Comparing Taymor's Frida And Across The Universe

Titus was an independent film, co-produced and written by Taymor and based on Shakespeare’s tragedy play Titus Andronicus. The film opened with a little boy playing with toy soldiers on the kitchen floor while watching cartoons. Then the background noises started to play sounds of war, as the house started to shake. The boy was then taken by a man and rushed down the stairs heading for outside, but as they enter outside, they enter an empty Colosseum. As the unnamed child was placed in the center, Roman soldiers entered in a solid formation surrounding him all wearing masks. Once they were in their final position, Roman general Titus entered the Colosseum. The boy’s, “private little war game builds to an imaginary explosion that magically
Frida is shown living her life in Mexico in pain but not letting anyone be aware of it. She was known for wearing long native dresses to hide her scars and braces from the accident (Nyman, 2016). In Across the Universe when Max went through the process of getting screened for the army. Taymor used masks again for the soldiers to all be synced and the masks had a similar look of the ones from Titus. This scene also showed the ritual of young people being sent out to a fight a war that they do not want to fight. Frida and Across the Universe are a bit different from Titus because what of what Taymor wants to show her audience for the purpose of her
Nine years later, in 1988, she worked on the production Juan Darien, A Carnival Mass which “Lincoln Center revived in 1996, giving Taymor her first broadway credit” (“PBS,” n.d. p. 2). She combined elaborate costumes and various form of puppetry that was influenced by the Japanese bunraku style (“PBS,” n.d). In 1997, she made her directorial debut with the musical The Lion King. Disney liked Taymor’s stage production in Juan Darien, A Carnival Mass and wanted to work with her on The Lion King franchise. She created puppets and masks to continue her avant-garde trademark style to connect the actor and the costume (“PBS,” n.d.). Avant-garde is an experimental method of theater or film work using visual, literary, or musical arts to explain a story. For example, a giraffe, was an actor “wearing a conelike giraffe neck and head - balanced on arm and leg stilts” (“PBS,” n.d. p. 3). Taymor wanted the actors and the puppet costume to work as one in order to become the