romeo and juliet review

Jasmine Jung

IB lit, Performance

I watched Baz Luhrmann version of Romeo and Juliet in class two weeks ago. Baz Luhrmann version of Romeo and Juliet is modernization of William Shakespeare’s tragedy Romeo and Juliet, setting in Verona beach during 1900s. Romeo and Juliet, the houses of Montague and Capulet are sworn enemies. The opening scene starts with the fight between Capulets family and Montague family; but later, this turns into a brawl, which disturbs the citizens and brings the prince to yell at them. That night, Romeo and Juliet meet at Capulet’s party and instantly fall in love. After the party, they meet in the Capulet’s orchard and planed to be married the next morning. They get the marriage by Friar Lawrence (father), but soon ruined since he is banished from Verona by slaying Tybalt. After Romeo leaves, Juliet learns she should marry to paris by her parent’s force, so she and friar forms a plan to prevent the marriage. However, similar to the classic tragedy, every plan goes wrong and it results both Romeo and Juliet killing themselves.

The major themes of the film are love and fate. In Romeo and Juliet, love is definitely one of the biggest themes since they show beautiful and passionate love toward each other. Although Romeo and Juliet marry each other due to their strong love, love also becomes a big connection with death and violence, and find its expression in their suicide. The theme of love in Romeo and Juliet does not only show the love feeling between Romeo and Juliet, but also reveal how other characters think about the love. Lady Capulet and Lord Capulet think love is based on material things by forcing Juliet to marry with Paris since he is wealthy, while Friar thinks love will become a reconciliation between the two families. During the film, fate is also another biggest theme throughout the story. The mechanism of fate works in all of the events surrounding Romeo and Juliet: the grudge between their families, accidental meeting of Romeo and Juliet in the masquerade, horrible series of accidents that Romeo gets banished from Verona and Friar’s plan goes wrong, and lastly the tragic timing of Romeo’s suicide and Juliet’s awakening. These events appeal presence of inevitable fate between Romeo and Juliet, which bring about unavoidable outcome of young lovers’ deaths.

Baz Luhrmann shows such an amazing job on developmenting story settings and staging. At a beginning part of the film, he presents a prologue as a news bulletin that creates a feeling of urgency. The news broadcast replaces the prologue part of the book while foreshadowing the main events that will happen later; furthermore, the news illustrates the impact of the ancient grudge between the two families to the entire city by saying “Two houses both alike in dignity” and pulling the camera back to reveal the photograph of two families on the front page of newspaper. He emphasizes the setting in the ending prologue as well. In order to appeal Verona as a city with chaotic urban violence, Luhrmann uses a great camera skill such as  zooming the scenes of Verona or flashing on the screen. In staging aspects, he emphasizes sound, clothes, and light of the movie. Firstly, Luhrmann uses different music to create tone of the situation; for example, he nicely showed the scene when Romeo and Juliet fall in love through staring at each other through the fishtank by putting opera song as a background music. The opera definitely takes a big role to create a romantic mood and makes audience to guess their love. Secondly, director shows clothing difference to distinguish between Capulets and Montague. He wear Montagues with bright color of casual clothes while clothing Capulets with black and darker color of formal clothes. Through clothing them differently, it makes audience to divide two families clearly. Lastly, Luhrmann emphasizes light to impact the scene during Romeo just kills Tybalt and gets banished from Verona. While Romeo fighting with Tybalt, the sky gets darker and darker, which symbolize some kind of tragic mood. However, it starts raining when Romeo kills Tybalt, and there is even thunder and lightening after Romeo kills and gets banished from Verona. Different level of lights and weather shows Romeo’s anger toward Tybalt vicariously, and foreshadow the tragic ending of the story.

Personally, I like Romeo the most among all the characters in Romeo and Juliet. First of all, the appearance of Leonardo Dicaprio perfectly fits to the ideal form of Romeo in the book. His acting was so good as well; since his eyes glance and voice are so sweet during the scene of conversation between Romeo and Juliet, I could even feel how much Romeo loves her in Juliet’s perspective. He expresses the love even better than Juliet; while Juliet’s facial expression and voice tone are little monotonous throughout the whole movie, Romeo acts are much more dramatic with variety tones and face expressions.

The Baz Luhrmann’s film version of Romeo and Juliet is really nice, and even more interesting than book in some ways since the movie have music, sound, and other things that can make the play more dramatic. I like all characters’ actings, and staging effects that Luhrmann shows from the film. Luhrmann appeals the love and tragedy of the story really well. Especially at the ending part of the movie, he creates tight timing between Romeo’s suicide and Juliet’s awakening, which creates strong tension from audience. I hope to watch Luhrmann’s other films if I get an opportunity.