Romeo and Juliet in the Movies

¶ … play Romeo and Juliet written by William Shakespeare during the Elizabethan Times in the late 1500s with four modern day movie adaptations: West Side Story directed by Robert Wise in 1961, Romeo and Juliet directed by Baz Luhrmann in 1996, Shakespeare in Love directed by John Madden in 1998 and Romeo Must Die directed by Andrzej Bartkowiak in 2000. The findings conclude that Romeo Must Die has little to do with the original play in terms of plot and passion. Shakespeare in Love evokes some of the passion that Romeo and Juliet had, but deviates substantially in events. While the movie Romeo and Juliet comes closest to the story line of the original play, only West Side Story succeeds in capturing the romantic passion first relayed by Shakespeare.

There is a lot in common between the play Romeo And Juliet and the movie West Side Story. This movie parallels not only the plot of the Romeo and Juliet play, but also the passion romance between the two lovers.

The opening scenes in both are remarkably similar. In West Side Story the Sharks harass a man, as the members of his Jets gang show up to his aide. Then the cops arrive to break up the two gangs, just as Prince Escalus had broken up the fight between Romeo's and Juliet's cousins. And, Riff talks Toni into attending the dance at the gym as Benvolio talks Romeo into attending the masquerade ball held by the Capulets. At the dance Toni meets Maria and Romeo meets Juliet at the ball where love at first sight occurs for both couples. Juliet and Maria are warned against love for inappropriate choices. Anita tells Maria that she shouldn't be involved with an Italian-American and Lady Capulet and the Nurse caution Juliet about the differences between the Montague and Capulet families. However, both women are determined to continue their true love rather than be forced to marry people that they are not in love with.

The balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet parallels the fire escape scene in West Side Story where Romeo and Toni propose their undying love. But, Maria and Toni do not get married, which is in contrast to the secret marriage of Romeo and Juliet. Marcucio in Romeo and Juliet, is killed while battling Tybalta. And, in West Side Story Riff is killed in a knife fight with Bernardo. Both deaths are accidental and cause Romeo and Toni to kill the close relative of their lovers, Tybalta and Bernardo. However, In Romeo and Juliet, the two lovers both die, in West Side Story, Maria lives. This is perhaps the largest different between the two stories. Juliet killed herself with Romeo's dagger after discovering his death. Both Romeo and Juliet and West Side Story end in the sad reconciliation of two fighting factions at the cost of the lives of young lovers.

The 1996 movie Romeo & Juliet stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes and is directed by Baz Luhrmann. This version of Romeo and Juliet is contemporary in setting accompanied by a rock 'n' roll soundtrack, except that some of the detail is futuristic and some is rooted in Elizabethan times. Luhrmann has left Shakespeare's words more or less intact. The film was organized visually to make the dialogue easier to understand than the original play. The Capulets and the Montagues maintain their age-old feud through their gangs and Verona looks like Miami. Luhrmann turns the Montagues into flower-shirted, Miami Beach-like thugs, who use 9mm revolvers rather than swords. The Capulets are street princes in funereal black and also armed to the teeth. Mercutio is an African-American in dreads, who dresses in drag and is a kung fu expert. It's a bit odd to see the gangs in modern dress and then hear them articulate their threats and quarrels in Elizabethan English.

The movie fails to capture the same degree of passion as the play. Ethnic differences between the white Montagues and the Cuban Capulets underlie the mob families' ongoing feud. But the Capulets and the Montagues bear an unsympathetic kinship to the Crips and Bloods rather than the compassionate bitter family rivalry established in the play. The feud between the family erupts when a carload of Montagues take on the hot-blooded Tybalt Capulet and his kinsmen at a gas station, which goes up in a spectacular inferno. The gang sequences don't really work absent the original play's swordplay. Even more disappointing is the lack of passion between Romeo and Juliet. It almost appears that Romeo and Juliet sort of like each other. This is partly because DiCaprio and Danes have difficulty saying their lines and, therefore, conveying the feelings underneath them. However, just as the play, the movie is a tragedy and the deaths at the end of the movie are just as sorrowful.

Shakespeare in Love is a portrayal of how William Shakespeare, as a young and struggling playwright, comes up with his famous play Romeo and Juliet while in the midst of a love affair. As Shakespeare falls in love with Viola, the play he is working on, Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate's Daughter, turns into Romeo and Juliet. Like Romeo and Juilet, Shakespeare and Viola are separated by a huge chasm: she is from wealth and her father has just sold her in marriage and he is barely able to make a living. Because females were not allowed to act, Viola assumes the guise of Thomas Kent and takes on the role of Romeo. But Shakespeare learns the real identity of Kent and they carry on their passionate tryst until events that test their relationship come to a head.

Romeo Must Die takes most of its story line from the conventions of Hong Kong action films, as opposed to Shakespeare. In fact, other than the name Romeo in the movie, it's difficult to imagine what this movie has to do with Romeo and Juliet although it's true that there is a family rivalry and that the guy of one family has a close relationship with the girl in the opposing family. The Romeo of the story is Han Sing, a former Hong Kong police officer who is imprisoned for crimes committed under the rule of his father, Chu Sing. Back at home in the San Francisco Bay area, the Sing family is involved in a vicious rival with Isaak O'Day and his black gang surrounding the control of the waterfront area. Upon hearing that the younger brother that he swore to protect has been killed amid the gang wars, Hans escapes from prison.

After his return to the United States, Han hooks up with Isaak's daughter Trish who is certainly no Juliet. Trish has lost her brother in a gang attack and rebels against her father's underworld connections. So, there's a loose connection between Julie's loss of her relative to a rival family and rebellion against her own family. But, Trish creates her own life as the owner of a trendy boutique decorated with red-and-gold dragons and other Asian imagery rather than building a life on her love for Hans as Juliet had based her existence on Romeo.