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delila
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(This one's going to be a long one, folks. Also spoilers for Baz Luhrmann's William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet (1996) starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes. TL;DR watch this movie.)


So I put on a movie with my girlfriends and my dog tonight, as a bit. As a joke we were going to watch Baz Luhrmann's William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet (1996). Because the premise is terrible, yeah? Here's Romeo and Juliet but it's set in 1996. Everyone is either a cartoonish gangster or a total dudebro goofball. They all have unbelievably ornate guns instead of blades, with names like Sword and Rapier and Dagger and Longsword, just to lean into it. Everyone uses the original dialogue, pulled literally directly from the text, and just acts that out. But it's 1996 now and they all have guns. This movie cannot be good. And then it...is. It is genuinely excellent, and that haunts me. You can derive the meanings of this old-ass language that is like, half English at best at this point from the context clues alone, because the inflection and delivery by the actors is so effective at conveying meaning without fully using their words to do so. The shots (after the pretty hyperactive, Robert Rodriguez's Spy Kids intro) are well-composed, with a lot of intention and thought behind them. While the performances are kinda hammed up, it elevates the film without making a mockery of it. The emotion feels genuine, and that's so fucked up! Why does this stupid over-the-top corny movie actually effectively convey the emotions present in this work? How do they do such a good job at adapting these (sometimes long) scenes meant for a stage in front of a live audience into a solid film performance? Why is the camera so zoomed in so much, and why do I not actually mind that much? Why is Benvolio doing such a good job at feeling like a genuinely sympathetic guy who is deeply distraught watching Romeo go down this path? Why is Mercutio so well-acted, from beginning to end? Why is John Leguizamo such a good Tybalt? What is this stupid film??? How can "A plague o' both your houses" be so overwrought and intense and still work? Why am I not giggling at "All are punished"? I should find this movie funny at best. It is ridiculous and overacted at points and incredibly goofy at others, but the entire time, it works. The billiards room with Romeo and Benvolio? Genuinely excellent, it's this ridiculous Early Modern English dialogue that the average viewer can parse like, a third of, tops, but with their performances, with their tone and behavior, you can get 100% of what they're saying. The meeting in the Capulets' garden between Romeo and Juliet? Should shatter suspension of disbelief like, 9 or 10 times, easy, but the framing of the shots and the performances hold it all together. The last shot of Mercutio? I've watched it like, 3 times. I will watch it more. While watching the scene of Romeo entering the back of the church, despite knowing exactly what was about to happen, I could only hope something else would. This film suspended my disbelief so effectively that I doubted the ending of Romeo and Juliet while watching it.

This ridiculous old story about a bunch of teenagers who end up dead because of the stupid grudges of their parents should not survive 90s-ification. It should be crushed under the weight of all the cliches it helped to define colliding with all the exaggeration and excess of 1996. But truthfully, I think this time period is exactly what this story needed. It is genuine without being corny. It is self-assured without being cynical. It knows what it is, accepts that, and meets the letter of the text (by literally only using dialogue from the text) and the spirit of the text (by injecting this thing with so much style and aesthetic and pure, unbridled emotion that it's trying to burst).

In Conclusion

Romeo + Juliet is legitimately good. This will trouble me for probably weeks as I continue dissecting this thing. Please watch this if you haven't, or if you have. It deserves to be remembered as an honest-to-god successful Shakespeare adaptation that holds up almost 30 years after it was made.


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in reply to @delila's post:

she made an entire review of Baz Lurhmann's 1996 hit film William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet (starring Leonardo DiCaprio) and didn't once mention radiohead...

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