Baz Luhrmann's Problems While Directing Romeo and Juliet

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Baz Luhrmann's Problems While Directing Romeo and Juliet The problem that faced Baz Luhrmann when he was directing the new

version of Romeo and Juliet was that he didn´t know whether there

would be an audience for Shakespearean stories in a modern culture. So

Luhrmann didn´t make this film with the old-fashioned, Shakespeare

"purist" in mind. Instead, by using lively, modern images (swimming

pool etc.) with a modern rock soundtrack and young good-looking

popular actors, he has taken Romeo and Juliet to an audience that

would normally think of Shakespeare as a chore to be studied in school

(!). However to make it successful with the target teenagers he would

have to change a few things- It has to have vibrant on-screen action,

soppy love scenes and references to sex. By incorporating these three

things into the film he can kill two birds with one stone. He will

have an action film that is exiting and fun to watch, and a more

romantic "chick-flick". For this reason things would have to edited.

Another reason for editing the text would be to keep the length of the

film down to a more suitable length for a movie, so some text and

descriptive poetry had to be removed. However this doesn´t necessarily

remove any of our understanding as speech can be replaced with images

which, though a different way of communicating can add to our

understanding even. The old Shakespearean language can be hard to

understand, but images are more universal and can be understood by

pretty much anyone. An example of images being used to put across a

message is the use of the Madonna figure throughout the play.

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