Buy it... if you intellectually appreciate the unpredictable mannerisms of Elliot Goldenthal's vast talents even if they don't translate into a functional album presentation.

Avoid it... if you dislike soundtrack albums that serve mostly as samplers of a composer's stylistic capabilities rather than cohesive listening experiences.

Goldenthal

Titus: (Elliot Goldenthal) If you think artists today have a hard time breaking onto the scene in mainstream entertainment, just think how difficult it must have been for William Shakespeare, who conjured "Titus Andronicus" early in his career to help make a name for himself. The gruesome tragedy, which is so disgusting in its lack of mores or hero that it becomes a laugh-fest, is a story that revels in every element of gore and excess. It is best known for its themes of body mutilation and how humor that can arise from rape and severed body parts. Julie Taymor's adaptation of the story, starring Anthony Hopkins and Jessica Lange, is set in ancient Rome, but not a historically accurate one. She builds upon the vast swings of tragedy and comedy by also blurring the time period in which the story is taking place, availing herself of every opportunity to insert modern tanks, radios, pool tables, and even the Popemobile into the narrative. It's a sort of mockery of the kind of timelessness that fantasy films like Tim Burton's Batman attempt to achieve, but in this case, the out of place elements are inserted with grandiose, in-your-face intentions. Critical response to the film was mostly positive, with Taymor's creativity winning the hearts of critics who had thought that they had seen it all. Audiences were less enthusiastic, however, with many of them not understanding Shakespeare's disparity of tragedy and comedy to enough of a degree to understand why some scenes are funny and others are not. Taymor, of course, turned to her husband to create the score of limitless potential; the two would collaborate for an Academy Award win for Frida two years later. As he would for Frida, Goldenthal went to the filming locale for inspiration on how to approach Titus. In the process, he heard ancient choral music in his mind while also hearing a variety of contemporary music throughout Rome (including Elvis, of course) as he traveled by car. Thus, he had the basic idea for his score.

To stylishly reflect the awkward disparity between tragedy and comedy, as well as the disparity between ancient and modern visual elements in the film, Goldenthal would simply follow the same path of disparity and infuse several genres of music into one score. He opens the film with exactly the kind of magnificent, bombastic, choral music that you would expect for the basic setting, and then he slowly strips away that common denominator as he introduces more and more eclectic genres into the environment. Jazz, heavy metal, neo-classicism, swing, and, of course, Goldenthal's own atonal, dreary ambient tendencies would all prevail in portions of the work. Melodramatic, troubled adagios of extremely weighty strings will please fans of Alien 3. Explosive ensemble chanting and brass heroics will appeal to Golden Age collectors. But there are even moments of seemingly drug-enhanced cues of carnival-like mayhem that Danny Elfman's most deviant collectors will appreciate. Each element is handled with talent and a smart edge for eccentricity. Those who carefully follow Goldenthal's career praise this score highly because of that creativity. What they miss, however, is the fact that this score failed for mainstream audiences for the same reason the film failed in theatres. When you have so many disparate elements, in both the story's emotions and the film's visual presentation of those plotlines, you need something to root the film a consistency that audiences can hold on to. Composers are often the tools with which to accomplish this. What Goldenthal did for Titus, however, was to simply repeat the same disparity, and thus added even more delirious confusion to the mix. The various genres begin and end with distinct edges (sometimes suffering from poor editing of the music in the merging of its separate recordings), and thus, the score cannot create a cohesive whole. Each element by itself (the swing, the adagio, the choral, and even the absolutely, riotously wild "Pickled Heads") has talent and merit, but together they form a badly schizophrenic atmosphere. If you thought that Batman Forever was aimless, this one is another giant leap in that direction.

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In the film, therefore, the score is highly successful in extending a surreal and unpredictable soundscape. On album, however, the presentation doesn't work unless you're looking to study it from an intellectual viewpoint. Had Goldenthal been able to merge all these elements together into some overarching identity during the entirety of the score, then Titus could have been uniformly magnificent. But the tone changes so thoroughly from cue to cue (ranging from a collection of rather mundane, underplayed, ambient cues to a frenetic sprinkling of different genres with sharp cuts) that not even a better integration of the material in its album presentation could have salvaged the listening experience. The irony involving Titus, of course, is in its extremely effective handling of the straight forward choral and orchestral bombast for ancient Rome. If you completely disregard the jazz and swing cues, then you have five or six really strong recordings of muscular, largely harmonic material that is so powerful that is has been emulated both seriously and in parody form. In the case of the former, Warner Brothers had to apologize (among other actions under legal guidance) for Tyler Bates' lifting of "Victorious Titus" and "Finale" in his 2007 score for 300. In the case of the latter, Christopher Lennertz used the same inspiration for the wacky Meet the Spartans in 2008, even extending the style of vocals heard in "An Offering." So if you do your own rearrangement of the album, taking its functional non-traditional elements and place them together at the end, the experience is actually quite rewarding. Even the cue pulled from Goldenthal's A Time to Kill fits with the remaining orchestral material. Like Interview with the Vampire, however, the score does have several underplayed cues of mundane meandering in its mid-section that could easily be skipped. As the album presentation stands, though, the product is a headache waiting to happen. Such was this score's destiny, and you can be guaranteed that the mainstream listener, along with a significant number of film score collectors, will either be confused by or intolerant of Goldenthal's intentionally inconsistent approach to the film. In context, there was no need for a sound rooted in consistency, but an album experience is an entirely different animal.   Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download

Music as Written for the Film: ****
Music as Heard on Album: **
Overall: ***

Bias Check:

For Elliot Goldenthal reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.13 (in 16 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.07 (in 15,203 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.