Julie Taymor is a designer, not a director. She lavishes all her creative energy on scenery, props, costumes and other inanimate objects. She can treat human beings as stage-dressing (the lock-step soldiers, the orgiastic revellers), but she cannot cast them properly or convince them to give good performances. Anthony Hopkins murmurs, rants and snarls without once achieving significant emotion; Jessica Lange and Harry Lennix can barely speak, let alone fill their roles; Colm Feore (Canada's idea of a major classical actor) does nothing with his apostrophe to Lavinia; and Alan Cumming is not convincing as a heterosexual. In brief, Taymor's film is a characteristic specimen of postmodern Shakespeare: heavy on production design, but dramatically and histrionically mediocre. One cannot do justice to Shakespeare through imagery alone, a truth that postmodern auteurs seem unable to grasp. And Titus, of all plays, is about flesh and blood, the very elements that leave Taymor at a loss.
Review of Titus
