Guns, gangs and violence in Verona beach? Has Baz Luhrmann bitten off more than he could chew with his ‘modernised’ take on the romantic tragedy of Shakespeare’s classic ‘Romeo & Juliet’?
By Larna Milton
I’ve seen Richard III as a Nazi. I’ve seen prince Hal and Falstaff as homosexuals in Portland and ‘Macbeth’ as a mafia story and I’ve also seen two different Romeo and Juliets’ about race-related impecuniousness in Manhattan (‘China Girl’ & ‘West Side Story’), but never have I seen anything remotely bordering on the dishevelment that the new gang/punk version of ‘Romeo + Juliet’ makes of Shakespeare’s beautiful tragedy.
The despondency with which it attempts to ‘modernise’ the paly and make it ‘relevant’ is immensely distasteful. In one grand but doomed gesture, writer-director Baz Luhrmann has created a film that (a) will disappoint any Shakespearian lover, and (b) debilitate anyone deceived into watching by the promise of gang wars, MTV-style. This production
was a train wreck of an idea.
It begins with a new broadcaster reporting the deaths of Romeo and Juliet while the emblem ‘Star Crossed Lovers’ hovers just above her shoulder. We see a collection of newspaper headlines (the newspaper is called ‘Verona Today’). There is a fugitive montage familiarising the main characters and showing the city of Verona Beach, overshadowed by two towering skyscrapers, topped with overly bright and shabby neon signs that read, “Montague” and “Capulet”. We are then speedily plunged into a turf war between the Montague boys (one in which had ‘Montague’ tattooed across his bald scalp) and the Capulet boys. When, in an early line of dialogue, the word “swords” is used, we then get an in-your-face closeup of a sword-branded handgun.
If the whole movie had been executed in the breakneck, aggressively obtrusive manner that was used for the opening scenes, it wouldn’t be Shakespearean, but at least it would have been something. The movie lacks the audacity to cut entirely astray from the literary roots of Shakespeare’s original, thus, making the movie greatly convoluting. The music is a clue. Much of the dialogue is caterwauled incomprehensibly, while the rest is delivered cringingly, making it seem more like a high school production than a published movie. Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes are very talented and captivating actors, but they are undoubtedly in over their heads here. There is most defiantly a way to speak in Shakespearean tongue so that it can be heard and comprehended., sadly, they have not mastered it. The soundtrack is a jumbled mix-match of rock, Latin and punk music, not to mention a children’s choir, and a production number, although the balcony scene and most of the later events are scored for lush strings (and not scored very well either).
The only actors in the film who seemed to be utterly at home are, indeed, Pete Postlethwaite, as Father Laurence, and Miriam Margolyes, as Juliet’s Nurse. They seemed to know the words, rhythm, the meaning and even the music, and when they say something its clear and understandable, whereas the other actors seem discombobulated with their lines either being screeched or mushy and mumbled. The movie takes a “Shakespeare’s greatest hits” methodology, giving us as much of the original as we would find in “Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations.” And even then, it becomes panicky and attempts to clean itself up. What can I make of a balcony scene that instantaneously results in Romeo and Juliet tumbling into the pool, treading water as they recite their loving and supposedly passionate lines? The film’s most fundamental and climatic scenes are more awestricken by action-movie cliques and unnecessary amounts of pyro techniques than by the supposed source and inspiration. Romeo manages to gun down Tybalt while screaming indistinguishable lines. Shakespeare’s death scene in the tomb lacked suspenseful culmination for Luhrmann, who has Juliet recover consciousness just as Romeo intoxicates himself with poison, so that she can use her sweet, sorrowful words while he is still able to hear them.
Overall this movie did not do Shakespeare’s beautifully tragic play the justice that it deserves. It was undoubtedly untidy, and the production work was noticeably sloppy. Baz Luhrmann was in over his head when he had the idea to attempt a ‘modernised’ version of ‘Romeo and Juliet’. The film was in no way exiting to watch and most of the time I was not able to understand any of the dialogue as it was ether inaudibly screeched or inaudibly mumbled. The music and pyro techniques seemed to be the main events of the movie and with the storyline following. This movie has little to no relevance to our teenage society in the present days, unless of course they’re a gang member who uses violence at any chance that they get and the girl or boy they’re completely in love with is from a rivaling gang and they end up dying because that was better than being without each other . The only relevance that this film has with teenagers now days is an out of proportion view of family rivalry stopping them from being with someone they ’love’ which causes them to sneak around