Romeo Juliet (Special Edition) (1996)

Gedurfde keuzes, vaart, Di Caprio in zijn goede begintijd. Juist scherp de oude tekst van Shakespeare in hedendaags decor. De scène met kaarsen zo mooi! En het klassieke gegeven dat het net wèl anders had kunnen aflopen; dat schuurt elke keer weer:
Als er een mooi verhaal opnieuw verteld wordt,
ben ik meteen weer helemaal kind;
Ik leef mee en ben benieuwd wat er met de hoofdpersonen zal gebeuren.
Ook al weet ik de afloop eigenlijk al van een vorige keer.

Ik voel me blij bij hun vreugde en jank mee om het verdriet,
Ik voel weer de afschuw bij een verkeerde beslissing
of bij een tegenstander die een loer probeert te draaien.

Bij de meeste verhalen ben ik blij
dat de afloop nog steeds dezelfde is.
Met één uitzondering:

Romeo en Juliette

En dan een goede versie,
één waarbij het op het einde nét goed
had kúnnen gaan.
Maar waar het precies nét mis gáát.

De mooie geliefden
die zo perfect bij elkaar passen
voor altijd gescheiden.

Het is mooi,
Maar het doet ook steeds weer pijn.
Want een kind wil horen:
“En ze LEEFDEN nog lang en gelukkig !” ( )

Romeo + Juliet (1996)

Leonardo DiCaprio – Romeo
Claire Danes – Juliet
Harold Perrineau – Mercutio
Pete Postlethwaite – Friar Laurence
Miriam Margolyes – The Nurse
John Leguizamo – Tybalt
Dash Mihok – Benvolio

Screenplay by Craig Pearce and Baz Luhrmann, based on the play by William Shakespeare.
Directed by Baz Luhrmann.

Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, 2009. 115 min. Colour. Dolby Digital 5.1. Widescreen 16:9 (2.35:1).

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Of course this movie is no match for Zeffirelli's legendary 1968 production. But that’s a poor reason to dismiss it. Such comparisons are generally fishy deals anyway: they lead chiefly to stupid prejudices and less mature appreciation than we would otherwise achieve. Baz Luhrmann’s take on the most famous love story ever is a very different affair indeed. It uses Shakespeare’s original text, but it moves the story into the modern world.

So we have the Montagues and Capulets as two powerful mafia families that terrorize Verona Beach with their “civil brawls”. Benvolio and the “Montague Boys” are boisterous teenagers, armed to the teeth with shining guns, driving grand and fast cars, and always looking for trouble. Sampson is a colourful guy with pink hair, black eye and yellow temperament. Mercutio is a freak fond of cross-dressing and singing/dancing in the style of Army of Lovers. Tybalt is a gorgeous Latino guy who dances flamenco while generously sending bullets around. Friar Laurence has a big black cross tattooed on his back and a church that looks like a bunker from the outside and is full of neon crosses inside, not to mention the statue of Jesus on the roof that looks like a sad experiment of a totally talentless art student. It’s all very funky, kinky, decadent, violent and, to use Baz Luhrmann’s favourite word, rambunctious.

Yet to dismiss the movie as pure travesty will not do. Much as I generally despise such modernist experiments – and I have seen some horrendous things on the opera stage – I am surprised how much I enjoyed this one. The ultimate test for any adaptation is not the visual side, but how faithful it is to the spirit of the original and how well it brings out the drama. Indeed the visual side here, unless one suffers from no “vagaries of taste” (Maugham), is not at all without certain appeal, even charm. As for modernization, Shakespeare has through the centuries been modernized in a number of ways without much ado. Elizabethan pronunciation, for instance, is not something often encountered in stage productions, is it? And surely today you wouldn’t expect Juliet to be played by a boy, would you? Only a pathological puritan would.

Baz Luhrmann is certainly not insensitive to Shakespeare’s play. The famous “balcony scene” has been transformed into an equally original and moving “pool scene”. The latter allows for more direct physical contact which is handled with remarkable restraint. The first meeting at the party does not lack romance, either, especially with the first glances through that enormous aquarium full of creatures in lovely colours. Nor, for that matter, does the final scene lack pathos. It may be because I have never seen the play on the stage, but it seems to me that Leo and Claire do a very good job with what must be a difficult text to speak convincingly. Some moments are visually well-nigh unforgettable. For example, the moment at the party when Romeo realises that Juliet is a Capulet, and at the same time she is told by the Nurse that he is a Montague, is superbly shot in slow motion, with brooding music in the background that suits the occasion to perfection.

There are numerous slight deviations from the play but most of them are either deftly handled or very effective, or both. Though the movie does use the original text, the script is a heavily abridged version of it (with comparatively few lines that are not to be found in the play, or at least not in the New Penguin Shakespeare). The cuts are indeed brilliantly managed. The long final speech of the Friar, together with the reconciliation between the heads of the two families, is entirely omitted. The words of the Prince, here a police inspector from VBPD (Verona Beach Police Department, presumably), “All are punished” form an excellent conclusion. The long and tedious rambling of the Nurse (I.3.) is completely missing, which is indeed an improvement. What is arguably not an improvement is that virtually all monologues, and many of the dialogues, are shortened, sometimes drastically, but this is again so well done that one would never notice it without knowing the play well.

Some plot details also differ from Shakespeare, usually to a great effect. The “pool scene” has already been mentioned, so I may add Mercutio’s death and the final scene. In the play Mercutio is stabbed onstage but he dies offstage, having snubbed Romeo by asking Benvolio to take him to the nearest house. This does detract from Mercutio’s otherwise admirable death, even if he is eager to blame his friend for his own foolishness. In the movie he dies in Romeo’s hands, his last words being the famous “A plague a’both your houses!” This is not just effective: it is indeed affecting, more so than Shakespeare’s version; also, it gives Romeo a better motive to slay Tybalt. Likewise, in the final scene Juliet wakes almost at the same time as Romeo drinks the poison, which makes for an even more heartrending episode than the one in the play where he is already dead when she comes to her senses.

(However, speaking of the death scene in the movie, it should be noted that “Isoldes Liebestod” from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde is a wrong musical choice. The music itself is sublime, of course, but the similarity between the two couples is very superficial. Isolde does sing over Tristan’s dead body, but she is transfigured by visions of her lover alive. She doesn’t think of suicide at all. Juliet does, and in her final words there is nothing to suggest hallucinations.)

On several occasions even whole scenes are deleted and whole characters are altered in comparison. It would be too much to say that any of these instances is an improvement over the play, but nor is any of them detrimental. I don’t know why Baz Luhrmann decided to cut Juliet’s charmingly ironic submission to the old Capulet as well as the bustle and hustle around her marriage with Paris that makes for such a striking contrast with the discovery of her “death”. Both scenes would have looked really fine on the screen, yet none is really a major loss. The character of Lady Capulet, on the other hand, has been transformed into a hysterical creature that bears little resemblance to her stage precursor. But this is a splendid source of farcical relief in an otherwise rather violent story.

On the whole, Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation is bizarre stuff, but not to be written off easily. My only complaint is his direction which sometimes tends to become frenetic. The fight between Tybalt and Romeo which Mercutio fatally interferes with – another very imaginative interpretation of the original which gives little action material to work on – looks a little chaotic. The opening scene is an even better example. It is pure farce in the play and is rightly over the top in the movie, taking place at a gas station where the gorgeously dressed Tybalt dances his “gun flamenco”. Unfortunately the idea, fine in itself, is realised in a completely overblown manner which largely ruins the comic effect it should produce. Last and least, some incidents are actually handled more unconvincingly in the movie than they are in the play – which is strange considering the screen’s much greater opportunities. For example, Romeo’s not noticing the exceptionally important letter from the Friar, which moreover he expects, stretches credulity almost to the breaking point.

Never mind. Such minor nuisances don’t detract much from the movie as a whole. Definitely not what one would expect from a Shakespeare play to look like on the screen, but fascinating and compelling all the same. Surely the wrong way to experience the original text spoken for the first time, and I still think an adapted screenplay would have been better. Yet the movie might well have inspired some teenagers to try reading Shakespeare seriously, or seeing traditional productions of his plays, and if it has done that – and I am almost sure it has – it has done more than enough. ( )

Baz Luhrman's modern classic unfolds with its heart on its sleeve and its guns ablaze. The pulse of this jarring masterpiece lies within its passionate performances and the varied and vibrant songs that score its retelling, and this special edition DVD delivers a new way to bring that score to life. Rated Pg 13. 120 minute.