The cars can also contribute for captivation of modern audience’s attention. They were fast and had different designs with many colours which call attention. Cars is a subject in which young people have knowledge about. The cars used during the film were very admired by youths by 90’s. To see these cars on a film could be enough to keep modern audience interested in the film.
Nowadays young people tend to have their own group of friends and socialise within their group. It is something that clearly happens in the film. There are two distinctive groups of young boys on the film, Capulets and Montagues, these boys do most of their things between their respective group and they have their little ‘adventures’ with their friends which could also result in fights. It is something typical to happen within youths, particularly boys.
Around those fights loads of action was brought up. The boys used guns in most of their fights, sometimes they also use their cars to catch their ‘enemies’, and these fights used to result in police intervention and even in deaths. The police interventions were massive with cars, helicopters, and television video cameras. The city ended in huge messes after these fights between the boys. It may also happen with some gangs nowadays. It may not be as frequent as it was in the film but youth would understand the feeling of those boys when they were defending their friends and find reasonable create all that chaos. For example, when Mercutio is killed the way Romeo reacted could be understandable and acceptable by modern audience.
In my point of view, these points that I just mentioned were very effective when it came to attract masculine modern audience, the boys. In general romances do not attract boys but the way Baz Luhrmann recreated this romance made it more attractive even for boys because all these aspects, rap music, cars, the groups of friends, and all the chaos created around fights could make boys forget or put apart romance but at the same time make them bear it.
However there are many other aspects that had an important role attracting modern audience. The actors themselves had a contribution for this. The actors used are very well known by most of people; particularly Leonardo Dicaprio (Romeo Montague) was very popular and admired in the 90’s mainly by young girls. It should have had a big impact to see him as principal character in such romantic movie as Romeo and Juliet.
But in my opinion Leonardo Dicarpio and Claire Danes did not form a couple with the same flame as Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey did; their chemistry was not the same. Nevertheless Leonardo Dicarpio and Claire Danes did their roles effectively.
The soundtracks of the film were also sung by very popular singers back in the 90’s. The love theme of Romeo and Juliet is the soundtrack “Kissing you” sung by Des’ree, a singer very talented and with lot of successes during the 90’s including “Kissing you”. She took part of the film by sing at the party in the Capulet’s mansion right in the moment Romeo and Juliet first met and kissed each other. At this same party, Juliet Capulet was dressed as an angel and it is also the name of one of the soundtracks of the film from Gavin Friday.
The camera shots are very agitated and rapid mixed with loud rock and rap music but at the last scenes cameras focused mostly at Romeo and Juliet’s last moments together even after both of them being die, in each other’s arms and being taken to the morgue. It emphasised the deep love of these young lovers which is the base of the all film and has touched every single character at the film.
Baz Luhrmann added his own taste at the film which made the film eye-catching and breathtaking and showed his good abilities in what he did particularly within this legendary Shakespeare’s romance by retaining the original language and at the same time designing it to younger modern audience.