To an extent, this is fair enough. Directors should be allowed to experiment with bringing the texts alive in any form imaginable. Perhaps it is the presence of Hopkins, once again a grandly eloquent, raging bull, that makes me ponder such unkind thoughts in the face of Julie Taymor's Titus.
Cinematic inspirations abound.
Most modernisations of classics inevitably trade on a heavy-handed reference to some major historic trauma of the 20th century. Hopkins as Titus, Jessica Lange as Tamora and Harry Lennix as Aaron give enormous power and intensity to their roles - although Taymor lacks Kenneth Branagh's facility at making Shakespearean language comprehensible and expressive, rather than a garbled gush. Elliot Goldenthal's score is bold. The movie's elaborate visual conceits intermittently find a poetic core in the motif of inanimate objects becoming animate - and vice versa. Taymor, likewise, is engaged in her own attempt at bringing a congealed monument to life.