthal piece is an old Italian song called "Vivere" performed by Italian singer Carlo Buti.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peacham drawing</span> Contemporary Shakespearean illustration

The Peacham drawing, or 'Longleat manuscript', is the only surviving contemporary Shakespearean illustration, now in the library of the Marquess of Bath at Longleat in Wiltshire. The drawing appears to depict a performance of Titus Andronicus, under which is quoted some dialogue. Eugene M. Waith argues of the illustration that "the gestures and costumes give us a more vivid impression of the visual impact of Elizabethan acting than we get from any other source."

Although traditionally Titus Andronicus has been seen as one of Shakespeare's least respected plays, its fortunes have changed somewhat in the latter half of the twentieth century, with numerous scholars arguing that the play is more significant and effective than has been acknowledged in most criticisms. In particular, scholars have argued that the play is far more thematically complex than has traditionally been thought, and features profound insights into ancient Rome, Elizabethan society, and the human condition. Such scholars tend to argue that these previously unacknowledged insights have only become apparent during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries due to newfound relevance in the play's ultraviolent content. For example, in his 1987 edition of the play for the Contemporary Shakespeare series, A.L. Rowse writes; "in the civilized Victorian age the play could not be performed because it could not be believed. Such is the horror of our own age, with the appalling barbarities of prison camps and resistance movements paralleling the torture and mutilation and feeding on human flesh of the play, that it has ceased to be improbable." Similarly, director Julie Taymor, who staged a production Off-Broadway in 1994 and directed a film version in 1999, says she was drawn to the play because she found it to be the most "relevant of Shakespeare's plays for the modern era." She feels that the play has more relevance for contemporary audiences than it had for the Victorians: "it seems like a play written for today, it reeks of now." Because of these newer appreciations of the play's relevance, previously unrecognized thematic strands have thus come to the forefront.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Titus Andronicus (character)</span> Fictional character

Titus Andronicus is the main character in William Shakespeare's revenge tragedy of the same name, Titus Andronicus. Titus is introduced as a Roman nobleman and revered general. Prior to the events of the play, he dedicated ten years of service in the war against the Goths, losing 21 sons in the conflict. In the opening act, Titus orders that the eldest son of Tamora, Queen of the Goths, be sacrificed according to Roman tradition in order to avenge his dead kin. He is also offered the emperorship, but he declines the honor and bestows it upon the late emperor's son, Saturninus. When Saturninus is denied the ability to pick his first choice of empress, Lavinia, he chooses to wed Tamora. Throughout the rest of the play, Titus and Tamora remain locked in a battle of brutal revenge. The play thus descends into moral chaos as characters perpetrate or find themselves victims of various egregious offenses, including rape, mutilation, and murder.

"The Lamentable and Tragical History of Titus Andronicus,"also called"Titus Andronicus' Complaint," is a ballad from the 17th century about the fictional Roman general, Titus, and his revenge cycle with the Queen of the Goths. Events in the ballad take place near the end of the Roman Empire, and the narrative of the ballad parallels the plot of William Shakespeare's play Titus Andronicus. Scholarly debate exists as to which text may have existed first, the ballad or the play. The ballad itself was first entered on the Stationers' Register in 1594, the same year the play was entered. Surviving copies of the ballad can be found in the British Library, in the Huntington Library, and at Magdalene College, Cambridge. Online copies of the facsimiles are also available for public consumption at sites such as the English Broadside Ballad Archive.

The gens Abudia was an obscure plebeian family at ancient Rome. This gens flourished during imperial times, and none of its members held any of the higher magistracies of the Roman state. Only Abudius Ruso, who had been aedile under Tiberius, is mentioned in history, but other Abudii are known from inscriptions.

References

  1. ↑ "TITUS (18)". British Board of Film Classification . 19 April 2000. Retrieved 24 December 2015.
  2. 1 2 "Titus (1999) - Financial Information". The Numbers . Retrieved 13 March 2018.
  3. ↑ Rowe, Katherine A. (1994). "Dismembering and Forgetting in Titus Andronicus". Shakespeare Quarterly. 45 (3): 279–303. doi:10.2307/2871232. JSTOR   2871232.
  4. ↑ Puchko, Kristy (17 January 2012). "Mary Costa, Aurora – Disney Princesses Then and Now". TheFW. Screencrush Network. Archived from the original on 21 January 2013. Retrieved 29 March 2014.
  5. ↑ McCandless, David (2002). "A Tale of Two Tituses: Julie Taymor's Vision on Stage and Screen". Shakespeare Quarterly. 53 (4): 487–511. doi:10.1353/shq.2003.0025. JSTOR   3844238. S2CID   194032305.
  6. ↑ BFI | Sight & Sound | Titus (1999) Archived 24 November 2009 at the Wayback Machine
  7. ↑ Julie Taymor, DVD commentary.
  8. ↑ "Weekend Box Office Results for December 24-26, 1999". Box Office Mojo . Internet Movie Database. 27 December 1999. Retrieved 28 January 2016.
  9. ↑ "Titus (1999) - International Box Office Results". Box Office Mojo . Internet Movie Database. 18 December 2002. Retrieved 28 January 2016.
  10. ↑ "Titus". Rotten Tomatoes . Fandango Media . Retrieved 28 September 2024. OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
  11. ↑ "Titus". Metacritic . Fandom, Inc. Retrieved 28 September 2024.
  12. ↑ Stephen Holden (24 December 1999). "Titus (1999) Film Review; It's a Sort of Family Dinner, Your Majesty". The New York Times.
  13. ↑ Ebert, Roger (21 January 2000). "Titus". Chicago Sun-Times . Retrieved 6 November 2013.
  14. ↑ Tobias, Scott (26 December 1999). "Titus". The A.V. Club . Retrieved 6 January 2017.
  15. ↑ "Nominees & Winners for the 72nd Academy Awards". Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). Retrieved 6 January 2017.

Bibliography

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