There have been several versions of the Bard’s ultimate love tragedy over the years. Only a handful of them, though, have captured the play’s emotional high points – love and loss. In 1996, a film starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes from Homeland was released with the same name. Yes, I’m referring to William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.
They were both young and not very well-known at the time. However, the film made them celebrities and was well-received by both reviewers and audiences. It would be a pleasant surprise if this happened to any film, but it was much more uncommon in this instance because Romeo and Juliet have been adapted several times, and it seemed expected to offer the storey as the proverbial old wine in a new bottle. But Baz Luhrmann, the filmmaker and co-writer, pulled out a fantastic trick from his bag, one that combined his distinctive sense of style with sympathetic storytelling. And, lo, there it was! We had a winner on our hands.
The families of Romeo and Juliet are depicted as warring parties who can’t tolerate one other in the film, which is a contemporary twist on the renowned play. Guns are used instead of swords, and narcotics are used. With a few exceptions, the filmmaker managed to keep the story’s core intact. Romeo, who was yearning for someone else at the time, comes into Juliet at a party and the two are instantly smitten.
To many, what follows may appear to be an old-school Bollywood masala film, with feuding family members running after each other, desperate for blood. Another thing Luhrmann accomplished with the film was to make us feel as though nothing was out of place, even while the leads took turns spouting flowery English speech. This is a noteworthy achievement given the environment, which, as previously said, is highly urbane. There are delivery services, city rushes, and two mafia families in contemporary America fight one other as their offspring pledge to be each other’s soulmates till death do them part.
