Romeo + Juliet Response
William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet (1996) is a movie based on the text, The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare. The movie is set in modern times, however, the characters use old English in their scripts. I thought this was fairly confusing, and off-putting as well; it was strange for me since I would rather have a movie set all in the past, or all in the future, not a mix in between. On the contrary, this aspect makes the movie stand out more than many others, since it’s such a new concept.
I didn’t enjoy the movie as much as I might have, since it’s difficult to understand what the characters are trying to say. This may be because I was listening to the movie somewhat quietly, or because we didn’t have subtitles turned on. However, when we turned on the subtitles, I could understand what the characters were saying fluently. Although it was strange hearing them talk in old English, I thought it was interesting nonetheless. I feel that the movie followed the Shakespearian type of production closely and they pulled it off much cleaner than I thought they would. So, I would have to say that they were accurate in most of their portrayals of the story.
I believe the movie should have been directed differently than it was. The director didn’t put emphasis on things that I thought were fairly important, and stressed things that I figured weren’t that crucial to the plotline. There were also some cinematic errors in the film, an example would be when Romeo had just gotten out of the pool and, in the next second, had already climbed onto the top of the balcony. I also felt that some parts, like Mercutio’s death, were executed poorly. If someone hadn’t known the story line, they would probably be confused about how Mercutio died. It doesn’t do a very good job of showing that Tybalt killed him, and he did it by stabbing under Romeo’s arm. It merely shows Tybalt, and then Mercutio’s shirt, then he’s screaming in agony; you don’t see the attack at all.