Baz Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet

Baz Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet

Baz Luhrmann the Australian film director chose to modernize the well

known play of ‘Romeo and Juliet’. The play began as a poem, written by

Arthur Brook called ‘The Tragicall History of Romeous and Juliet.’ The

poem itself is a translation of a popular fictional novel by Bandello

.William Shakespeare saw this poem and chose to adapt it to a play

script in 1593. ‘Romeo and Juliet’ is referred to as Shakespeare’s

most popular play because and of its thrilling and complex plot. The

play script since then has been adapted and interpreted a large number

of times for many theatre productions and films but none of the scale

of Luhrmann’s. The entertaining and dramatic plot was way ahead of its

time and still can used as a modern story line in an modern film in

today’s society as Luhrmann superbly demonstrated in his 1996

adaptation of ‘Romeo and Juliet’.

Luhrmann's interpretation of Shakespeare’s play can be vastly explored

and the techniques which he used to modernize it can be deeply

analysed. Luhrmann’s interpretation was found to be appealing and

attractive to a modern audience, the reasons for this can also be

thoroughly examined. Luhrmann chose to use fast pace editing and

extreme close ups throughout the film and he uses a variety of

different shots which adds another dimension of fast and dramatic

action, whilst still keeping the essence of the original play.

The film begins with an exciting prologue which features fast camera

action and dramatic music. The prologue informs the audience of the

immense rivalry between the two Protagonist families, of Montague and

the Capulet. The director usin...

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... There is fast pace editing as

the tension and dramatic in the fight scene begins to build up.

Pathetic fallacy, weather reflects the mood of the film, helps to

build up the suspense and tension amongst the film. These techniques

help modernise the film.

In conclusion Luhrmann uses a wide variety of techniques to make the

film appealing for a modern day audience. Deciding to keep the same

script was a brave decision but was beneficial to his creative

adaptation. He chose to focus more on the editing than tampering with

the plot of the play, this worked well as he still kept the essence of

the original play.

I think that Luhrmann achieved in making it appealing to a modern

audience. Luhrmann got nominated at the Oscars for Best achievement in

Art Direction for his work on “Romeo and Juliet” but lost to “Titanic.