Romeo + Juliet (1996)

 

 

Claire Danes and Leonardo DiCaprio, Romeo + Juliet (1996)

Directed by: Baz Luhrmann
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Claire Danes, John Leguizamo, Harold Perrineau, Pete Postlethwaite, Paul Rudd

 Since the dawn of the cinematic age, there have been adaptations of William Shakespeare's famous tragic romance, Romeo and Juliet, but you've never seen one like this. Jacob McMovie's first pre-2000 review looks at the 1996 adaptation entitled Romeo + Juliet, directed by Baz Luhrmann, famous for his masterpiece work of film Moulin Rouge! and starring an extremely young Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes.

Let me begin by clarifying something -- when it comes to Shakespeare, I'm a snob. I judge film adaptations pretty harshly, especially ones that think to modernize the Bard's work (you don't want to hear my thoughts on the Ethan Hawke version of Hamlet) but I do actually like this adaptation. Sure, it's not the best you've ever seen and it definitely has some pretty detrimental flaws, but it is not bad at all. It is actually a very good interpretation of the work. I'm a big fan of how they translated the story into the 90s, into what looks to be somewhere in California or Florida -- I think it specified, but I can't recall which.

The best thing about this adaptation is, in fact, the leading actors. And that's big. Usually, productions of the play highlight the supporting characters, because for some reason actors and directors alike find Mercutio, the Nurse, Friar Lawrence, and even Tybalt much more easy to make interesting than the star-cross'd lovers themselves.

In this adaptation, however, we find stirring performances coming out of our Romeo and Juliet, specifically Claire Danes. Juliet is not an easy role to capture -- either she becomes too mature to be believable as an almost-fourteen-year-old, or she's a whiny little girl, which discredits the intelligence her character actually has. Claire Danes plays the balance, though. She's got the youth and the romanticism, but she's also got the sense to know what she's doing. It's really a beautiful performance to watch, in all honesty.

Now let's talk about the negatives. To be quite frank, Baz Luhrmann is a wonderful director, but he probably shouldn't have touched Romeo and Juliet. He's a very big director -- he makes huge choices and everything about what he does is in your face. It's noticeable in Moulin Rouge!, but it works there; here, it doesn't work quite so well. Shakespeare's tragedies are about simplicity, in most circumstances, and the flashiness of Luhrmann's directing does this film no favors.

Secondly, some of the supporting cast doesn't put their best foot forward. The Capulets and Montagues are stone, unsympathetic characters, and while that's certainly a valid choice on how to play them, the movie would have a lot more humanity if these actors allowed (or were allowed, depending on circumstances) to add a little life to what are now just mindless tyrants.

I'll admit it: I really liked the movie up until the last ten minutes, but everything about the final scene of the movie is just ridiculous. There are certainly multiple interpretations you can do of Shakespeare, but the degree that Luhrmann went to is much too far. In my opinion, the lighting is much too bright for the somber situation -- I couldn't even count how many candles surrounded Juliet's body, ready to fall and burn her to a crisp at any wrong move.

The most infuriating thing, though, to me, was how blocking as the pair died completely butchered the effect. As it's written, both characters get an ending that is sort of happy -- when Romeo dies, he believes Juliet to be dead, and dies on the thought that he's going to spend eternity with her in heaven. Not in this version, nope. Juliet wakes up just after he's taken the poison, but before he dies, so Romeo's life washes away from him on the thought that he's a complete idiot and he'll never be happy, and his wife has to live without him. Which she doesn't for long, but it ruins the catharsis that is intended for that moment.

All in all, it's a pretty good interpretation. The end is butchered, some of the supporting cast is weak, and the cutting is extremely weird (they cut out important lines in favor of pretty ones that don't actually matter) but the interpretation is a good one, and Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes make the movie with their powerful performances.

Final Rating: 7.0/10
Notable Performance: Claire Danes as Juliet