Titus Andronicus!

I remember seeing this movie two months ago for the first time. Instantly the movie with its amazing plot became an instant favorite. It is fast paced and carries many plot kicks. The actors did an amazing job in realizing each of the characters and in fufilling a great light into the original work written by Shakespeare. The movie beings when Titus Andronicus, the great Roman general, returns home victorious from a long war with the northern Goths during which all but his four remaining sons have died. Lucius, the eldest son, reminds Titus that part of the victory ritual is the human sacrifice of an enemy prisoner. Titus chooses the eldest son of Tamora, the Queen of the Goths, who has been brought back to Rome as a captive with her three sons and the Moor, Aaron. Though Tamora pleads for her son’s life, Titus carries out the ritual, not out of cruelty but out of what he conceives to be religious devotion. Tamora and her two remaining sons, Chrion and Demetrius, vow revenge. With that, the tale of double revenge begins—first Tamora’s and then Titus’s.
To the dismay of his family and friends, Titus faithfully supports the new emperor, the spoiled and corrupt Saturninus, who surprises everyone by taking the seductive and alluring Tamora for his wife—and act that shocks and unsettles Titus and further enrages Titus’s family, causing the disoriented Titus to kill one of his own sons in the dispute. Now the enemy is in a position of power and, through a truce is feigned by Tamora, the battle truly begins.

During a hunt in the forest, Aaron, the Moor, plots with Tamora and her sons, Chiron and Demetrius, to kill Bassianus, the emperor’s brother and the husband of Titus’s only daughter, Lavinia, who is dragged away mercilessly by the boys. Aaron frames two of Titus’s sons for Bassianus’s murder and, in spite of Titus’s pleas, the Emperor condemns them to be executed and orders that Titus’s eldest son, Lucius, be banished from Rome. Just as Titus laments this terrible turn of events, his brother, Marcus, brings him the pitifully maimed Lavinia who has been raped and mutilated so that she cannot reveal her assailants.

Aaron appears with the message that if Titus cuts off his own hand and sends it to the emperor, he will have his condemned sons back. Titus lets Aaron cut off his hand, but realizes how cruelly he was deceived when he receives in return his sons’ severed heads. Vowing revenge, Titus sends his only remaining son, the exiled Lucius, to the Goths to raise an army against the Roman emperor. And, when Lavinia finds a way to write the names of Chiron and Demetrius in the sand, Titus continues to plot his vengeance.

Aaron turns his back on Tamora when she asks him to destroy the child she has secretly born him—for he and Tamora have been lovers all along—and he escapes from Rome with his son, only to be captured by Lucius and the Goths. In an effort to save his son, Aaron confesses all to Lucius.

To his family and all of Rome, Titus appears by his eccentric behavior to have gone completely mad. Tamora is overjoyed, but Saturninus, insulted and outraged, demands that the Senate take action against Titus. Then they hear the bad news that Lucius is bearing down on Rome with an army of Goths. Although Tamora tries to “trick” Titus, he outwits her and captures her two sons, revealing to them how he will take revenge on their mother at a feast he is preparing.

The feast begins, deceptively cordial, painfully tense. All are present but Chiron and Demetrius. Titus, dressed as a cook, serves Tamora his specially baked pies…