![]() ![]() They fall into the pool, literally falling in love. ![]() Meanwhile, the suitor her mother prefers, the perfectly nice but generic bachelor “Dave” Paris (Paul Rudd), obliviously tries to dance with her. It’s a tender moment of possibility that stretches onto the dance floor as Juliet keeps gazing back at the smitten Romeo. The aquarium separates them, a barrier they don’t notice, much like their families’ enmity. Romeo, dressed as a disheveled knight, and Juliet, in a white dress with angel’s wings, size up each other in a gentle, playful moment that feels like a dream, each reflected in the glass. As they have for centuries, they fall for each other at first sight, without the baggage of preconceived notions. Yet the rapid cuts, whip pans, and spectacle fall away once Romeo and Juliet first meet on either side of an aquarium at her family’s costume party. He teases Romeo with sexy puns and presents a tab of Ecstasy while speaking of Queen Mab, who visits people’s dreams. Romeo’s freewheeling friend Mercutio (Harold Perrineau), in a silver bra, white wig, and heels, is as confident and wild as he is on the page. They and Juliet’s smoldering cousin Tybalt (John Leguizamo) wave silver handguns instead of swords, set the pumps on fire, and break up their latest row amid tabloid headlines and a fiery rebuke from a police captain named Prince instead of the local monarch. Instead of the City of Verona, the action takes place in Verona Beach where the Montagues, cruising in a convertible and bare-chested in tropical shirts, square off with Capulets at a gas station. Romeo and juliet with sidenotes tv#Luhrmann’s updates include a TV newscast that acts as the Chorus, laying out the bad blood between the Montagues and the Capulets that dooms Romeo and Juliet’s love from the start. His instincts were right: Made for an estimated $14.5 million, Romeo + Juliet went on to gross more than $147 million worldwide. He believed that “as long as you reveal the fundamental essence of what Shakespeare was chasing, that would have an effect on an audience.” Romeo and juliet with sidenotes movie#Luhrmann has said that he wanted to reimagine the play “as if Shakespeare were making a movie today,” making it more accessible through modern touches but maintaining the poetry of iambic pentameter. “The fundamental essence … would have an effect on an audience” ![]() Yet it’s also in the vision that Luhrmann had and set on the page with co-writer and frequent collaborator Craig Pearce ( Strictly Ballroom, Moulin Rouge!). Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet is a hyperkinetic swirl of pop music, neon, violence, and Catholic imagery, but it never loses sight of the heartrending story at its core. While you cannot and should not be literally faithful to the source material, you must be faithful to its intention – and whatever moved you to want to tell this story as a film, he’s said. Yet you still have to “ make it play” onscreen, as Oscar-winning writer William Goldman ( Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) has said. Shakespeare gives writers blueprints for the characters, the plot, the setting, and the dialogue. “But I was willing to take a risk, because great stories should be told over and over again to reflect different perspectives and contemporary values.” “There’s a lot of risk when you take a masterpiece and make it distinctly different,” he’s said. Spielberg has said he felt drawn to West Side Story, which places its lovers on opposite sides of an ethnic gang war in New York City in the 1950s, since he first heard the soundtrack to the stage musical when he was a child. ![]()
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