Romeo and Juliet Essay.

Class - Romeo and Juliet Essay.
How does Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo+Juliet maintain the textual integrity of Shakespeare’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ while making it relevant for modern audiences?
Achieves the same meaning – textual Integrity

Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet explore universal ideas that have remained relevant throughout many eras. Baz Luhrmans’s Film Romeo+Juliet, maintains the plays textual integrity by keeping its focus on the play’s main ideas. Like the play, the film delves into the nature of how impetuous decisions can lead to tragedy. AS well as this, the benefits of listening to the advice of one’s elders and the complexities of family relationships are explored. Luhrmann’s keeps these ideas alive through the plays language, coupled with a range of film techniques.
Decisions made in extreme emotional states can often lead to negative outcomes.   In Shakespeare, Romeo appears highly emotional from his first entrance in Act I. His series of oxymoronic phrases, ‘O loving hate, brawling love….’, exposes his fixation with love and of being in love. This emotional state is carried through into the last scene of Act I when he sees Juliet for the first time, only hours later declaring his love for her, seen with his metaphorical devotion to her,; she is the ast and Juliet is the sun. Luhrmnass captures this heightened emotional state through the use of melancholic non diegetic music which underscores Romeo’s Entrance. A cle-up shot is also shown of Romeo of writing love poetry when we first see him, which symbolises his state of mind. Like the play, the film charts Romeo and Juliet’s journey towards tragedy that has the effect of suggesting impetuous decisions are foolish and unwise. Luhrmann’s casting of an archetypal Hollywood teen idol in Dicaprio, along with a heightened and surreal settling that captures a type of violent and modern   Miami, also helps to bring this issue into modern times and keep it relevant.
No society is perfect. All societies...