Two households both alike
Ah
Welcome to Brows Held High
We are gonna be covering a wide range of movies
In Shakespeare Month
So lets start with something
Ah
accessible
Something wild, something fun, something light
Something kinda stupid
Ah so they put the trailer for the movie in the actual movie
How thoughtful of them
One of Shakespeare's most popular plays
Has always been Romeo and Juliet
And arguably more than any other play
It has been quoted by..
Everyone
Picture me: a balcony,  Above a voice sings low,
Everyone
Not if you called them "stench blossoms"
Or "crap weeds"
EVERYONE
The story of two lovers caught between their feuding families
Is globally ubiquitous
It is the most frequently taught text in American high schools
Verona, Italy has a tourism trade based on visiting sites from the work
Even the name "Romeo" has become short hand for "a man in love"
Naturally, the play has been adapted into paintings, and ballets, and operas, and of course films
One of the most popular being..
This one
Baz Luhrmann you scamp
So... Baz Luhrmann
The boy from Baz
The Bazmanian Devil
The Australian director has only made five films in his career
But damn if he hasn't done so with panache
After mild success with his first outing
He achieved his mainstream breakthrough with
With his utterly wonkey bonkers adaptation
Romeo plus Juliet
When adapting Shakespeare
The inevitable decision every director has to make is
How much of the text do I use
 
Use every line and the movie ends up four hours long
Hi Kenneth Branagh
So in order to make a serviceable movie
Cuts have to be made
Will see varying degrees of textual fidelity over the course of the month
But here for this movie
It's notable for how faithful
Almost fundamentalist it is about the text itself
Even though it plays liberaly with action
They make cuts here and there but the words included are not to be touched
"Heres my gold"
My green papery gold
The worst example of this
Elizabethan England...
...had guns
Like they knew what guns were
They had primitive firearms back then
Shakespeare knew what a gun was
He used the word "gun" in his plays
In its modern context
And it's not entirely unreasonable
To imagine a Shakespearean character wielding an early firearm
And Yet
"Put up your swords"
They label the guns "swords"
So they don't have to say
"guns"
"Give me my longsword, Ho"
Stupidest goddamn thing
I hated this movie for years
Purely on the basis of that one stupid decision
Yeah just give me a minute to place my wax seal on this letter
So my courtier can send it
Done
That said the language is intact
And the lovely poetry is
After all one of the main reasons this play remains is so beloved
"The reason that I have to love thee"
"Doth much excuse"
"The appertaining rage to such a greeting"
Such a shame no one can actually say it
It's such a let down
Almost every young actor delivers their lines as if they've been asked to learn ancient Sumerian phonetically
"My only love sprung from my only hate"
Word words words words, words words words words words words!
Which has always baffled me
They are speaking English
Aside from a few antique words and poetic rewordings
It is the same language I am speaking now
'But old English is hard'
whined the straw-man commenter
Alright
So we're all on the same page
Old English sounds like this
Middle English sounds like this
And English
The language I am speaking now
Sounds like this
"From ancient grudge break to new mutiny"
"Where civil blood, makes civil hands unclean"
The film's greatest failing is its two leads
Leonardo Dicaprio and Claire Danes are such dull actors given lush words
There is a technique and a cadence to it
But a good rule of thumb is to know what the hell your saying
And they just don't know what they're saying
"How sweet is love itself possessed, when but loves shadows are so rich in joy"
Saying things that are good because they are old
Sure there are those that can say the lines
Miriam Margolyes can say them
Paul Sorvino can say them
Harold Perrineau can really say them
Even Paul Rudd can say them
Pete Postlethwaite can sing them
John Leguizamo...
"Peace"
"Peace?"
"I hate the word"
I'm a ground shloth
And the rest just sound like they're reciting context-less punchlines
The only time they seem to know when to match the emotion to the word and the word to the emotion
IS WHEN THEY'RE SCREAMING THEEEEEMMMMM
"I AM FORTUNE'S FOOOOOOOL!"
"TOO LONG TO SPEAK I LONG TO DIE!"
"I DEFY YOU STARS"
"ISSSSS SHEEEEE!"
"GO WITH THEM!"
"PUNISHED"
"MOVES ME"
"YOUR HOUSES"
{So much screaming}
And honestly it kinda fits
At least with the tone they're going for
Hell this movie made Queen Mab into a quaalude
"Xanax to take the edge, pot to mellow me out, Cocaine to wake me back up again and Morphine well"
"Because it's awesome"
"The drugs are quick"
And so the dialogue is drowned out by the... everything else
Luhrmann is mildly insane
"Julieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet"
Zounds! Is that shtick I do espy?
But as frenetic as he can be
He is also an incredibly talented panderer
He knows his audience well
Teenagers
And what do teenagers want?
Validation
To feel like they're the smartest kids in the room
Plus they're probably studying Romeo and Juliet in 9th grade English
So they'd probably watch a movie than read a book
Yes your learning Shakespeare you smart smart kids you
Hey kids did you know that Romeo and Juliet is about love
"Repeats Amore" (Italian for love)
The man is not subtle
Orson Welles once said that we sit through Shakespeare
Just to recognize the quotations
This movie feels the same way
It's a Sparknotes-friendly edition
Blah blah blah boring stuff boring stuff
IMPORTANT QUOTE
Blah blah blah blah
"A plague on both your houses" (echos)
This is an important quotation be sure to use it in your essays
And honestly fine
It's not a terrible retelling of the story
Well it hits the beats
Well you can understand the words
Actually this makes no sense whatsoever
The story works thanks to it's roots in the politics of the day
People swore fealty to houses and were willing and able to fight for them
thanks to a lax constabulary
Which would be an easy setting for
Noble houses to allow ancient grudges to break into mutiny
But here?
Where the Montagues and Capulets are construction magnates or something?
Where their private parties are advertised on local news
And potential suitors have their faces on Time magazine?
And their petty squabbles produce this!?
Hey remember that time Donald Drumpf's chauffeurs got into a knife fight with Warren Buffet's secretaries?
Man those Drumpf boys sure could bite a thumb
The story doesn't quite work in a modern setting
Unless it's outside of the law
West Side Story got that
Shesh even Tromeo and Juliet got that
The setting feels more trendy than sensible
Pandering to the tastes of the day
(choral cover of Prince's "When Doves Cry")
Twentieth century director Harley Granville Barker famously marked R and J with the elegant descriptor:
The original story
Arthur Brook's "The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Iuliet"
Was a cautionary tale
Warning of the perils of young, foolish, unchecked lust
And disobeying your parents
The lovers in Shakespeare's adaptation are also foolish
But he asks us to see the world as they saw it
Shakespeare writes to place us in the minds of those young lovers
Minds where love is deep and seeming eternal
Where ancient conflicts seem petty and absurd
Where authority figures are at worst oppressors and at best incompetent
No wonder it's taught to high school kids
As for this movie
In 1996 this was youth as youth saw itself
Romeo + Juliet was born of a time where demographic focusing was intense in Hollywood movies
It catered to 90's teenagers and the world as they saw it
A world informed by MTV and Nickelodeon and American Surfer parlance
Luhrmann is doing his damndest to convince the kids of the day that the story is still relevant
Hey kid from the 90's
I know it must be tough
Hiding from your parents, listening to Radiohead, and reciting your own poetry
But you know who else hide form his parents, listened to Radiohead, and recited his own poetry?
Romeo
Thats who
I'm sure this felt necessary at the time
Filtering through the trends of the mid 90's
And so we have  Romeo and Juliet where the Capulets vs Montagues
Become El Mariachi vs the Burger King Kid's Club
All that said there are many touches to admire in this film
The cinematography for one
Like I love this shot
Like this is the movie in a nutshell
Neon on candlelight
Early modern through kitsch
And lets face it Luhrmann knows how to stage a scene
Alright amending that
Luhrmann knows how to stage a scene unexpectedly
He knows the story has been done countless times and knows people's expectations
Everyone knows that Romeo and Juliet speak to each other separated by a balcony
So
He brings them together
Replacing their chaste distance with erotic proximity
And toss them into a pool
Ok fine well actually there is a lot of water imagery
Fitting too
It is an erotic element
Sex is after all fluid exchange
Or less dirtily
Perhaps it's just a visual expansion on Juliet's promise that
And this scene
I simply think is genuinely brilliant
Seeing each other through water
Each refracted in the others eyes
Made larger and deeper and more beautiful by their young eyes
It's a perfect visual metaphor
For the depth and naivete of first love
And it's such a shame we had to get through all this nonsense first
It is a deeply flawed movie
Though a deftly made flawed movie
Maybe more clever than smart
But serviceable to it's audience
But that audience of people who were teenagers in the 90's will only dwindle with time
So I wonder how well this will age
Even almost twenty years on the dust apears to be showing
Still I won't say it isn't fun
At least
After all for never was there ever a story of more
WOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAHHHHHH
Than this, of Juliet and her Romeo
I am so much better than that final line Jesus Christ
Spring break, spring break, spring break forever more
