One Creative Adaption of Romeo and Juliet

A film that I watched is called Romeo + Juliet. Actually our class watched the first few scenes of the film in class. Watching in class, my classmates and I were surprised at the incredible beauty of Leonardo DiCaprio which is obviously one of the greatest characteristic of this film. This film was released in 1996 and directed (adapted) by Baz Luhrmann, who also filmed The Great Gatsby with Leonardo DiCaprio in 2013. The director must love to adapt films that have base on the fiction. Among many other adaptations of Romeo and Juliet, this film kept the lines and language used in the original Romeo and Juliet but set time background differently. It was unique that they used not modern English in modern time. 

The film was pretty good. I liked it. I actually had watched it when I was 12 but I definitely do not remember how and what it was. I guess this time, it was even more interesting than before because I knew the basic plot and even some lines so it was a lot of fun to find the things in common between the film and my background knowledge. This film was basically modernization version of everything except the language, so I could find some fun facts and some strange facts about it. Firstly, they used gun instead of dagger (or knife or maybe sword). Every scene that has to deal with knives in the original has substituted knives for guns. For example, when Tybalt kills Mercurio, original play version uses a sword while this adaptation uses a gun. Also, when Juliet killed herself, original version uses Romeo's dagger while this adaptation uses Romeo's pistol. This shows the different time period as well as different level of technology development from original version. However, although the film version is modernized version of the original, there was something intriguing in some aspects. The question is : why did not Friar Lawrence send Romeo an e-mail instead of physical letter? At the first scene of the film version, it shows that there are many skyscrapers which shows that the time period is pretty modern, and it looks modern enough to use e-mail as their tool of communication. If they used e-mail, there would be no problem with postal office and Romeo and Juliet might live well. Secondly, prologue and epilogue through the television was smart choice. It not only showed its time period but also started and ended the film more impressively. I can not imagine that chorus comes out and does the prologue and epilogue just like the original. It will be really weird. However, through the reporter in television, it made me curious about what is going to happen next, and this film became more natural and smooth and not awkward. Lastly, I liked the way they did not change the words because language is one of the most remarkable characteristics of Shakespeare's plays. By keeping the language, they conserved the beauty of Shakespeare's piece which is really important factor of adaptation. Shakespeare used a lot of figurative language and strategies. For example, Juliet's saying "ghostly confessor" which somehow foreshadows her death is one of them. 

I can say this film is really well made. Its modernized interpretation created a lot of interesting things that are little different from the original. 

Source:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117509/