1990s List Discussion and Suggestions (Lists Project Vol. 2)

[John Cope]

I actually think The Shape of Things is his best film and the one in which he most successfully refined his approach. Frankly I have no real interest in seeing him continue along this road as it seems the path of diminishing returns to me. I don't like where he's gone since then but at least he's trying to find a way to develop his own responses rather than just sink further into eloquent or not-so-eloquent misanthropy. For me, though, Possession is his only film from this decade to branch off in an interesting fashion. But now we're officially in another decade from the 90's entirely.

[LQ]

swo, I found what you wrote about the movie more compelling than the film itself!

A lot of the characters have an uneasy creepiness to them, but my favorite of the bunch by far is Eckhart's poor schlub, who genuinely thinks he is moderately successful and happy, but is really just one of the most boring people you could ever meet.

Indeed, you've captured here what kept me from hating the film outright
Even though I had my problems with the film, I was, at least at a very base level, 'entertained' by the characters. They were well-written, and I did somewhat enjoy squirming with disgust over them.

I actually think The Shape of Things is his best film and the one in which he most successfully refined his approach

Agreed.

[Antoine Doinel]

Easily the worst of the two is Get Shorty, an astonishingly unfunny and tiresome Elmore Leonard adaptation that is about as subtle in its filmmaking satire as its cast is in delivering their lines. Oh boy did this one get old fast. At a certain point I was grasping for anything at all to like about it. I came up with a ninety second scene between Travolta and DelRoy Lindo where they blithely gab away about screenwriting like a couple Chatty Kathies which was kind of funny, but that's it. This is a film that sets up its gags with big orange traffic cones to let you know they're coming. Also, I'm pretty sure I've now met my Dennis Farina Quotient for life.

You haven't known astonishingly unfunny and tiresome until you sit through the sequel Be Cool.

Also, I'm really happy to see some appreciation for The Shape Of Things, I think is miles ahead of the novelty of In The Company Of Men, and probably LaBute's best film. His observational powers and cutting dialogue are terrifically on point, and the entire film really finely balances the hilarious and horrifying. As others have said, I agree that is probably LaBute's most accomplished film of his early work until he started treading water with remakes and pseudo-"controversial" dreck like Lakeview Terrace. But it's definitely a film that is tremendously underrated.

[Forrest Taft]

No love for Abel Ferrara? It´s been years since I saw any of his films, but remember enjoying his 90s output the most. King of New York, Bad Lieutenant, The Funeral, The Addiction, even Body Snatchers and New Rose Hotel. I need to see some these again before the list is due. Any of these have good DVD releases? I seem to remember most of his films being available only in fullscreen. Not good enough in 2009.

[John Cope]

All the titles you listed are great and I would add Snake Eyes/Dangerous Game without hesitation. It may be his finest film (that or New Rose Hotel).

As to DVD representation, you're certainly right that it is not up to par. Of all those titles, only King of New York has a noteworthy edition, with excellent picture/sound quality and terrific extras.

[pauling]

I'm wondering what people have to say about Craig Monahan's, The Interview. I haven't seen it in quite some time, so I can't comment too in-depth, but I remember liking it quite a lot and it will probably make my list.

[Murdoch]

I just revisited Scorsese's Bringing Out the Dead and was surprised by how much I liked it this time around. Originally I saw it as an unsuccessful retread of Taxi Driver's themes of urban alienation and suffering, but the film offers some truly disturbing imagery that I found hard to shake off. It might be my favorite 90s Scorsese after I go back to his other output this decade, even Cage and Arquette didn't detract from it for me. I don't know how high up it will place on my list, but it was certainly a pleasant surprise and has left an overall good impression on me.

[kaujot]

I've always thought that Bringing Out the Dead gets a bad rap. Glad that you enjoyed it on another go around. One of Cage's better performances.

[GringoTex]

Finally caught the Thing Called Love. Oof, apologies to Gringo Tex, but this one is unfortunately going in the books as yet another late-period failure from Bogdanovich. A creaky ensemble piece that rests almost wholly on actors who barely register, this bit of country music wish fulfillment is as sluggish and frustrating as Phoenix's performance. A few nice moments are sprinkled throughout (Such as the convenience store wedding or the uncomfortably close camera placements outside the hospital), but the three minutes of country music performed in They All Laughed contained more energy and heart than anything in this film.

That means I'm still the only person I know who likes this film. Thanks for trying! What's your swapsie?

[knives]

What's the forum's standing on Titus? I thought it was a unique take on the Bard from one of my favorite tales. Hopkins also gives a grade A performance.

[domino harvey]

That means I'm still the only person I know who likes this film. Thanks for trying! What's your swapsie?

Dick or Miami Blues

[kaujot]

What's the forum's standing on Titus? I thought it was a unique take on the Bard from one of my favorite tales. Hopkins also gives a grade A performance.

I saw it for the first time recently, and really enjoyed it, though I have to agree with Ebert that it's a better adaptation than the material really deserved. Hopkins was absolutely riveting in his role, and the last dinner scene descending into chaos was really well done. I thought the opening was also very well done (but utterly confusing in its transition. Seriously, what the hell?), but the ending went on for far too long before the credits.

Anyway, very good movie that more people should see. Hopefully Taymor's next movie (if she ever makes another one) shows more of this promise rather than what was displayed in the disappointing Across the Universe.

[knives]

My thoughts exactly, even though I do enjoy the Shakespeare text very munch. Only Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, and Much Ado About Nothing have done more for me.

[kaujot]

I spoke too soon! She's in post-production on The Tempest with Helen Mirren, Alan Cumming, Chris Cooper, Alfred Molina, and some other good names.

Edit: Reading the cast list again, it seems to be perhaps a "radical" adaptation of the play, as Helen Mirren plays Prospera.

[knives]

I would have preferred Othello or one of his lesser known, but still The Tempest isn't so popular for nothing.

[Sloper]

Titus is very popular among the Shakespeareans (Jonathan Bate, Carol Rutter etc) here at Warwick University – Bate even calls it the best Shakespeare film ever made, though he once said the same about Chimes at Midnight.

I couldn’t stand it. After an arresting opening sequence, it becomes a really embarrassing, sub-Luhrmann (and I hate Luhrmann) attempt to make Shakespeare seem cool. The ‘little boy’ who witnesses everything is lifted from an equally bad film of Midsummer Night’s Dream, and even played by the same actor. As in the earlier film, the device seems intended to give A-level students and undergrads something to write essays about: the characters/the audience/the playwright himself are like children playing with toys, de-sensitised to violence, this is how Titus Andronicus ‘speaks’ to the modern TV-saturated age, blah blah... Who cares? The kid’s annoying as hell, and his final departure with the baby is an unendurably mawkish and self-important way to end the film.

Lots of sequences are jazzed up with gimmicks and MTV editing to try and make them seem less ludicrous. There are too many to mention, but by far the worst was Lavinia’s ‘writing on the ground’ scene. The girl has no hands or tongue, so she puts a staff in her mouth and manipulates it with her feet in order to tell her family what has been done to her, and by whom. That's what Shakespeare gives us, and we can't cut it. Pretty boring and stupid, huh? How do we keep the teens interested, and stop them from laughing? How about some bad heavy metal guitar on the soundtrack and a montage of the images rushing through poor Lavinia’s tortured mind? The sad thing is, the idea of using this scene as an opportunity to really drive home the sense of the victim's suffering, and make us identify with her, is essentially a good one. Imagine the scene played with nothing on the soundtrack except the howling wind, and some simple close-ups of the girl’s bleeding face as she struggles to spell out the words. The cinema, with its ability to focus on tiny details of facial expression, offers a way of playing this scene really effectively. Instead, Taymor plays it cool. Because that’s what Titus Andronicus is all about, right? The violence is cool, but in an ironic, self-critiquing sort of way – like Tarantino – or Sin City – that’s the kind of thing kids are into these days, isn’t it?

Great performance from Hopkins - the scene where he beats the stones and pleads for help is really effective, depending as it does largely on the text and the acting. Harry Lennix makes a very good Aaron as well, multi-layered, chilling yet easy to root for. Jessica Lange, a very good actress, seems out of her depth, or uncomfortable with what she's being asked to do; Alan Cumming is surely taking the piss in a wonderful so-bad-it's-good performance; and Laura Fraser and James Frain (as Lavinia and Bassianus) make one of the most obnoxious couples I’ve ever seen. Though normally a gentle person, I couldn’t wait for them both to get horribly butchered.

Sorry for the negativity, but I have strong feelings about this one. Like Kaujot, I don’t think much of the play, although there was a brilliant Japanese-language production a few years ago. Very histrionic, very loud and, most important, very bleak – playing this one for trendy thrills and laughs, as Taymor does, is a bad idea. Take it on its own terms, as stark Grand Guignol horror tragedy, and it can just about work.

[kaujot]

The ‘little boy’ who witnesses everything is lifted from an equally bad film of Midsummer Night’s Dream, and even played by the same actor. As in the earlier film, the device seems intended to give A-level students and undergrads something to write essays about: the characters/the audience/the playwright himself are like children playing with toys, de-sensitised to violence, this is how Titus Andronicus ‘speaks’ to the modern TV-saturated age, blah blah... Who cares? The kid’s annoying as hell, and his final departure with the baby is an unendurably mawkish and self-important way to end the film.

I agree about the kid for the most part. I didn't find him annoying during the course of the film, but the end was pretty awful. I think everyone should have just walked off-screen and that would've been that. "Self-important" is absolutely a term I concur with.

The cinema, with its ability to focus on tiny details of facial expression, offers a way of playing this scene really effectively. Instead, Taymor plays it cool. Because that’s what Titus Andronicus is all about, right? The violence is cool, but in an ironic, self-critiquing sort of way – like Tarantino – or Sin City – that’s the kind of thing kids are into these days, isn’t it?

I don't agree with that. The violence in Titus Andronicus is supposed to be over-the-top and soap operatic. Every analysis of the play that I've read (admittedly, not that many, but a few) has convinced me that it's is almost a satirical take on the plays of Marlowe and other contemporaries, whose plays were filled with grotesque violence. Shakespeare's taking the piss, and to play most of those scenes as serious goes against the intent of the work. (By the way, Murder, Rape, and Revenge scene had me in stitches). Though a few of the scholars I've read also have stated that, because it's one of his very earliest plays (supposedly), he also used the violence and mayhem as a way to make his name more prominent. "Have you SEEN that bloodbath at the Globe?" (or wherever he was at the time)

Great performance from Hopkins - the scene where he beats the stones and pleads for help is really effective, depending as it does largely on the text and the acting. Harry Lennix makes a very good Aaron as well, multi-layered, chilling yet easy to root for. Jessica Lange, a very good actress, seems out of her depth, or uncomfortable with what she's being asked to do; Alan Cumming is surely taking the piss in a wonderful so-bad-it's-good performance; and Laura Fraser and James Frain (as Lavinia and Bassianus) make one of the most obnoxious couples I’ve ever seen. Though normally a gentle person, I couldn’t wait for them both to get horribly butchered.

How could I forget about Harry Lennix! Possibly my favorite performance of the film. I wish the play had afforded more time for Titus and Aaron to smile and snarl at each other. I agree about Lange. She's the only one, from what I remember, that has an American accent. And whilst I normally wouldn't care, and whilst her character is a Goth, none of the other Goths have American accents. It just sticks out. Lavinia and Bassianus weren't on screen (or talking, in Lavinia's case) long enough for me to really care about the annoyances of their relationship.

Sorry for the negativity, but I have strong feelings about this one. Like Kaujot, I don’t think much of the play, although there was a brilliant Japanese-language production a few years ago. Very histrionic, very loud and, most important, very bleak – playing this one for trendy thrills and laughs, as Taymor does, is a bad idea. Take it on its own terms, as stark Grand Guignol horror tragedy, and it can just about work.

Again, I think it's supposed to be played for trendy thrills and laughs.

Glad to finally talk to some people about this.

Edit: An ex-girlfriend of mine actually went to the University of Warwick. I saw it once. Lovely place. I also went to the Disney-ish castle.

I really need to just break down and buy that Brazilian copy of Chimes at Midnight.

[knives]

I have to agree it goes into parody. I actually thought it was a later work since it feels like a punch to his history plays. Very over the top and funny. As for the film itself, the only thing to get on my nerves was the new ending that already has been spoken of.
The revenage, murder, rape scene is my favorite also. It plays out like Hamlet, with the exception that Titus isn't stupid. Basically after playing dumb he says, 'okay your mum's gone, I can kill you know' just makes me laugh heartily.

[zedz]

US Go Home

I had seen Claire denis’ debut, Chocolat, and thought it was decent enough, but it wasn’t until I saw this film, her contribution to the ‘Tous les garcons et les filles de leur age’ project, that I realised she was a major, distinctive talent. What I remembered about it was its precise evocation of certain adolescent states of mind, its moodiness, the wall-to-wall music (not wallpaper) and the wall-to-wall wallpaper (maybe a kind of music), and above all the extraordinary extended party sequence in the middle. Like a lot of Denis films, the plot and character details fade from the memory long before the atmosphere does.

So anyway, I revisited this, in the light of the half dozen or more masterpieces that have followed (and the couple that preceded it that I later caught up with) and found that it held up magnificently. It’s sort of a precursor to my favourite Denis, Nenette et Boni, as it too stars Gregoire Colin and Alice Houri as siblings struggling with the transition to adulthood – though obviously they’re younger here. In US Go Home, it’s really Martine’s story, and we’re seeing most of the action through her eyes.

It’s probably Denis’ most stripped-back narrative (even more so than Vendredi soir): four characters, one party, one night. A suburb of Paris in the mid-60s. Martine and her friend Marlene check out one sad party (with embarrassing parents on site) before going to another, cooler one (without), where they try to fit in with the older kids, including Martine’s brother Alain. On the way home, Martine solicits a lift from American soldier Vido Brown (Vincent Gallo), against whom Alain bristles.

The period is lovingly evoked through fantastic décor (a cavalcade of headache-inducing wallpapers) and sharply framed architecture and, above all, through music. This is one of the best films at showing how pop music informs young people’s lives (Denis has always been superb with pre-existing music), and, in a film barely over an hour in length, there are about twenty songs from the time: The Animals, Otis Redding, Sam the Sham & the Pharoahs, Wilson Pickett, Nico, The Troggs, Prince Buster (quite a surprise, but it’s gloriously incongruous), and a French cover of ‘Leader of the Pack’. What’s interesting is that none of these songs are really ‘background’: they’re played pretty much in their entirety and foregrounded in the action. Early in the film Colin does a solo bedroom dance to the Animals’ cover of ‘Hey Gyp’ that’s a dry run for Denis Lavant’s solo at the end of Beau Travail. In a way, the songs actually form a stronger commentary on the action than the overt narrative or dialogue.

At the heart of the film is an extended party sequence that’s one of the great passages of 90s cinema. Martine and Marlene show up at the older kids’ party, in a darkened house, where there’s slow dancing to soul music in the lounge and sexual fumblings in the bedrooms. The long sequence has great music and is sensually shot (all half-light and shadows), but it’s the emotional truth of the scene, with Martine out of her depth but desperate to appear cool, that carries the day. Lots of details here ring so true: the older sibling trying to ignore the uncool younger one; the awkward, pseudo-sophisticated bartering of cigarettes and lights; the desperate clinging to any dance partner for fear of having none; the concealed meltdowns; and the casual cruelties and betrayals. It hurts when Martine’s friend abandons her on the sofa to pick up a boy, and it’s even more devastating when Martine tries to emulate her. She asks for a cigarette, gets one. The boy asks, “Is that your friend over there?” “Yes,” she replies. “She’s cute,” he comments, and walks off.

The party sequence in this film feels as serious to us as it does to Martine, and it ends with her marching home through the forest with Alain, which leads to the quirky and lovely scene with Gallo and a calm, sobering morning-after coda. On the surface the subject matter could be considered slight, but the film is so much about how supposedly ‘insignificant’ matters are magnified by the anxious lens of adolescence that that’s beside the point.

If you can track down this film, it’s likely to be unsubbed, but don’t let that deter you. The first section (about twenty minutes) is the only one that has much dialogue, and it primarily serves the purpose of setting up the relationships and situation. Even then, about half of the ‘commentary’ is music. The central section (a half hour or so), at the party, has very minimal dialogue, and most of it’s phatic (exchanges of names, requests for dances or smokes). The closing section (15 minutes), with Gallo, is 90% English.

[colinr0380]

Personally I liked Titus a lot too. The stylisations and visual effects did not feel just there for their cool effect but to show violence divorced from its historical setting. Normally that would be illustrated by paring the scenery and the props down to their minimum, while in this version every era is evoked from Roman ampitheatres (which is stated in the commentary to have been a location in the Balkans, adding an extra resonance to modern day conflicts in the final scene where the audience is made up of people who lived through the conflict and be able to apply the play all too well to some experiences in their own lives) to video game violence to show that this is a problem that has troubled humanity through the ages and is not either a recent phenomenon we can blame on packs of uncouth youths running wild or some ritualistic and barbaric act that people in the past did which we can view from a comfortable distance and pretend that we are more enlightened. As well as the film showing every conceivable type of violence people can enact on each other (and attitudes that cause people to act with violence. I would argue with Sloper that you are meant to hate Lavinia and Bassianus for the way they act towards Tamora and Aaron before Bassianus is killed and Lavinia is raped and mutilated - does their racist, gloating, pompous attitudes justify the violence towards them though? Does it mitigate? The power of the play and the film is that you sympathise with and understand everyone at one point or other, but at other times they perform the most unconscionable acts, simply because they cannot forgive and are driven by the need for revenge and 'baser impulses'), the other 'big message' emphasised by Taymor's film is the idea that each generation passes the curse of violence on to the next.

That can apply to Titus, Tamora and Aaron all teaching their children to follow in their footsteps and continue their feuds into the future. The final walk into the sunset is a magnificent end as in a sense the young boy, the grandson of Titus, is innocence that has been a witness to the violence of the rest of the film. The film seems to suggest children are innocents learning the ways of the world (as the boy does as he plays war games with his toys at the beginning of the film or when he is constantly shown as witness to the various violent acts and attitudes) and are then initiated into the violence of the adult world. The boy is going through this transition (initiation) throughout the film.

When he takes Aaron's baby out of its barbed wire cage and walks out of the ampitheatre with it, we are given the slighest glimmer of hope that undercuts even the final Shakespearean speech that his father Lucius pronounces (which is full of hypocrisy). The boy seems to be turning his back on this whole world, rejecting the course planned for him and the baby and instead leaving to find another, better way of life with the other as yet uncorrupted soul.

On the other hand, has the boy already witnessed too much? Is he already marked by hatred? The film ends with the idea that things could go either way. We all have the choice to kill or to save, to continue fighting or (more frightening) to forgive. There is more of an emphasis on the light rather than the darkness in the ending walk - that there is always the possibility of choosing to do the right thing, of refusing to hurt or hate another just because of racial, religious, sexual, cultural or class differences.

[kaujot]

I swear, though, that walk lasted like 3 minutes.

Didn't the boy help Titus with some act of violence? I can't seem to recall at the moment. Even if he did, of course, children often do things that are "wrong" if their parents help them with it/perform it with them (a contemporary, though not comparable example would be the parent helping a child cheat on homework, even though both know it's wrong), and still come out into adulthood with strong moral guidelines.

On my first viewing, I, like Sloper, saw the grandson (Titus does refer to him thusly, yes?) as an avatar for the audience. The opening gives us ourselves, playing and toying with silly notions of gratuitous and nonsensical violence until Taymor interrupts to say "I'll show you violence."

[colinr0380]

No, he was encouraged to kill a fly by Titus at the dinnertable though, and seemed to take glee in it, perhaps showing how much he'd learnt from the events he had witnessed up to that point. But then on the other hand he did go and buy beautifully crafted wooden hands for Lavinia to replace those she had lost.

[kaujot]

Very true. I could have sworn he assisted Titus in killing someone.

[Sloper]

The violence in Titus Andronicus is supposed to be over-the-top and soap operatic. Every analysis of the play that I've read (admittedly, not that many, but a few) has convinced me that it's is almost a satirical take on the plays of Marlowe and other contemporaries, whose plays were filled with grotesque violence. Shakespeare's taking the piss, and to play most of those scenes as serious goes against the intent of the work. (By the way, Murder, Rape, and Revenge scene had me in stitches). Though a few of the scholars I've read also have stated that, because it's one of his very earliest plays (supposedly), he also used the violence and mayhem as a way to make his name more prominent. "Have you SEEN that bloodbath at the Globe?" (or wherever he was at the time)

I’ve never read any scholarship on Titus, so I’ll defer to you on this one, and I’m sure you’re right that this is the general line on the play these days. Your last remark, about the use of violence, is convincing – I can believe this was an attempt to outdo other tragedies with an excess of gore, and draw attention to this new playwright, who was seen at this time as something of an arrogant upstart. However, I just don’t buy the satirical angle. Jonathan Bate also argues that many of Shakespeare’s early plays were games of one-upmanship with Marlowe: Titus and the Henry VI plays being heavily reminiscent of Tamburlaine the Great, for instance. But the latter is far funnier than Titus, as is Marlowe’s Jew of Malta, and it feels like Shakespeare just doesn’t have the taste for the jugular needed to make gallows humour work. When Marlowe did tragedy, it had to be loud and violent and sardonic, and when he reined himself in for Edward II, the results were vaguely disappointing; Shakespeare has a far more subtle approach (hence Richard II resembles Marlowe’s Edward, but far surpasses it) and so when, in his formative period, he tried to ‘do a Marlowe’, his heart just wasn’t in it. That’s how it seems to me, anyway.

I have to agree it goes into parody. I actually thought it was a later work since it feels like a punch to his history plays. Very over the top and funny... The revenge, murder, rape scene is my favorite also. It plays out like Hamlet, with the exception that Titus isn't stupid. Basically after playing dumb he says, 'okay your mum's gone, I can kill you know' just makes me laugh heartily.

The rape, murder, revenge scene always seemed unintentionally funny to me (in the play, at least). It’s just so out of character for Tamara to be that stupid: she assumes, because Titus has gone mad, that he will not recognise her or her sons (which he does, doesn’t he?); then she assumes, also because Titus has gone mad, that her sons will be perfectly safe in his care; and all this, as far as I remember, because of some vague plan she has to manipulate the Goths while Titus is distracted...? My memory of the play is hazy, but this all seemed a little contrived, and somehow not deliberately so; more because Shakespeare really wanted to get to the ‘baked in a pie’ scene, and couldn’t figure out anything more convincing. You see this sort of artificiality in the Henry VI/Richard III tetralogy too. It seems the mark of an immature writer keen to include certain set-pieces or dramatic speeches in his work, and not too concerned with the process of working them into a convincing narrative. Drama takes precedence over verisimilitude; we're supposed to marvel at the words (which are wonderful), while the action is just gaudy spectacle for the undiscriminating masses. (Decades later, Edward Ravenscroft re-wrote the play and had Titus give his grandson into the care of Tamara’s kids; the grandson leads them into Titus’ garden, telling them treasure is buried there, and they’re caught in a trap. It’s rubbish, but logical rubbish.)

Again, Taymor’s film seemed to overcome the ‘problem’ in the text by distracting us with weird visuals. The idea may have been to suggest that, since Titus was having visions of ferris wheels and so on before even looking out of the window, he might really be having a hallucination, and so we, the disoriented audience, might find Tamara’s plot less absurd; are they real, are they imaginary, does Titus really buy their story? Fair enough in theory, but the execution is so flawed. In all these effects-driven scenes, they just don’t have the budget to pull it off, and it seems naff and wannabe-stylish. I still think a pared-down, primitive, po-faced style would have served the play better. If it's supposed to be comic or parodic, it needs to be much funnier I think; but then humour's such a subjective thing.

Colin, you seem to be arguing in the opposite direction, for the film as a serious statement about the nature of violence throughout the ages. This, I think, describes better what the film sets out to achieve, and your interpretation of the ending is, I’m sure, spot on. This seems like a film which, for all its occasional attempts at humour, essentially wants to be taken as a Serious, Tragic and ultimately Uplifting work of art. Part of the problem may be that it strives for these heights through ornamentation and flamboyant ‘business’ which can only be credited to the film-makers, and has no real basis in the play. I’m anything but a textual purist when it comes to adaptations, but (as I’ve been suggesting in this and my last post) Taymor seems embarrassed by her text; she feels the need to excuse it, to distract us from it, to add things to it. A great adaptation loves its source and messes about with it in order to tell the audience why it’s worth loving. From beginning to end, Taymor’s film seems in love only with itself. The moments of greatness – the still ones, when Hopkins or Lennix are the centre of attention – stand out from the rest like beautiful sore thumbs. The theme of cross-cultural violence is certainly there in the text: Titus, the ‘civilised’ Roman, treats the Goths brutally and they retaliate, and he retaliates, and all this makes us reflect on our own culture (the Henry VI plays deal with this theme so much more effectively and poignantly, I think). And you can rationalise everything in the film as an ‘expansion’ of this theme. But ultimately, it feels self-regarding, and fundamentally untrusting of the play’s innate qualities. Chimes at Midnight, or Welles’ Othello, are model adaptations, reducing, re-ordering, even re-writing the plays, but in order to set their beauty off more clearly, not to obscure their perceived deficiencies.

I would argue with Sloper that you are meant to hate Lavinia and Bassianus for the way they act towards Tamora and Aaron before Bassianus is killed and Lavinia is raped and mutilated - does their racist, gloating, pompous attitudes justify the violence towards them though?

I remember a moment in the forest when Lavinia and Bassianus seemed to be gloating; and Kaujot, you may be thinking of when Lavinia assists Titus in draining Chiron and Demetrius, though I too remember the boy being more involved in the violence. However, the heroes are consistently characterised as good people, and I do think we're supposed to like the young couple despite their gloating, while the villains are all gross caricatures, flailing about like Nazis on crack, bearing no resemblance whatever to real human beings (again, Aaron is an exception). If we were meant to think that Lavinia and Bassianus were somehow culpable, the characterisations needed to be more balanced. As it is, it’s unmistakably a story about goodies and baddies.

Alex Cox’s truly dreadful Revengers Tragedy [sic] made the exact same mistake, dividing the characters too neatly into 'nice' and 'nasty', even having the goodies smile righteously when the duke is dying. There is nothing funny about a man’s face melting off. Damn, that does sound funny... Anyway, time to stop, apologies for the long post.

[kaujot]

I must ask, Sloper, what did you think of Almereyda's version of Hamlet? I'll guiltily admit that I enjoyed a fair portion of it. Enough to own the disc, actually.