![]() ![]() This could be taken as a weak argument, for Luhrmann always uses the language of cinema to great effect throughout his movies – I can’t think of another director who makes better use of manic editing or vibrant mise-en-scene. But these successes are few and far between. ![]() There are a few moments that make good use of Shakespeare – the male cast leans into the play’s innuendos the foreshadowing line of “the drugs are quick” at the Capulets’ party is obvious but effective and I’ll always be amused by the characters screaming Shakespearean insults like a bunch of crazed coke-heads during the gas station shootout. Romeo + Juliet is the problematic entry, since the Shakespearean dialogue is not only unsuccessful but probably the film’s biggest flaw. Strictly Ballroom and Moulin Rouge!, I can’t argue with. The dialogue failure is particularly fascinating when you consider Romeo + Juliet in relation to Luhrmann’s Strictly Ballroom (1992) and Moulin Rouge! (2001), with the trifecta being dubbed the “Red Curtain Trilogy.” The trilogy’s loose mission statement is that each film uses a specific medium to enhance the story’s meaning and the audience’s investment: dance in Strictly Ballroom, music in Moulin Rouge!, and language in Romeo + Juliet. Pete Postlethwaite as Friar Lawrence is the only exception (he is the one cast member to speak in iambic pentameter, though, which is likely the reason for his success), but everyone else flounders at one point or another, if not consistently. The Hollywood actors in Luhrmann’s film just aren’t on that level, even though they do their best. It’s no surprise that the two Romeo and Juliet films that best handle the dialogue (Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 movie and Alan Brown’s 2011 indie experiment) contain actors that were either Juilliard prodigies or spent almost a year prior to filming studying the language. Shakespeare is a difficult beast – his dialogue can be spoken in a way that is understandable to even untrained ears, but that normally only works with crazy-dedicated actors who have dedicated their lives to analyzing the text and practicing iambic pentameter. If viewers didn’t know the story of Romeo and Juliet going into the movie and if there weren’t so many visual cues to help them along, the film would be utterly baffling. ![]() Luhrmann intended for the actors to speak the Bard’s words in the style of modern street slang (to reflect the film’s updated setting), which is an admirable idea but one that didn’t entirely work out. Not the language itself, you see (though there are whiners for every Shakespeare adaptation that demand to know why the actors can’t just speak “normal English”), but the fact that the film’s cast was ill-equipped to deliver it. Love it or hate it, almost everyone agrees that the language in Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet is pretty bad. ![]()
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