As soon as I started watching William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet, I was struck by the fact that it was a forerunner, in some ways, for two other films I love -- in fact, two future #1s.
Which means maybe I just wasn't ready for it yet in 1996.
Oh, I didn't dislike Baz Luhrmann's second feature film, the first I had seen at that time. But I do remember feeling a bit irritated by its style, and by some of the histrionic displays of emotion by Leonardo DiCaprio. In fact, as I was watching last night, I asked myself the following chicken-or-the-egg question: "Do I think of Romeo & Juliet as one of Shakespeare's lesser tragedies because of DiCaprio's histrionics, or do I find DiCaprio histrionic because I think of Romeo & Juliet as one of Shakespeare's lesser tragedies?"
I think there's evidence of this being a lesser tragedy, at least from the plot side. Romeo & Juliet is not a play I've seen over and over again like I have with Hamlet (my favorite) or Macbeth (the one that seems to have been remade the most recently, plus I've also seen two older versions within the last five years). So each new exposure to Romeo & Juliet is a reminder of the plot, or lack thereof.
I didn't mind that I'd chosen this viewing for the night before a four-day weekend, when my brain was dead from two really busy weeks at work. (I should say, it's a four-day weekend for most people -- for me, the weekend lasts until a week from Tuesday, as I am going to Vietnam for a resort holiday. I should probably tell you more about that, but not today.) I didn't mind the timing of the viewing because a) I already knew the basic story, so little failures to parse the dialogue would not make a difference, and b) it doesn't seem that there really is much of a story.
Unlike, as a point of comparison, all the minute twists and turns in the outlook of characters in Hamlet, as well as some really interesting plot mechanics, Romeo & Juliet seems like it can be primarily broken down as such: Boy and girl meet and fall in love. Their families hate each other. Girl arranged to marry dopey guy she hates, so pretends to kill herself to escape. Boy thinks she's really killed herself so then kills himself. Girl sees he's killed himself so really kills herself.
Unless I missed them, there don't seem to be a lot of interesting digressions from this. The characters on each side of the feud exist merely to dramatize the intensity of the feud. A couple characters (Mercutio and Tybalt) are killed near the mid-point of the story, but the only effect of that is really to yet further intensify the feud.
Am I oversimplifying Romeo & Juliet, which, to its credit, does contain some of Shakespeare's most widely quoted text? Perhaps. But last night's viewing did nothing to improve that general impression of the material.
It did make me realize, though, how much of a debt my #1 film of 2000 owed to it -- and how it had some probably more coincidental echoes in my #1 film of 1997.
Michael Almereyda's 2000 version of Hamlet, the one where Ethan Hawke gives the "To be or not to be" speech in a Blockbuster video, was a huge success for me, as I went on to name it my best of that year. And to be certain, I had already seen William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet at that time.
What the passage of four years apparently made me forget was that this movie has exactly the same framing device as Hamlet, which is a television newscaster reading the opening and closing lines of the play, functioning as sort of a Greek chorus -- though it's dialogue that would belong to an actual character in each play (I'm just not going to look that up right now to tell you who).
When I saw this transpiring in Romeo + Juliet, I was shocked at the directness of how Almereyda ripped off what Luhrmann was doing here. I mean, any modern adaptation of Shakespeare, which both of these are, might be inclined to use a television newscaster as part of the proceedings. But the fact that both films begin and end with it as well? Perhaps critics raked Almereyda over the coals for this at the time, but if so, I didn't hear it. (Granted, it wasn't as easy in 2000 to read all the reviews you could possibly want to read about a movie you loved. I believe this was before the invention of Rotten Tomatoes.)
That's the most obvious way Hamlet is indebted to Romeo + Juliet, but what about a less obvious way, that you'd call a coincidence if both of the films were being produced simultaneously. Actress Diane Venora appears in both films, here as Juliet's mother Gloria, there as Hamlet's mother Gertrude. I almost feel like Luhrmann might have cast her just to be cheeky, since her last name is Venora and the play takes place "in fair Verona." Maybe Luhrmann is a fan of word jumbles. Almereyda seems almost certainly to have cast her in order to evoke Luhrmann's film -- or at least because that film gave him evidence she could do this sort of material.
The second point of comparison that I couldn't help notice was with Titanic, though this likely falls more into the category of coincidental.
It made me realize, possibly for the first time, that there is a real Romeo & Juliet quality to Jack and Rose's relationship in Titanic. Sure the similarity became obvious to me because DiCaprio played both Romeo and Jack, but there are other elements that solidify that similarity. For one, Rose being rich and Jack being poor is a similar sort of "opposites attract" scenario that informs their Montague-Capulet style pairing. But then there are also similarities with the way their romance develops, including scenes of going hand in hand to run around corners and evade the pursuit of the people who would stop them. Even the element of suicide is common between them, as you recall that Rose is considering jumping off the back of the ship at the time Jack meets her.
One other similarity I could not ignore. Although Paul Rudd technically plays the role of Romeo's romantic rival, Paris (Dave Paris, ha ha), Paris is a bit of a drip and doesn't much factor in to the story. (And what a babyface version of Rudd!) Romeo's real antagonist, whom he eventually kills, is Tybalt, played by John Leguizamo. I couldn't help notice a physical similarity between Leguizamo and Jack's rival in Titanic, played by Billy Zane. Imagine them in your mind and you'll see what I mean. (By the way, as many times as I've seen Titanic -- I want to say it's about six -- I had to look up his character's name just now. Caledon Hockley? That doesn't sound right.)
Of course, the real similarities are between this and Luhrmann's future work. Naturally it's easy to see similarities to his very next film, Moulin Rouge!, which also includes an illicit tragic romance where the central pair are trying to evade a romantic rival. Some of the most "in your face" aspects of Romeo + Juliet from a style perspective are just getting warmed up for Moulin Rouge! Then the film is also a reminder of the future The Great Gatsby, as there are big parties here that resemble the big parties there -- plus of course both films star DiCaprio. (I caught myself wondering what Luhrmann might have done as the director of last year's Babylon, instead of Damien Chazelle. Would certainly have had a lot more heart.)
To be clear, the style elements that maybe didn't work for me in 1996 do in fact work for me now. In fact, I think they are an essential part of what I've come to call this series: Baz Jazz Hands. If I didn't like the choices Luhrmann made with his camera, with his editing, with his anachronisms, etc., I likely wouldn't be doing a series like this at all.
I have to come back to DiCaprio's histrionics before I close things out for today.
I may be overstating this a little bit. DiCaprio has always been a good actor, even back then, and I suspect any tendency to turn things up to 11 was the result of a direct request from his director. His screaming of "I am fortune's fool!" is something I always think of as a telling moment from this film, and I think I thought it was all a bit too much back then. Which, as suggested earlier, may just be my notion that the whole play is a bit overwrought.
There are really only a few moments like this, and I do think DiCaprio does a better job than Claire Danes as Juliet. She's not bad, but I did think she seemed a little uncomfortable with some of the dialogue. I do remember really swooning for her at this age, probably because she reminds me a little bit of a former girlfriend, just around the face. (As opposed to, you know, her elbows.) But I also noticed a moment when she does this sort of choking cry that seems a bit off -- and I noticed it in particular because Danes has this really over-the-top crying seen in Fleishman is in Trouble. It's not that her crying strikes me as artificial, but maybe just that few actresses are willing to "cry ugly" the way Danes is willing to "cry ugly."
So as not to leave you with a negative impression of what I thought about these two, I do find their scenes together to be incredibly romantic -- a function of both their chemistry, and Luhrmann's expert ability to conjure romance on screen.
Okay I clearly had a lot more to say about this movie than maybe I thought I would going in.
In June I'll be back with what has historically been my favorite Luhrmann film, Moulin Rouge! We'll see if it still holds that crown after my first viewing since 2011.
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