The first conversation between Romeo and Juliet is an extended Christian metaphor. Using this metaphor, Romeo ingeniously manages to convince Juliet to let him kiss her. However this metaphor holds many further functions. The religious association of the conversation clearly implies that their love can be described only through religious vocabulary. This, although an effective way of portraying the ‘divinity’ of their feelings, was not emphasised by Luhrmann to great extent; instead the essence of costume is involved. The movie is, essentially, Romeo and Juliet modernised, so how does Luhrmann modernise a masked ball and how does he help capture the drama involved? He turns the masks into costumes; Juliet is dressed up as the angel and Romeo as the knight. This is ironic because she does, at the end of the story, kill herself and Romeo, far form being the knight in shining armour, is the cause of her death.
When Romeo and Juliet meet they speak just fourteen lines before their first kiss. These fourteen lines make up a shared sonnet, with rhyme scheme of ABABCDCDEFEFGG. A sonnet is a perfect, idealized poetic form often used to write about love and in the film their body language illustrates their lines so well. Luhrmann emphasises Romeo’s persistence and Juliet’s reluctance through their body language. She is playing a game with Romeo, the more she teases him the more persistant he becomes. She is clever in turning the first, slightly rejected kiss into something that can be taken back as a sin with another kiss and so the game continues. Luhrmann portrays this well as they move around the hall and the building without any consideration for anything or anyone around them. Encapsulating the moment of origin of Romeo and Juliet's love within a sonnet therefore creates a perfect match between literary content and formal style. Luhrmann shows the importance of this by using the actors’ tones of voice. The use of the sonnet, however, also serves a second, darker purpose. The play's Prologue also is a single sonnet of the same rhyme scheme. If you remember, the Prologue sonnet introduces the play, and, through its description of Romeo and Juliet's eventual death, also helps to create the sense of fate that permeates Romeo and Juliet. The shared sonnet between Romeo and Juliet therefore creates a formal link between their love and their destiny. With a single sonnet, Shakespeare finds a means of expressing perfect love and linking it to a tragic fate whereas Luhrmann does this differently: the viewer is absorbed into the present moment through sensory impact and therefore is less likely to think so much about the fate of the ending. This, I think, helps include the viewer into the pair’s state of mind as they are, with the viewer, oblivious to their ending fate.
That fate begins to assert itself in the instant when Romeo and Juliet first meet: Tybalt recognizes Romeo when Romeo takes off his mask. Capulet, acting cautiously, stops Tybalt from taking immediate action, but Tybalt's rage is set, creating the circumstances that will eventually banish Romeo from Verona. In using modern weapons such as guns instead of swords, Luhrmann increases the effect of violence: when Tybalt reaces for his gun when he sees Romeo, it induces more fear in the viewer than if he were to draw his sword. I think this is because guns are more lethal without the need for proximity and Romeo would not be able to defend himself from a bullet. Luhrmann has subtly dressed Tybalt as the devil and this holds great relevance to the way he reacts to Romeo’s presence as he appears as evil as his character. In the meeting of Romeo and Juliet lie the seeds of their shared tragedy.
The first conversation between Romeo and Juliet also provides a glimpse of the roles that each will play in their relationship. In Luhrmann, this scene shows that Romeo is clearly the aggressor through emphasis of body language. He uses all the skills at his disposal to win over a struck, but timid, Juliet. Note that Juliet does not move during their first kiss; she simply lets Romeo kiss her and seems perfectly keen. She is still a young girl, and though already in her dialogue with Romeo has she proved herself intelligent, she is not ready to throw herself into action. But Juliet is the aggressor in the second kiss. It is her logic that forces Romeo to kiss her again and take back the sin he has placed upon her lips. This interprets Sakespeare’s dramatic craft through body language; you can see Juliet pull back away from Romeo or going in to kiss him. This can be done in theatre but can be more concentrated on film through photography. In a single conversation, Juliet transforms from a proper, timid young girl to one more mature, who understands what she desires and is quick-witted enough to obtain it. Juliet's subsequent comment to Romeo, "You kiss by th' book," can be taken in two ways. Firstly, it can be seen as emphasizing Juliet's lack of experience; as can be seen in the movie she is quite young. Many productions of Romeo and Juliet have Juliet say this line with a degree of wonder, so that the words mean "you are an incredible kisser, Romeo." But Luhrmann sees that it is possible to locate a bit of wry observation in this line. Juliet's comment that Romeo kisses by the book implies that he kisses as if he has learned how to kiss from a manual. As is seen near the beginning of the movie, he reads and writes love poetry. In other words, he is proficient, but unoriginal. Juliet is clearly smitten with Romeo, but it is possible to see her as the more incisive of the two, and as nudging Romeo to a more genuine level of love through her observation of his tendency to get caught up in the ideas of love rather than love itself. This is typical of Shakespeare as throughout the scene we can see that Juliet is quick-witted and manipulative to an extent.
Shakespeare is more traditional and classic in a sense that he leaves a fair amount to the viewers, or reader’s imagination. Theatre gives you the whole scene on the stage and the viewer knows when they go to watch a play, that it will be confined to that stage. This is a great limitation for the viewer and the director of the play as it prevents closeness. The viewers are stuck to their seats and can not relate to such things that require closeness, like facial expressions. Shakespeare tries to overcome this by using words to convey emotions, moods of violence, tragedy and love. Although effective, this can be static for the viewer, and so a little more is required. This is where Luhrmann comes in; he has so many aspects of the modern world at his disposal that Shakespeare didn’t have. At Luhrmann’s fingertips lie such effects as music and camera angles. He uses colour to help interpret Shakespeare’s dramatic craft and selects specific camera angles and close-up effects to display it. Take the scene when Romeo and Juliet meet for example; this would have been impossible to achieve on stage. The camera changes from side to side of the aquarium, helping the viewer see from each character’s angle. There is romantic music in the background and the beautifully coloured fish inside the tank only add to the romantic mood that the scene provides for the viewer. This is greatly effective and makes the viewer almost feel what the characters feel, but on stage can be done by acting alone. Good acting affects the quality of the production; however there is an even more important, fundamental difference between what there is on the stage and what is on film: on film you are given the film. You know that what you are watching will be the same next time you or someone else watch it: there is less originality as it is plainly ‘served’ to the viewer ‘on a plate’ so to say. With film your senses are stimulated and less imagination is required: what you see is what you get. Shakespeare includes the factors of love tragedy, danger and violence by means of beautiful words because that is all he had at his disposal, whereas Luhrmann uses panoply of sensory effects by means of modern technology. Personally I prefer Luhrmann’s version of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ because I can instantly immerse myself into the story.
