The Corruption of Shakespeare

Reviewed Item

William Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet
The Corruption of Shakespeare

by: moonmoods_52 (Wed Dec 1 '99)

Pros: the beautiful poetry of Shakespeare
Cons: Everything but Shakespeare's words

Plot Details: This opinion reveals no details about the movie's plot

I can't begin to say how much I abhor this version of "Romeo & Juliet" (1996). What kind of cockamamy cockalorum could even conceive of corrupting a Shakespeare play? I also have little patience with others who think that this is a great film because it is hip and different. Vulgarity may be "hip" and "different" in this age of declining taste, but that does not make it quality art.

This moronic movie is an example where even a great script can be destroyed by a delirious director. It was as if director Baz Luhrman was on LSD and speed simultaneously when he concocted this monstrosity. Everything about how to do a Shakespearean movie wrong was done here: sorry setting, clownish costumes, erratic editing, poor phrasing, amateur acting, mediocre music, ad nauseam. And to exchange swords with guns, that really took the charm out the fight scenes. They even replaced the final dagger with a gun. The worst was having Romeo high on a drug during the masquerade scene. Oh, please spare us! [Oddly enough the same director of this flop, did a fine job on "Strictly Ballroom" (1992).

I loved Leonardo Di Caprio in [Titanic](1997), but after performing a ridiculous Romeo, I think he should change his name to Di Crapio. How could anyone with any artistic sensibility allow himself to be a part of such a hideous attempt to poorly frame the poetry of [Romeo & Juliet] is beyond me. I am amazed it did not destroy Leo's career.

I find public censorship criminal, but if I had the power to burn all the copies of this foul film I would be rather tempted to commit the crime.

Save your soul and watch "Romeo & Juliet" (1968) by Franco Zeffirelli instead. Now there's a masterpiece that could even please Shakespeare.

Note: If you think I am the only reviewer who hated this version of "Romeo & Juliet", then read Roger Ebert's critique.

Viewing format: VHS
Video Occasion: None of the above

Recommends to friends? No

Shakespeare for the MTV era

by: RdeCassia (Mon Jun 26 '00)

Pros: Pitch-perfect adaptation, great cast
Cons: Not for traditionalists

This movie scandalized a lot of Shakespeare lovers when it came out. They felt that the drugs, the guns, the tacky beachwear all cheapened this classic love story. Outraged fans pointed to Franco Zeffirelli's more respectful 1968 adaptation (rather bloodless, in my opinion) as a more appropriate tribute to its author. I would say the opposite: the fact that the play, with the original dialogue all but intact, works so well when set in the age of MTV shows Shakespeare's genius all the better.

R&J has always been considered one of the Bard's fluffier works, which is part of what makes this adaptation so great. Just as Richard III was brilliantly set by Ian McKellen in the politically turbulent 1930's, and Jane Austen's Emma finds herself at home among the golden children of Beverly Hills in Clueless, this teen romance is well-suited to the bubblegum genre.

Director Baz Luhrmann's genius is on display here, too: he adapts several key scenes with perfect pitch to the Miami-in-the-nineties setting. Romeo and Juliet first see each other through a fluorescent-lit aquarium, which creates the perfect mood of silent wonder in the middle of a raging party. Then Juliet goes off to dance with the smarmy "Dave" Paris, icky blandness itself in an astronaut suit. Mercutio, whose friendship with Romeo has some homoerotic overtones, is a cross-dresser AND a gun-toting bad boy here without going over the top. Juliet's nurse is a kindly abuela type with mambo-flavored fashion sense. The narrator is a TV anchorwoman.

The well-chosen score by Nellee Hooper does a good job of highlighting the mood in each scene. And the set design, from the tacky beach pavilion to Romeo's dusty trailer-park exile to Juliet's bedroom all bedecked in Catholic statuary, is the most creative I've ever seen.

Claire Danes shines as Juliet. She shows a full range of emotion: giddy infatuation, longing, despair, mute resignation. Her expression as she asks, "What satisfaction canst thou have tonight?", wary but wanting to believe, should go down in movie history. Leo DiCaprio is well-cast as her charming suitor. Other good performances include Harold Perrineau Jr. as Mercutio, John Leguizamo (who plays Tybalt as the devil in black boots, rockabilly hair and a soul patch), Miriam Margolyes as Juliet's nurse, and Pete Postlethwaite as the drug-distilling priest.

Don't be afraid to give R+J a try: you may be surprised to find that you love it.

Romeo & Juliet

** (PG-13)

Juliet Capulet: Claire Danes
Romeo Montague: Leonardo DiCaprio
Mercutio: Harold Perrineau
Father Laurence: Pete Postlethwaite
Fulgencio Capulet: Paul Sorvino
Ted Montague: Brian Dennehy

Directed by Baz Luhrmann. Screenplay by Luhrmann and Craig Pearce. Based on the play by William Shakespeare. Running time: 120 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for scenes of contemporary violence and some sensuality).

By Roger Ebert

I've seen Shakespeare done in drag. I've seen Richard III as a Nazi. I've seen ``The Tempest'' as science fiction and as a Greek travelogue. I've seen Prince Hal and Falstaff as homosexuals in Portland. I've seen ``King Lear'' as a samurai drama and ``Macbeth'' as a Mafia story, and two different ``Romeo and Juliets'' about ethnic difficulties in Manhattan (``West Side Story'' and ``China Girl''), but I have never seen anything remotely approaching the mess that the new punk version of ``Romeo & Juliet'' makes of Shakespeare's tragedy.

The desperation with which it tries to ``update'' the play and make it ``relevant'' is greatly depressing. In one grand but doomed gesture, writer-director Baz Luhrmann has made a film that (a) will dismay any lover of Shakespeare, and (b) bore anyone lured into the theater by promise of gang wars, MTV-style. This production was a very bad idea.

It begins with a TV anchor reporting on the deaths of Romeo and Juliet while the logo ``Star Crossed Lovers'' floats above her shoulder. We see newspaper headlines (the local paper is named ``Verona Today''). There is a fast montage identifying the leading characters, and showing the city of Verona Beach dominated by two towering skyscrapers, topped with neon signs reading ``Montague'' and ``Capulet.'' And then we're plunged into a turf battle between the Montague Boys (one has ``Montague'' tattooed across the back of his scalp) and the Capulet Boys. When, in an early line of dialog, the word ``swords'' is used, we get a closeup of a Sword-brand handgun.

If the whole movie had been done in the breakneck, in-your-face style of the opening scenes, it wouldn't be Shakespeare, but at least it would have been something. But the movie lacks the nerve to cut entirely adrift from its literary roots, and grows badly confused as a result. The music is a clue. The sound track has rock, Latin and punk music, a children's choir, and a production number, but the balcony scene and a lot of the later stuff is scored for lush strings (and not scored well, either; this is Mantovani-land, a dim contrast to Nino Rota's great music for the Zeffirelli ``Romeo and Juliet'' in 1968).

Much of the dialogue is shouted unintelligibly, while the rest is recited dutifully, as in a high school production. Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes are talented and appealing young actors, but they're in over their heads here. There is a way to speak Shakespeare's language so that it can be heard and understood, and they have not mastered it.

The only actors in the film who seem completely at home, indeed, are Pete Postlethwaite, as Father Laurence, and Miriam Margolyes, as the Nurse. They know the words and the rhythm, the meaning and the music, and when they say something, we know what they've said. The other actors seem clueless, and Shakespeare's lines are either screamed or get all mushy. (Brian Dennehy, as Romeo's father ``Ted Montague,'' would have been able to handle Shakespeare, but as nearly as I can recall he speaks not a single word in the entire movie--a victim, perhaps, of trims in post-production.)

Not that there is much Shakespeare to be declaimed. The movie takes a ``Shakespeare's greatest hits'' approach, giving us about as much of the original as we'd find in ``Bartlett's Familiar Quotations.'' And even then it gets nervous and tarts things up. What can we make of a balcony scene that immediately leads to Romeo and Juliet falling into a swimming pool and reciting their best lines while treading water? I think back to the tender passion of the 1968 version, and I want to shout: ``Romeo! Quick! Poison yourself!''

The film's climactic scenes are more impressed by action-movie cliches than by the alleged source. Romeo pumps Tybalt full of lead while shouting incomprehensible lines. He tenderly undresses Juliet and they spend the night together. Shakespeare's death scene in the tomb lacked a dramatic payoff for Luhrmann, who has Juliet regain consciousness just as Romeo poisons himself, so that she can use her sweet alases while he can still hear them.

No doubt I will receive mail from readers accusing me of giving away the story's ending by revealing that Romeo and Juliet die. I had my answer all prepared: If you do not already know what happens to the star-crossed lovers, then you are not the audience this movie is aiming for. But, stay, my pen! Perhaps you are.