Part II
So, well, perhaps Jessica Lange was the right choice since she’s playing not so much a sexy siren than a Freudian mother. She plays the motherly side well. Aaron, similarly, plays a very fatherly figure, especially towards his son. The sense that he is a teacher to Demetrius and Chiron is also emphasized. I liked that they’re playing games in their little den of iniquity (I can’t remember where that phrase is from. I know I’ve heard it somewhere else.), Aaron pool and the kiddies arcade games. Well, only Chiron plays arcade games, but Demetrius has that pumping music he flails around to in his cage. I may have just misidentified them although Taymor goes to great lengths to distinguish the two, giving each a different hairstyle as well as a different manner of action. Demetrius, the long-haired one, representing the more animalistic one, acts so, while Chiron, short-haired, is more the Ryan Phillippe in Cruel Intentionskind of guy. But I think it was Demetrius who recognizes the words of Horace, which really seemed out of character. I’m really split on Taymor’s use of weird surrealistic thought sequences. We get another one, when Lavinia madly writes her rapists’ names down, blue images of Chiron and Demetrius morphing into tigers with Lavinia as a doe flash, set to the pumping music Demetrius had been listening to. While I can see her motivations in doing it, and I like the music she uses, because it’s the kind of music that appeals to me, I can’t help but feel like it’s a bit overdone. It’s just so…out there. I can hang with the “brilliant” crowd on this, or the “what the hell?” crowd as well. At this point, I would like to point out that Saturninus’ hair is very reminiscent of Gary Oldman’s in The Fifth Element, and his character is reminiscent of his as well. Kind of a kooky villain. The way Taymor handled the Revenge bit was kind of odd. At first, it was in that red dream world of Titus (Titus is red, Lavinia is blue, hmmm), and I thought she was doing it so that Titus was mad and imagining the whole thing. When the camera panned away as he was looking outside, I was very sure that there would be no one outside at all. It seemed like what was being set up. But then Tamora and sons were actually there, so I guess Taymor wanted to use her dream world one more time. And oh dear, the cut from the sons’ bodies to the two pastries cooling by the window… absolutely hilariously gruesome. Here, Lavinia actually offers herself to Titus, making it more apparent that this is what she wants, it’s what he must do for her. And the final death scene, set to that wonderful pumping music, can be described in Clue terms. Tamora: Titus, in the Dining Room, with the Knife (butterknife, that is. Yum.). Titus: Saturninus, in the Dining Room, with the Candlestick (three of them, and not exactly the way used in Clue, either). Saturninus: Lucius, in the Dining Room, with the Revolver (and the Spoon, let’s not forget that). But what was with that revolving spittle shot? Oh, well, it was cool, and I’m one for cool. And suddenly we’re back in the Coliseum, where we began, giving the impression that this whole deal was just one big show for the audience. The dead bodies are covered in plastic. The camera lingers on Lavinia for longer than any of the others, moving in a bit closer; she was the most horrid victim in all of this. And then young Lucius walks very slowly out into the New World carrying Aaron’s son. Very slowly. It was like a Gladiator ending. So, all things considered, this movie is definitely very visually interesting. Taymor does a lot of cool things because they’re cool, some for reasons I can discern, but I can tell she really enjoyed making this movie, and that’s something.