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Director Julie Taymor taps into feral instincts with upcoming 'Titus'
Thursday, January 20, 2000
By PAULA NECHAK
After all, this is the woman who won a Tony and an Evening Standard Award
for her production of "The Lion King" in 1998. And now she's tackled the least-performed of William Shakespeare's tragedies, "Titus Andronicus," first on stage in 1994 and now in her film version, "Titus," in which she literally depicts a Rome that is "a wilderness of tigers."
"Titus," which opens tomorrow, also features a ferociously accomplished cast: Anthony Hopkins plays the flawed Roman warrior, Titus; Jessica Lange is his feral enemy Tamora, Queen of the Goths; Alan Cumming purrs as the hedonistic Roman Emperor Saturninus; and Harry Lennix rips the screen apart as Aaron the Moor, who, with his secret lover Tamora, exacts a terrible revenge upon Titus and his family.
Taymor is a coiled bundle of catlike energy. She's intense, committed to her work and eager to defend "Titus," which has been attacked for its acts of torture, infanticide, cannibalism, rape, honor killing, suicide and war. The film, she says, is much more than a violent vision that doesn't take responsibility for those acts of brutality.
"There's a timeliness to this play," she says, "and I knew it would cross over. Inner-city high school kids and sophisticated Shakespeare lovers will like it. The film is really not that bloody, and everything takes place offstage in the play and I think it's important you write that because while we're getting the younger audiences, we have to make sure older audiences know it's not full of gratuitous violence. It's all for a purpose and it's very witty, even when you laugh that uncomfortable laughter."
Taymor recently visited Seattle for a screening of the film at Paul Allen's Cinerama Theatre, where its regular run begins tomorrow. Allen was executive producer of "Titus" and his sister, Jody Patton, co-produced it through their Clear Blue Sky Productions company.
The film's director commends Allen and Patton for even taking the risk.
"Robby and Ellen Little from First Look Pictures sent Jody and her company, Clear Blue Sky (whose first film production was John Sayles' "Men With Guns"), the screenplay and she committed to the film straight away because she loves Shakespeare. She'd seen my film of 'The Tempest' on PBS and 'The Lion King' had just happened so she just went for it. The financial support was all theirs. They could have done anything, any movie, I didn't think I'm making a movie that will inspire acts (of violence)."
Taymor recently visited Seattle for a screening of the film at Paul Allen's Cinerama Theatre, where its regular run begins tomorrow. Allen was executive producer of "Titus" and his sister, Jody Patton, co-produced it through their Clear Blue Sky Productions company.
The film's director commends Allen and Patton for even taking the risk. "Robby and Ellen Little from First Look Pictures sent Jody and her company, Clear Blue Sky (whose first film production was John Sayles' "Men With Guns"), the screenplay and she committed to the film straight away because she loves Shakespeare. She'd seen my film of 'The Tempest' on PBS and 'The Lion King' had just happened so she just went for it. The financial support was all theirs. They could have done anything, any movie, and this is a huge independent film."
I ask Taymor if she felt a greater responsibility for the play's violence because of her sex. She bristles a bit and responds, "Not as a woman but as a person. There are no stage directions in Shakespeare, so nothing that doesn't have dialogue is in his play. I added the orgy, the march, the wedding, a hunt and the opening segment. Those are all invention . . . It's about blood and family and why one family's child is more important than another in the entire cycle. The child has to break that cycle."
"You know what we do as entertainers, directors, artists, whatever, well, I'm just not interested in doing this job just to say 'Look, you're an ugly mess,' you know? I'm there to open up, if not answer, the doors. Is it possible for us to get out of this, is there any hope to break what seems to be an innately human thing -- hate and the need to avenge our family?"
While Taymor is a relative newcomer to the cinema after some 25 years in the theater, she says she's excited by film though she continues her love affair with the stage. "I made two shorter films before this and the visual style of film certainly comes naturally to me."
"I loved doing this in the theater," she says, "so let me say I don't prefer one medium over the other. It's just the difference is so enormous as far as audience. With film, you reach a much wider group who don't have to pay 50 bucks. The notion that 'Titus Andronicus,' a 400-year-old play, can reach a wide variety of people is one of the reasons I chose to do it. What most excites me is the level of intimacy and emotion you can achieve. I try and strive to get involved with my characters. I thought they were dimensional, compelling and I understood their journey."
So did her actors, apparently. Taymor said she got her "dream cast" for "Titus" and she labored to make the language accessible for her actors and for audiences.
"There's not a weak actor in this cast," she adds. "I'm very proud of it and that everybody I wanted wanted to do it. Actors love great material and they gravitate toward directors who have strong ideas about what they want to do."
Hopkins has performed many times in Shakespearean plays, but for two-time Oscar winner Lange, it was a new world.
"You know, Jessica doesn't like to spend a long period of time away from her home," says Taymor. "And she really takes risks in this movie, both visually and physically."
Indeed, Lange has a nude scene with Cumming and sports tattoos all over her body. But it's her ferocity, that of a mother lion protecting her cubs, that so impressed Taymor. "The first scene in the movie when Jessica's character pleads for the life of her son was the first day of the shoot. Everyone was blown away by her. They all said she laid down the gauntlet."
"Her performance was coming from a deep place and she really understood the part. I asked her later why she hadn't done any other Shakespeare and she told me 'none of the other female roles are like this.' In that first scene, you see why Tamora becomes what she becomes. Who knows why Lady Macbeth is who she is. She's just ambitious. Is that interesting? Not to me.
"I'm more interested in the theatrical possibilities of filmmaking that I believe a lot of people have left behind."
Indeed, "Titus" is stylized and gorgeous, clashing eras and fashion, architecture and ideology.
"One of my favorite films is 'The Informer' by John Ford," Taymor says. "It's minimalist and full of shadows. I love German Expressionism and early filmmakers. But like theater, which fell into a naturalistic mode in the '50s and '60s, we've lost a lot of that freedom. You look at 'Citizen Kane' and wonder why do people love it? Well, it's the way the story is told. In theater, it's all art and the way you tell the story. I want to heighten the text, take it further to make my point and take the audience along."
"That's what I wanted to do with 'Titus,'" Taymor says. "I was very much doing a tightrope act with the movie. I wanted the audience to be with the characters, believe in the situations we created, because it's a created world, but to really believe it. I use landscape as metaphor to help support the language," she says.
"Theater is more minimal and the audience has to fill in the blanks, which I love. That's its strength, poetry and brush stroke."
"But in film there is this opportunity to flesh out the sequences," she says. "I want to help people with it, help them understand the language by supporting it with imagery. I need to show them the experience."
SPECIAL TO THE POST-INTELLIGENCER
There is something feline about director Julie Taymor.
Director Julie Taymor pauses for a pensive moment on the set of "Titus."
Fox Searchlight Studios
"I'm not sure the players in some of the other films of Shakespeare adaptations knew what they were saying," she says laughing. "I'm convinced they didn't because I couldn't follow it. We spent three weeks on every single word and took time together to explore the language so it became second nature. I have Anthony Hopkins just talking in a close-up and it's so easy to comprehend. Shakespeare really does lend itself to movies."
Anthony Hopkins portrays the title character.
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