Romeo + Juliet

Luhrman created a captivatingly timeless adaptation of an immortal classic. His version is not the insane plan of an unreasonable formalist, but rather an inventive reflection of Shakespeare and the principles of Elizabethan theatre. He directly stated that his aim was to shoot Romeo and Juliet in the manner that the bard himself would have done it if he’d had access to film. Let’s at last leave aside the distorted view of Shakespeare – that he was an untouchable genius – that has been beat into our heads since elementary school. His mastery consists in the fact that he was able to appeal to all layers of Elizabethan theatre, where the upper crust came into contact with ordinary people (albeit in separate sectors of the playhouse) and at that time it was mere entertainment whose competition was murder ballads and jugglers. Shakespeare was simply the era’s leading pop-author, who constructed even his most fragile romance as a roller coaster of emotions, where the infatuation and clarity of great love at first sight run up against a humorous perspective (it is too often forgotten that this is not about first love and Romeo’s broken heart from a previous relationship is superbly commented upon by other characters), dramatic conflicts, bombastic skirmishes, heart-rending tragedy, exaggerated wisdom and delicate declarations of emotions. Furthermore, all of this is accompanied by dialogue in which new love is carried to romantic heights, but does not look beyond its physical dimension. Luhrman was able to create an ideal framework for Shakespeare's verses by bringing the story into a hyper-stylised and kitschy overwrought world reminiscent of music videos, where the aesthetics of the wealthy’s tastelessness are blended with the sweatiness of beach bums and the self-adoring pomposity of hip-hop videos. Like the libretto, the film’s style perfectly mixes together kitschy wisdom, tense theatricality and fragile emotions. The genius of Luhrman’s approach consists in the roughly half-hour introduction, when he literally hurls viewers into a tempest of total passion, which, however, lays the groundwork for the subsequent soothing of the romantic passages, whose sincere youthful naïveté is not such an assault on the eyes. At the same time, the small details (especially in the characters’ gestures – see, for example, Juliet’s entrancing initial sequence with her mother) and the fresh approach give new life to the classic and makes it exactly what it is supposed to be – a story for teenagers. Not an insipidly superficial story as when cynical adults and eternal adolescents make films for teenagers such as American Pie, but rather an absolutely empathetic story that understands the agitated emotional state of youths and the feeling that one is the star of one's own video or film, as John Hughes superbly managed to capture. Under Luhrman’s direction, DiCaprio and Danes created what is indisputably the best version of the star-crossed lovers ever. The scene in which they first meet abounds with mutual enchantment, romantic fragility and adorableness, as well as the horniness that is usually omitted elsewhere. After more than twenty years, the film still works just as perfectly and seeing it in the cinema was a dream come true and proof of its qualities – while at the beginning viewers fidget and laugh at the pompousness of the entourages of the Capulets and Montagues, the next two hours are filled with alternating emotions, enchantment, amusement and emotional tension, and at the very end in the church, you could hear a pin drop and the tension could be cut with a knife. Luhrman simply managed to fulfil the master's words: After all, eternally will the heart receive Juliet’s grief and Romeo’s pain. (28/07/2019) (less) (more)