The gory that was Rome

Yesterday we had a leisurely day in Guadamar. We went to the market, had lunch outside the Las Vegas restaurant, walked along the seafront and drove back through Rojales and Quesada.

We often watch films on our Spanish satellite TV. Last night we watched Titus, the 1999 take on Titus Andronicus starring Anthony Hopkins and Jessica Lange on Canal +1.

Apparently in a TV profile on British TV in 2002 Anthony Hopkins confirmed that he had found the experience of working on this film so stressful that he decided at the time to retire from film acting. In the same interview Hopkins points out that in the dinner scene towards the end of the film he mimics the great British 'Knight' actors of Shakespeare, John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson and Laurence Olivier.

We don’t normally watch movies that are violent – maybe we worry too much about being kept awake by nightmares. This film though was compelling because the acting was superb, the mix between modern references and ancient Rome clever and the sets brilliant. Not perhaps a film to enjoy but rather to admire.

The revenge of Titus
"Oh villains, Chiron and Demetrius. Here stands the spring whom you have stained with mud, this goodly summer with your winter mixed. You killed her husband, and for that vile fault two of her brothers were condemned to death, my hand cut off and made a merry jest, both her sweet hands, her tongue, and that more dear than hands or tongue, her spotless chastity, inhuman traitors, you constrained and forced. What would you say if I should let you speak? Villains, for shame, you could not beg for grace. Hark, wretches, how I mean to martyr you. This one hand yet is left to cut your throats whilst that Lavinia, 'tween her stumps doth hold the basin that receives your guilty blood. You know, your mother means to feast with me and calls herself Revenge and thinks me mad. Hark, villains. I shall grind your bones to dust, and with your blood and it I shall make a paste, and of the paste a coffin I will rear and make two pastries of your shameful heads. And bid that strumpet, your unhallowed dam, like to the earth, swallow her own increase! This is the feast I have bid her to, and this the banquet she shall surfeit on... And now prepare your throats."
Nice!