Blog 4

Yichen.Li

Oct. 10th. 2016

Liter & Performance

Today I watched the 1996s Romeo and Juliet, which was directed by Baz Lurhmann. This version is my favorite one because the main characters’ beauty and interesting plot. First of all, in the movie, the director retained most of the language use from the book, which was written by Shakespeare. However, in order to show difference and creativity, director improved some language into modern language and also moved the time period of Romeo and Juliet into modern days, which gave audience a new feeling and understand on the show Romeo and Juliet. In the last two acts of the play, the director made the new version of the show that was faithful to the original, but also added some new elements in it in order to make it seem more modernized.  For example, after Juliet went to the Friar Lawrence cell but met with Paris, she wanted Lawrence to give her some solution to avoid the marriage, she throat Lawrence with a gun in stead of a knife. Also instead of using a priest to go to Mantua to tell Romeo about the fake death of Juliet, in the movie it used a “ post post haste dispatch “ as a modern element in the movie to show why Romeo did not get the letter from Lawrence. So these modern elements make me feel that it exists in my period not Shakespeare time because it relates closer to my time period. However, the director also deleted some scenes form the Shakespeare’s version.  For example when Romeo went into the churchyard, there was no Paris inside the churchyard but there were many policemen outside. And also Lawrence did not go to churchyard to save Juliet. However these elements are not important, they are not related so much on the main plot, the most important scene is the death of Romeo and Juliet. Both the additional modern elements and deleted scenes make the whole video become modernized and attractive to the audience. For me, as an audience, I could have more time in the movie to look at Romeo and Juliet whatever they were in Juliet’s room or in the churchyard. The absence of Paris made me pay more attention on the despair Juliet showed when she realized her lover was died in front of her. 

Moreover, compared with Shakespeare’s version, in the 1996 version, the audience would feel the plot from peace to despair to happiness then finally turn to despair. I like the plot that the director arranged the scenes. His style was similar with Shakespeare’s writing style, which everything was in peace however if one thing disturbed, all the things would have a chain reaction to break. Audience have to adjust the fast change style in the movie. In the movie version, audience would feel Juliet and Romeo always stays in the two different world, Romeo always got wounded by Tybalt or the police. But Juliet always wore in white and smiled. The direct difference between Juliet and Romeo made the audience get a hint about their final tragic result.  The main feeling audience felt would be the continues despair and disappointment. For example when Juliet felt she was abandoned by her families and her dad, her mom and the Nurse can nothing for her. She felt helpless and lonely. And after she woke up she would experience another despair from her husband. Also, one of the most surprising scene in the movie is when Juliet woke up but watching her husband died in front of her. In the original story, Juliet saw her husband died in front of her and finally made the decision to kill herself by a knife. However, in the movie version, she did not do the soliloquy, the director made the Romeo did not die soon after he drunk the poison, the director wanted to make a dialogue between Juliet and him. So Juliet watched her man drinking the poison without any thinking and then she felt this was not a good thing, so she touched Romeo. For Romeo, it was the most surprising and most tragic movement in his life. His wife did not suicide but he drunk the poison, he can not accompany with her in the future.  So he stared her a long time but only said: “ Thus, with a kiss I die.” He knew he had no time to accompany with Juliet but he wished time could be traced back, so under the comparison between the surprising of Juliet’s live but the despair of drinking the poison, he only desired a kiss from her. For the audience, because we know the whole story from Juliet and Romeo sides, we would think Romeo is stupid on Juliet’s “death”. However, if you really experience in that situation, you would do the same thing with Romeo. I feel sorry to Romeo but I would also say the director was also awesome because even he deleted the battle scene between Romeo and Paris, he letted Romeo to show more love on Juliet. Thus the audience could watch more unsuspected situations from the original book.