The story begins in the Andronicus family crypt where Titus (Anthony Hopkins), a long-time leading Roman general, is burying sons he lost in the war with Goths. In a vengeful sacrifice, he orders the torture and killing of the son of his prized prisoner, Tamora (Jessica Lange), the queen of Goths. Titus is offered the title of Roman emperor, but he eagerly surrenders it to Saturninus (Alan Cumming). Saturninus asks for the hand of Titus’s daughter Lavinia (Laura Fraser) who is wisked away by her fiancé Bassianus (James Frain), Saturninus’s brother. Lavinia’s brothers know of her engagement to Bassianus, and support Lavinia’s refusal to marry the emperor. Titus, however, feels dishonored that his children would defy his command for her to marry. In his outrage, Titus kills one of his sons. Saturninus then quickly turns the tables and proposes to Tamora and makes her the empresses. She vows to destroy Titus and his entire family as revenge for her son’s merciless sacrifice. And thus, the story unravels as Tamora and Titus vie for power, revenge, and control of the minds and spirits of those around them.

In trying to make the play more appealing to our time, and perhaps to save money on expensive period setting and wardrobe, the film weaves in and out of modern scenes of car filled streets, extras dressed in black suits and hats, villains unleashing their obsessions to rock music in front of rows of computer gaming machines. This could be seen as an attempt to use Shakespeare’s Titus as a commentary to the degradation in contemporary culture, or perhaps to illustrate the immortality of the bard’s genius. We even thought this might be a tip of the hat to the Bard’s tendency to interject then current conditions onto the Roman world of the play’s settings. Just as he made the common parlance of Roman stories relevant to his Elizabethan world, perhaps the story creators of the movie wanted to make the movie more accessible to our times.

Regardless, Titus seems more focused on the flaky modern overlay and graphic depiction of violence than with the attempt of the play to shed light on the corruption of government and the personal abuse of power to kill. Because graphic violence is difficult to show on stage, Shakespeare describes its impact through verse that the characters speak in response to what happens. In the screen version, the violence is graphic to the point of becoming absurd, and instead of being drawn within to reflect on the nature of humanity and questions at hand, we are shocked away from the subtler meanings.

Titus has served Rome all of his life. He shed blood and lost sons in numerous wars. He is proud to kill for Rome, and the pain of his personal loss in this service is relieved through a gruesome sacrifice of Tamora’s son. Maybe, the best of men would muster compassion and show mercy to the enemy whose defeat is definite, but Titus is an instrument of his government, one that is depicted as a den of blood sucking manipulators, torturers, and murders who thrive on the sweat and honor of its loyal citizens, and then turn a merciless cheek. For acting heartlessly out of devotion to Rome, Titus pays the price, but the empire is the ultimate villain here, and those who rose to power by exploiting Titus’s loyalty must be brought down through their own treacherous means.

Hopefully, the depths of humanity that Shakespeare so poignantly exposes will help you to appreciate Titus. We’d love to know how you reacted to this film.