Movie: Romeo and Juliet
Release date: 28 March 1996
Director: Baz Luhrmann
Running time: 124 minutes
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio , Claire Danes
Plot: When two star-crossed lovers fall in love at first sight it sadly ends in tragedy. Both lovers take their own lives when 16 year old Romeo (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Juliet (Claire Danes) realises that they came from each others families biggest rivals. However the families do realise what they had driven their only children into.
Review: The way the film was done was fantastic! I must say how impressed I was with Baz Luhrmann who manages to put comedy and the modern theme into an old fashioned romance play and really puts the excitement in the movie which was done in the Shakespeare language. This is a good idea because otherwise the audience would have lost interest in the movie and would find it boring.
Romeo and Juliet is about a 16 year old boy and a 14 year old girl who secretly fall in love and decide to marry and the only people who knew about this was the Friar Laurence who got them married hoping it would result in their families finally coming to peace and the nurse of Juliet who had looked after her since she was a child. The reason it had to be done in secret was because the families which they had come from had an ancient family feud which was going on at the time of their marriage. But their life gets harder when a family feud goes on between Romeos friend and family and Juliet’s family which resulted in Romeos friend dieing. This upsets Romeo and he looses his temper and ends up killing a member of Juliet’s family called Tybalt who had killed his best friend, Mercutio. So this had ended in Romeo being banished from his land. Meanwhile Juliet was getting engaged to a family friend called Paris so to avoid this in happening Juliet had faked her own death but when Romeo gets the wrong message by mistake and assumes she really is dead he takes his own life by taking poison. So when Juliet sees him dead she takes her life and shoots herself. However in the end the family had finally realised that they were so caught up in the fighting that they had no idea what was going on.
Throughout the movie Baz Luhrmann uses really good techniques to keep the interest of the audience. These techniques vary from the way the camera is used, the mood music: the modern theme without loosing the Shakespeare language.
The opening scene was done really good and was a great opening scene. The idea of a TV in the beginning telling the prologue as if it’s the news puts the viewers in excitement. Also the way they had introduced the Montague boys which was all done very modern with load pop music bursting through their high powered cars was also funny and it kept the audience in touch. Also when they introduced the Capulet boys were also done in a modern way and showed us how the characters are like. All I can say about the beginning of this play is that it was really; fun, fantastic and funny.
The music that was selected was an ideal choice for the movie. When the Montuges boys had entered the scene load pop music was used which showed us what the characters were like. Also when the Capulet boys were introduced the music used showed their characters. The music also showed the mood of the scene for example when the star crossed lovers take their lives more tense and dramatic music is played. He does this to give it the effect of it being dramatic.