This week on MovieJawn, we are celebrating our favorite movies that turned 25 this year. All week long we are going to Party Like It’s 1999!

by Carmen Paddock, Staff Writer

While we can argue that Ben Johnson’s famous paean to his fellow (recently deceased at the time) playwright William Shakespeare, “he was not of an age but for all time,” is a touch on the grandiose side, history seems to have proved Johnson’s confidence right. While Shakespeare’s popularity on stage has ebbed and flowed over the past four and a half centuries, his presence on the silver screen has been a near constant, from the days of silent cinema through Denzel Washington’s forthcoming pre-retirement film plans. 

The 1990s was perhaps the greatest decade for populist, almost blockbuster Shakespeare on screen. Irish actor-director Kenneth Branagh played a key role in this resurgence, directing and starring in versions of Henry V, Othello, Hamlet, Much Ado About Nothing, and Love’s Labour Lost between 1989-2000. While the reception of each varied, he was able to marry prestige location shoots, casts that mixed Shakespearians with movie star glamour, and an unshakeable confidence in his own talents to redefine big-budget, on-screen Shakespeare from the days of Olivier. The other side of this cultural shift was the teen Shakespeare adaptation: Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet may have kept the play’s original language while shifting the action and time to “Verona Beach”, but its runaway success inspired contemporary twists that placed very modern youth in Shakespeare-inspired plots. While Shakespeare on screen before and since has found audiences and acclaim, the heyday of the 1990s feels a unique occurrence.  

The final year of the decade proved perhaps the epitome of the trend. In addition to Michael Hoffman’s ultimate Hollywood take on A Midsummer Night’s Dream–a charming, star-studded Shakespearian adaptation, albeit one of the decade’s lesser Shakespeare films–two superb fresh takes on Shakespeare premiered: Titus, directed by Julie Taymor, and 10 Things I Hate About You, directed by Gil Junger. Although these two films take radically different paths to reimagining Titus Andronicus and The Taming of the Shrew for the screen and 1990s sensibilities, the end result of making the old plays fresh, vibrant, and unforgettable is the same. 

To begin with, neither Titus Andronicus nor The Taming of the Shrew are easy plays in a modern context. While they each lend themselves to satirical presentations, they prove problematic when taken seriously. Titus Andronicus is early Shakespeare, where the poetry does not flow as easily as his great Roman tragedies and the plot is an endless revenge parade of murders, mutilations, rape, insanity, and cannibalism. While not thought of highly in many scholarly circles and not one of his most popular plays today, it was Shakespeare’s most performed play in his time. The Taming of the Shrew, also on the early side of Shakespeare’s output, is far less lurid and better constructed, but its message of women’s subservience and spousal abuse as a valid means to marital harmony is troubling. 

Titus and 10 Things I Hate About You take the material seriously–with their own twists. Where they succeed is in finding the energy, meaning, and humanity that keeps people coming back to these stories while updating the atmosphere and message for 1999. 

Titus uses Shakespeare’s language and plot as written, but places the action in a surreal world that flits between time periods united by vaguely Roman/Italian architectural and costume flourishes. Since the play is over the top, it makes sense that Taymor finds a visual language to revels in this excess. The film opens with young Lucius (Osheen Jones) dragged out of his kitchen full of toy soldiers to join Titus’ family and army. Saturninus (Alan Cumming) is coded somewhere between Mussolini and Helmut Berger’s Martin von Essenbeck in The Damned. While the cast mixes different acting styles and traditions (a choice that matches the patchwork of aesthetic styles and eras), Harry Lennix as Aaron and Anthony Hopkins as Titus are experienced thespians, delivering Shakespeare’s verse with skill and emotion. The violence–of which there is plenty–is often obfuscated or stylised; it is clear what happens, but audiences do not have to experience horrors that might distract from the anarchic world. 

10 Things I Hate About You does away with the verse and plays fast and loose with the plot, but it keeps cheeky nods to the source material: Kat (Julia Stiles) and Bianca’s (Larisa Oleynik) last name is Stratford, Patrick’s (Heath Ledger) is Verona, and they go to Padua High School. Cameron’s (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) outburst of “I burn, I pine, I perish” fits hand-in-hand with “And I’m back in the game!” It is corny, but joyously so. The fact that Patrick (Petruchio) is paid to try to take Kat (Katerina) on a date remains from the source material, but it is not her father funding this scheme, rather, some unscrupulous, rich high school jocks are behind it. While Kat’s outrage when she finds out is very understandable, she has a family she can trust and turn to despite the way they annoy each other. Turning one of Shakespeare’s most dysfunctional families into a loving, imperfect one is a deft touch. And making Patrick switch tactics and shamelessly sing Frankie Valli to win Kat back–once they have both fallen for the other–is something every Shakespeare play should have. 

Titus is a tragedy and 10 Things / Taming is a comedy, but both these films have happy endings, sort of. When young Lucius (one of few survivors) can finally return to his toy soldiers, he takes Aaron’s baby with him rather than leaving the infant to die–a change from Titus Andronicus and from Taymor’s own stage production thereof. Of course, Kat and Patrick are high school sweethearts and may not live happily ever after, but they are able to reconcile and rekindle their romance knowing the full truth about each other–no ulterior motives or power plays involved. 

In terms of Shakespeare on film, Titus and 10 Things I Hate About You are still hard to beat 25 years later. Unfortunately, Titus is very hard to find, being out of print in most physical media formats and difficult, if not impossible, to rent or stream around the world. Losing such a bold, inventive take on Shakespeare’s shocker would be a huge tragedy for cinema. Thankfully, 10 Things I Hate About You remains a staple of both the high-school rom-com and the Shakespeare spin-off, with its descendants including 2023’s Anyone But You. Both remain textbook cases in adapting Shakespeare for the film medium’s unique capabilities, continuing to share the guts, passion, and joy of these centuries-old works with new audiences.