Other examples: when the Nurse (Miriam Margoyles), whose part is badly truncated, tells Juliet that banished Romeo is as good as dead “and you no use to him” she makes no sense.
At least the other kinsman, Mercutio (Harold Perrineau) is plausibly black. When at the end, for example, “Captain Prince” the chief of police who stands in for the Prince of Verona takes the Montagues and Capulets to task for the “brace of kinsmen” he has lost, it makes no sense in terms of the film since the second kinsman, “Dave” Paris (Paul Rudd) is not shown being killed - and seems unlikely to have been a kinsman anyway, since he is white and Captain Prince is black. His attitude toward the words is shown as much by what he leaves in as by what - and it is a lot - he takes out. Luhrmann abandons Shakespeare for the shakes. The language, which is why the play has survived for 400 years, is chopped up and unrecognizable.
Likewise, the rap and hip hop soundtrack (apart from the very odd intrusion of Wagner at the end), the constant presence of TV news cameras, the aerial shots of the city of “Verona Beach”, the jumpy camera work, the fast cars and the violence and the attitudes and the guns and the drugs and the camp sensibility - all of this makes the movie wired as well as weird.Īlas, these rhythms are not Shakespearean. The balcony scene takes place in the Capulets’ swimming pool with a security guard always just missing it on his surveillance cameras. Even the few moments of tenderness between the lovers are not enough to give us a sense of respite from the high anxiety engendered everywhere else in the film. All the lines seem to be delivered in a screech, at maximum intensity. Adding Leontyne Price singing the Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde over the unhappy climax is one measure of the movie’s desperation.Īs is its playing everything at top volume.
But everywhere, Luhrmann is more interested in making the play contemporary than he is in making it an emotionally satisfying, Shakespearean experience. Having Juliet (Claire Danes) wake up just before Romeo (Leonardo DiCaprio) drinks the poison and simply cutting Friar Lawrence (Pete Postlethwaite) out of it is an interesting notion and adds a certain poignancy to the often-seen final scene. It is remarkably clever, and even has some good dramatic ideas. Romeo and Juliet (William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet)īaz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet is a good example of Shakespeare killed by terminal hipness.
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