Lion Queen Tames 'Titus'
The New York Post, December 30, 1999
by Jonathan Foreman

Julie Taymor doesn't look the part of a Shakespearean revolutionary: a person who, with her first, amazingly ambitious film, has singlehandedly rescued a play from relative oblivion and demonstrated that, of all the Bard's work, "Titus Andronicus" is the most relevant to our age.

But the slight, vivacious woman tucking into her tuna ceviche at Union Square Cafe has done just that with the stunning "Titus," which opened Christmas Day.

Three years after she started the project, which stars Anthony Hopkins and Jessica Lange, she's still passionate about the work. She fluently and frequently quotes the play, which she thinks is "a better story than 'Romeo and Juliet,' more dense and complex" and which could not be more different from her Broadway triumph "The Lion King."

And she's furious with the people who go on about the startling bloodshed of this murder-jammed tragedy, which climaxes at a banquet where Hopkins' character serves Lange a pie made from the flesh of her own sons.

Taymor points out that you don't actually see any of the really horrific stuff—the beheadings, the hacking off of limbs. "You just feel you do," she says. And in any case, "The body count is less than 'Braveheart' or 'Saving Private Ryan.'"

The violence aside, "I think it's a genius Shakespeare play, as good as any of them," Taymor says. She argues that it has the rawness and passion of the young Shakespeare and is written in particularly accessible language.

Taymor also makes the point that in a time of Bosnian barbarism, the savagery of the play is hardly over the top. "It's like in Rwanda when they asked 'Do you want short sleeves or long sleeves?' meaning do you want your arm cut off at the forearm or above the elbow?"

To heighten the sense of the play's timelessness and timeliness, Taymor shoots some scenes in modern Rome, others by buildings erected by Mussolini in the 1930s and several in the ruins of the Colosseum.

And she distinguishes that decision from the gimmicky way directors have sometimes relocated Shakespeare to a particular era: "I don't believe in updating Shakespeare," she says, "but Titus, remember, is not a historical play." What it is, she says, "is the first theater of the absurd."

"When Shakespeare juxtaposes tragedy and humor, he makes Tarantino look like a baby. It is much more risk-taking, disturbing, jolting, and the use of comedy is incredible. Yet there is such great poetry all through the play, you can't deny its seriousness."

Of course, Taymor has cut text and "added things visually that are not part of the play but are inspired by the play," she says.

It's important to Taymor that the characters in "Titus" who commit appalling acts are not monsters but ordinary people who are "shocked by slaughter and cruelty when they are not doing it themselves."

Throughout the interview lunch, admirers approached Taymor to offer congratulations on the film. Danny Meyer, the owner of Union Square Cafe, presents her with a special Titus meatloaf.

It's a joke, a reference to Titus' culinary revenge, and Taymor takes it in stride. She cuts off one slice for me, and one for herself and takes the rest home to share with Elliot Goldenthal, the composer of the film's score.