One of Shakespeare's stranger, darker plays, "Titus Andronicus" supplies the framework for Julie Taymor's 1999 "Titus." This is Shakespeare made surreal, and it's an inventive and thoroughly unforgettable experience. Anthony Hopkins plays Titus, a Roman general whose success unravels spectacularly and horrifically under the forceful revenge plot of Tamora (Jessica Lange), whose son Titus executed. Titus and Tamora clash on an epic scale, resulting in a bloody tapestry of murder, rape, mutilation, amputation, and forced cannibalism.
If you can stomach all that brutality, "Titus" is truly awe-inspiring. As Scott Tobias at The A.V. Club said, "Bold and decadent, 'Titus' is built on jarring and darkly comic juxtapositions, colliding the past with the present, garishness with serene poetry, and wild excess with chilly aestheticism." It's a lot to take in, but if you like your movies dark, weird, and over-the-top, they don't get much better than this. And with all that in mind, Hopkins' casting is, as Roger Ebert pointed out, essential. Taymor needed someone who could nail the corrupt, wild Shakespearean grandeur ... and carry with him a cannibalistic alter-ego to acknowledge the bad taste of it all up front. Ebert saw plenty of parallels between Titus and Hopkins' most famous role, saying, "Hopkins plays him, like Hannibal Lecter, as a man pitiable, intelligent, and depraved."
It's a lot to take in, but "Titus" makes it all work, even if it might be a film you can't watch more than once.
