Directors (both theatrical and cinematic) are reluctant to give us 'straight' versions of Shakespeare. They seem to assume that we must have seen Hamlet or Othello dozens of times already and that we can't possibly be interested in seeing them yet again--at least not in their familiar settings. That's the most charitable way I know to excuse the theatrical version of King Lear I saw that was set, for no reason that I was able to discern, in the world of a post-nuclear holocaust. It also accounts for that terribly awkward moment in Baz Luhrmann's clumsily modernized Romeo + Juliet when the camera zooms in on the brand name (Sword) of Tybalt's handgun to explain why he is referring to his gun as a sword.

Like Brannagh's Hamlet or Loncraine's Richard III, Julie Taymor's Titus is deliberately anachronistic. A little boy (Osheen Jones) is playing with toy soldiers when, all of a sudden, he is whisked into the incomprehensible world of Titus Andronicus. Historically, we are in Ancient Rome. We must be--for that is the only context in which Titus' story makes any sense. But technologically, we are wherever Julie Taymor cares for us to be. Characters wield maces and shoot arrows, but also use handguns. They ride horses and walk the cobbled streets of Rome, but occasionally find themselves on motorcycles.

In lesser hands than Taymor's, the belligerently anachronistic quality of Titus would be distracting at best and suicidal at worst. But it gradually becomes clear to the viewer that Taymor is engaging in precisely the sort of wordplay for which Shakespeare himself is famous. Titus Andronicus' Rome is engaged in a war with the Goths; Titus himself (Anthony Hopkins) is persecuted by a Goth queen named Tamora (Jessica Lange); and we the twenty-first century viewers find ourselves at odds with the imagery of our own 'Goth' subculture--a subculture of long leather coats (such as the one worn by Emperor Saturninus), body art (such as the tattoos sported by Tamora and the symmetrical facial scars of Aaron), and the androgynous sado-masochism of Chiron and Demetrius.

If we give Shakespeare the benefit of the doubt by assuming that Titus Andronicus must have been an elaborate joke, a way of making fun of his audience's insatiable taste for gore and melodrama, then we have to give Taymor the same high marks for adapting the Bard's play in such a way as to transform it into an elaborate (and highly contemporary) joke of her own.

It is not the sort of joke that is easy to laugh at, however. Taymor's talent for painting on the canvas of the silver screen is far too arresting for us to laugh at the gore of Titus. Mangiotto has already commented on the extraordinary image of Lavinia after her hands have been amputated and her tongue has been cut out. I'll confess that after seeing her wavering on a tree stump in a desolate marsh with her hands replaced by twigs and straw and a sickeningly thick strand of blood curling out of her mouth, I simply had to turn the film off for a few minutes to get my head straight. (And this from a man who thought that it was funny when Michael Madsen cut the cop's ear off and doused him with gasoline in Reservoir Dogs!)

What's so troubling about the rampant gore of Titus is that Taymor manages to make it so beautiful. In a way, that tendency seems consistent with the running Goth gag of the film, which makes it bearable. But in another way, it's far more than unsettling--the kind of unsettling that would prompt me to decline if I were offered the opportunity to climb inside Taymor's head for a day.

For those who are unfamiliar with Titus Andronicus, a plot summary will be far less useful than a plot assessment. And the plot can be assessed, quite simply, as ridiculous. Titus' first interaction with Tamora is to dismember her first-born son as part of a ritual sacrifice. It is only the first of several episodes of dismemberment--all of which clearly fascinate Taymor. The performances of Hopkins and Lange are every bit as compelling as one expects them to be. But the wrongs that they do to one another give their mutual hatred a motivation that makes their jobs much easier than those of such seemingly unmotivated villains as Saturninus (Alan Cumming) and Aaron (Harry J. Lennix).

Cumming does quite a marvellous job of portraying a spoiled brat of an emperor who likes to hurt people and simply cannot understand why they would ever try to hurt him back. But the real star of the show is Lennix, who manages, with the brutal force of his own charisma, to convince us that it's perfectly natural for a man to decide to be villainous for the sake of villainy. He lends his character all of the credibility and Miltonic/Melvillean dignity that the similarly villainous Don John of Much Ado About Nothing lacked as portrayed by Keanu Reeves.

Although Titus is just under three hours long, it took me the better part of an evening to get through it. I enjoyed it, but I needed breaks. I was absolutely overwhelmed by Taymor's artistic vision. This film is a must-see for Taymor's artistry alone. She is an incredible new talent in cinema--fascinating, terrifying, brilliant. To skip Titus is to turn your back on a director who deserves your attention--and who may cut your arms off when you're not looking.

Recommended: Yes