She also had this to say about that young boy: "I thought it was quite clever--playing with violence, quite literally. The film opens with a prologue that encapsulates the spectrum of ‘violence' as it transforms, in a matter of seconds, from innocuous entertainment to horrific reality. As the child's innocent play with his toy soldiers escalates into a palpably thunderous explosion of bombs, the boy falls through an ‘Alice in Wonderland' time warp, right into the Coliseum. Magically his toy Roman soldiers have become armored flesh and blood, covered in layers of earth; Titus and his armies returning from war with a triumphant march into the arena. The conventions of the film are set in motion: archaic armor and weapons, motorcycles, tractors, tanks and horse drawn chariots, comfortably jumbled together like the toys on the boy's kitchen table. As to the spectators in the bleachers, there are none. Only the sound of their cheering, as if ghosts of past centuries were being awakened. The boy takes his part as young Lucius, Titus' grandson."

I had read many poor reviews of the film, so I was pleasantly surprised when I actually watched it. It is severely under-rated. It wasn't as violent as I expected, and I thought the "staginess" and eclectic look of the production helped the work transcend time. Although the plot of Titus Andronicus might be considered a bit "over the top" by today's audiences, I thought Taymor's version made the play relevant.

Taymor herself has noted, "I think the play has been terribly underrated and unappreciated. I find it so beautiful and powerful. For 200 years it was discarded as tasteless and over the top, but I think it is exactly right for our times - outrageous humor juxtaposed to potent tragedy"

One warning, though. I would definitely not use this material with high school age students. It's far too disturbing. In the US, it is rated R for restricted. People under 17 must be accompanied by an adult. In the UK, Australia, parts of Canada, the Philippines, Spain and Singapore, it is rated 18. Other countries rate it a little younger, from 13 and up, depending on the country, but I would limit the teaching of this play and film to university-age students and up.

I thought the blending of time periods in the sets and costume designs was very imaginative. Somehow it felt like we were in Rome, but then we weren't. "The time is a created time.... it's a blend of time," said Taymor. In another interview she added, "The film is really ancient Rome.... and then the 30s, 40s, 50s and the present.... And cars and costumes are a reflection of character. So Saturninus [Alan Cumming], who's the kind of mad emperor, drives in Mussolini's car, I mean it really is of that period. Then his brother [Bassanius, played by James Frain], who's more of a 1950's straight sort of guy, very conservative, he drives in a 50's convertible" (qtd in Hanna).

Tamora's two sons, punk/Goths (a visual pun, no?) could fit in today's world just as easily as they would have fit into Shakespeare's Rome. We hear stories of brutal young people who rape and disfigure for fun, able to laugh at their actions, and Jonathan Rhys-Meyers as Chiron I found especially good. This is an actor who does a good creepy character. He played similar (though not as bad) characters in Velvet Goldmine and the excellent TV mini-series Gormanghast. He more recently played the caddish George Osbourne in Vanity Fair. But he was also sweet and loveable in Bend it Like Beckham, so that says something about his range. Matthew Rhys, playing his brother Demetrius was good as well, but I think there's something about Rhys-Meyer's almost girlishly beautiful face that contrasts with the evil he is able to play.

I found the orgy scene a little shocking, and found myself thinking, "that's not in Shakespeare!" At first I thought, aw, gratuitous sex, but then I said, no, this explains Saturnius and the lack of morals in the people around him. I changed my mind then, and thought that this was a brilliant way to underscore the lack of morality in the Roman court that Shakespeare is depicting. We think of Roman orgies as part of the late Roman life, but according to Suzanne Dixon, "the Roman orgy is a modern invention (not even Juvenal thought of such a thing). Sorry if that's a disappointment." But I think Taymor was playing on the popular imagination. What the Romans actually would have considered an orgy was a huge feast of food!

Julie Taymor, interviewed by Douglas Eby, vehemently denies that her film wallows in violence: "I... explore violence in many different ways.... But there's not tons of blood. It's not as graphic as other people could have made it." (qtd in Hanna) And it's true. This is no Kill Bill or even Gothika. Because I knew what was in the play, I wouldn't let my then 14-year-old son watch with me, but I realized that I could have let him watch it as almost all the violence was ritualized. We would have still have had to talk about the action--we discuss violence in films--but I found Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet more violent than this Titus.

This may seem contradictory, since above I wrote that I wouldn't teach this to high school age students. I wouldn't. I know my own child and his maturity level, but not all young teens would be able to process the information and ideas. For that reason alone, I would use caution when teaching.

In another interview she said, "This is not a violent movie.... It's a black comedy about the vicious cycle of violence.... Where is the blood? You never see the knife go in. You never see the hands cut off. I stylized the violence to make it approachable for audiences." (qtd in Hanna)

The film critic Hanna wrote that Titus "might seem a questionable choice for a major new production. Until quite recently, Shakespeare's most violent play was either neglected as peripheral to the Shakespeare canon or reviled as too horrible to be staged. Accordingly, T. S. Eliot dismissed Titus Andronicus as "one of the stupidest and most uninspired plays ever written, a play in which it is incredible that Shakespeare had any hand at all....".

"The eminent scholar Harold Bloom, for instance, points out that audience members attending the celebrated Peter Brook production, "never quite knew whether to be horrified and when to laugh" (cited by Alan A. Stone). To Bloom, then, Shakespeare's gory play is best understood as "a bloody farce" or perhaps as a parody of the Elizabethan revenge tragedy (Stone).

But one thing I noticed when preparing this page is that many recent stage productions work the violence in the play for laughs. I think this bothers me more than the inherent violence in the play. Has our society become so numbed to violence that we can laugh at it? Shakespeare's audiences enjoyed violence and a good spurt of blood, but I wonder if they were finding it funny?

One thing I very much appreciated about the film were the little quirky visual details. This is something that pops up quite early in the film. The first thing I spotted was Alan Cumming, who plays Saturnius, brilliantly, of course, as I don't think Cumming can be anything less than brilliant, speaking through microphones labeled S.P.Q.R. Literally, this famous Latin abbreviation, often seen on Roman military standards, means "Senatus Populusque Romanus," or simply "the Roman Senate and People." You can still see it on buildings in Rome today. Then there are the wolves all over the royal palace. According to legend, Rome was founded by Romulus and Remus, twin orphans who were suckled by a wolf. What else can you spot?

The director's production notes are available on-line, and this is such an excellent resource for us that I'll be quoting them at length:

I liked Taymor's reasons for wanting to film Titus: "For centuries Titus Andronicus, Shakespeare's earliest play, has been the subject of hot debate. Regarded as his most successful potboiler in his own day, the polite centuries, before our own, were shocked by the juxtaposition of heightened drama, ruthless violence and absurdist black comedy. It is precisely these characteristics that fascinated and convinced me that the play was ripe for adaptation to film, speaking directly to our times; a time whose audience feeds daily on tabloid sex scandals, teenage gang rape, high school gun sprees and the private details of a celebrity murder trial. And equally a time where racism, ethnic cleansing and genocide have almost ceased to shock by being so commonplace and seemingly inevitable. Our entertainment industry thrives on the graphic details of murders, rapes and villainy yet it is rare to find a film or play that not only reflects the dark events but turns them inside out, probing and challenging our fundamental beliefs on morality and justice. For "Titus" is not a neat or safe story, where goodness triumphs over evil, but one in which through its relentless horror, the undeniable poetry of human tragedy emerges in full force, demanding we examine the very root of violence and judge its various acts."

Now I'm going to include Taymor's analysis of three characters: Titus, Tamora And Aaron. I don't always agree with what she has to say, but seeing her interpretation of the character illuminates the choices she made for the film.

"The great general Titus Andronicus is a fascinating and unnerving protagonist. At first glance he could be our Colin Powell or General Schwarzkopf. The Roman people, in their love and reverence for their triumphant war hero, beg that he become their emperor in a time of chaos. He is an honorable man, a strict but loving father who respects traditions and the law, but whose fatal flaw is, ironically, this rigidity and inability to adapt to the emotional climate around him. According to religious ritual Titus mercilessly sacrifices the eldest son of the captive Goth Queen. This first act is the catalyst for the rest of the events that spiral out of control. From great war hero Titus descends into a madness that rivals King Lear's. The armor of his world view shattered, Titus, in his insanity, is finally able to see the world as it truly is. In a bittersweet and wonderfully absurd scene he acknowledges that the Goddess of Justice has fled the earth, so he wraps letters around arrows, shoots them to the heavens, soliciting the Gods to right his wrongs. Ultimately Titus weds his sorrow with vengeance and in a final act of retribution this great General evolves into a mythic pastry chef, serving up his enemies in the form of pies to be devoured by their mother.

"Tamora, the Goth Queen could be the precursor for Lady Macbeth. In fact she is much more dimensional and psychologically comprehensible than Shakespeare's most famous villainess. First seen as captive, she witnesses the brutal sacrifice of her son. After her pleas of mercy fall upon deaf ears she cries out with searing venom, ‘Oh cruel, irreligious piety!' From this moment onward we understand her motivations and we watch in horror as the lust for vengeance transforms her into the Goddess of Vengeance incarnate. Along the way this extraordinary character moves us as a mother, seduces us as a sexy and sly lover and confounds us with her brilliant and cunning control as the powerful Empress of Rome."

Personally, I think Taymor is missing some cruelty and unnaturalness in Tamora's character. I wrote a paper once, "Power, Mothers and Lovers: The Women of Shakespeare's Late Tragedies," in which I argued that Lady Macbeth and Volumnia (from Coriolanus) verbally unsexed themselves during their respective plays, and from that point on they become disempowered, to the point of death for Lady Macbeth. While reading this play, not a late tragedy, I saw the same thing happening. Tamora takes the male role, especially when dealing with Saturnius. I thought Jessica Lange showed this aspect of Tamora's character well. Lange is 16 years older than Cumming, and she played the role as an experienced queen lending her political savvy to a young, brash and not very intelligent emperor.

So now back to Taymor: "Tamora's slave, lover and cohort in evil is Aaron, the Moor. Perhaps the most disturbing and yet contemporary of all the characters, Aaron begins as an enigma. His story unfolds as we watch in shock his master manipulation of the awful events. His nasty sense of humor and asides connect the audience to him in the same manner as an Iago or Richard the Third. But what sets him apart from those arch villains is that Aaron is black. Shakespeare has painted a picture of racism that is unparalleled in his other plays. The speeches of Aaron that reflect his fury at the bigoted world surrounding him, and the vile words that spew at him from others, allow us to reflect on how and why he became this godless soul. Nihilistic, atheistic, cold and calculating, this dark figure emerges as the mirror image of Titus. Titus begins as the good man, acting upon honor and a sense of morality. Aaron is the artful and self-aware devil who revels in horrific acts of atrocity without conscience. But by the end, Titus' turn as the cook closely resembles an Aaron act in its cruelty and creativity, while Aaron, the loner, evolves into a loving father, ready to sacrifice himself for the life of his child."

Again, I wonder if Taymor is overstating the case for Aaron and for the play itself. When she says that "Shakespeare has painted a picture of racism" it's as if Shakespeare is an observer, not a participant in that racism. And what is Aaron's motivation for saving the child--love or ego?

In her production notes, she went on to discuss location as metaphor: "Modern Rome built on the ruins of ancient Rome, offered the perfect stratification for the setting of the film. I wanted to blend and collide time, to create a singular period that juxtaposed elements of ancient barbaric ritual with familiar, contemporary attitude and style. Instead of recreating Rome, 400 AD, the locations of the film would include the ruins of Hadrian's villa, the baths of Caracalla, the Coliseum etc., as they are today, with all their corroded beauty, centuries of graffiti and ghastly, ghostly history. As counterpoint to the classical architecture, Dante Ferreti, my production designer, introduced me to E.U.R. [Esposizione Universale Roma], Mussolini's government center, whose principal building is referred to as the "square coliseum" because of its myriad arches. Built by Mussolini to recreate the glory of the ancient Roman Empire, this surreal -- almost futuristic architecture -- was a setting which perfectly embodied the concept for the film.

"To frame the narrative I chose an architectural structure to function in a symbolic manner: the Roman Coliseum; the archetypal theater of cruelty, where violence as entertainment reached its apex.

Taymor also explains that "the concept of the ‘Penny Arcade Nightmares' was devised to portray the inner landscapes of the mind as affected by the external actions. These stylized, haiku-like images appear at various points throughout the film counterpointing the realistic events in a dreamlike, and mythic manner. They depict, in abstract collages, fragments of memory, the unfathomable layers of a violent event, the metamorphic flux of the human, animal and the divine. By the last of these surreal sequences the line between illusion and substance becomes blurred. The nightmare takes over... madness becomes clarity and the unimaginable is realized. The finale banquet slaughter, which mirrors the opening carnage at the boy's kitchen table, ends with Lucius aiming his pistol at the emperor Saturninus. We are in an interior set, Titus' dining room. With the reverberating blast of gunshot, the camera quickly zooms out from the table to reveal the entire scene, minus the walls, now sitting in the center of the coliseum. This time, the bleachers are filled with spectators. Watching. They are silent. They are us."

The film's PR packet included these interesting bits: "While in the theater production I directed the actors to find a balance between heightened choreography and naturalism," says Taymor, "in the film I wanted them to make their characters and actions natural without sacrificing the poetry." Thus, Taymor had a three-week rehearsal period before the start of the shoot, during which the text was dissected and made as comfortable as possible on the tongues of those with little or no Shakespeare experience. It was also invaluable in allowing the actors to get a sense of the arc of their parts.

I was listening to the poetry in this film very closely. Anthony Hopkins was Anthony Hopkins. A little too much Hannibal the Cannibal coming through, I thought. Who could not think of that in the film's final scene? Lange is a good actor, in fact, the cast was full of good actors, mostly film actors, strange considering Taymor's background, but then again, with such an obscure play, she needed something to make some good box office.

I thought Harry Lennix, who played Aaron, was amazing. The real stand-out in the cast. He is probably most familiar as Commander Lock in the second and third Matrix films, but he's done quite a bit of film as well as theater in Chicago. He was also a teacher for eight years, so I think he's a hero!

Taymor didn't do extensive cuts to the play, as it's a relatively short one in the canon, but she did move scenes around and split them up so that they could be in different locations and so on, really making this a film as opposed to a film of a play, and I think that the changes she made really helped one to understand what was happening. There are a few lines cut here and there, but nothing too much. Mostly the Latin things, which are really distracting if you're reading without footnotes, so they would be doubly annoying in a spoken version.