STAR-CROSSED AT VERONA BEACH
Reckless. Inventive. Harebrained. Impudent.
Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet is all of these.
Would Shakespeare approve? Probably.
Would he be entertained? Absolutely.

As the title suggests, William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet follows the bard's original dialogue -- but nearly everything else in Australian director Baz Luhrmann's film has been modernized and electrified. His Romeo and Juliet love and die against a landscape of 20th century images and urban decay.

The result is more than a movie. It's an event.

Complete with split-second editing, garish visuals and a soundtrack straight out of MTV's "Buzz Bin," Romeo and Juliet is so breathtaking and over-the-top that viewers won't know whether they are smiling with admiration or derision.

The answer: probably both.

This latest version has been labeled Shakespeare for the TV generation -- a film so glossy, action-packed and desperate that it leaves viewers too stunned even to think of reaching for the remote.

In the film's trailer-like first moments, Luhrmann plays to the lowest common denominator in his audience with broad comedy and a prolonged Tarantino-esque sequence between the warring Montague and Capulet gangs -- both sporting designer duds and signature guns -- that threatens to blow the roof off the theater.

But just as the emphasis on the "ancient grudge" grows tired, the lovesick face of Leonardo DiCaprio's Romeo fills the screen. Viewed against a turbulent and deeply tinted sunlit backdrop, the forlorn and oh-so-disenchanted youth sucks on a cigarette as he writes in his journal.

Suddenly, the film has heart.

Still, it's a loud, shiny, teen-idol kind of heart. Bookended by shots of an approaching and then receding television (the prologue and epilogue are recited by a news anchorwoman), Luhrmann's film is as slick as a rock video -- and as immensely watchable.

And, thanks to the talent and chemistry of young actors DiCaprio, 21, and Claire Danes, 17, both of whom seem to live the language rather than merely recite it, enough real emotion remains to keep the audience interested.

The two leads, dubbed the best actors of their generation, are engaging and sexy as the young lovers. Their scenes at the costume ball, as they meet and fall in love, are first-rate -- and remarkably silent. Regrettably, Luhrmann has trimmed much of the text in favor of long glances and fight sequences.

While dancing with her clueless suitor, Paris (Paul Rudd), Juliet only has eyes for Romeo. "Did my heart love til now?" the youth asks simply as he watches his newfound love. "For I swear I never saw true beauty til this night." Yet DiCaprio could be speaking in Martian, and the import and meaning of his words would still be apparent: It is all there in his glowing, expressive face.

As Juliet, Danes brings immediacy and truth to a sometimes thankless role that consists largely of weeping and waiting for word from Romeo. At once youthful and alluring, she captures his poetic and sometimes fickle soul with a disarming lack of pretense. Danes' 14-year-old Juliet has the wisdom and self-possession of one much older. She knows what she wants, even when Romeo does not, and, buoyed by her love for him, she goes after it.

Still, although Juliet motivates much of the action, this is undoubtedly Romeo's film, and DiCaprio more than delivers. Whether joking with the Montague gang or murdering Tybalt (John Leguizamo) to avenge his friend's death, DiCaprio is every bit the angst-ridden, grown-up-too-soon, modern Romeo.

Luhrmann has also effectively modernized the other players. Romeo's friend Mercutio (Harold Perrineau) dresses in drag for the costume ball at the Capulet mansion; his "talk of nothing" prior to the ball is depicted as the ravings of a mind on acid. Paris, the governor's son, graces the cover of Timely magazine as "Bachelor of the Year." Father Laurence (Pete Postlethwaite, in a masterful performance) becomes a new-age herbalist tattooed with a large, ornate cross. During mass, his choir boys break in to a gospel rendition of Prince's When Doves Cry -- and in the surreal Verona Beach that Luhrmann has created, somehow that, too, works. But the director leaves his most effective and shocking spin on Shakespeare's plot for the end. When the sleeping Juliet's eyes begin to flutter open too soon, one can't help entertaining a split-second's hope that these lovers may still find happiness in the living world. Instead, Juliet watches in horror and disbelief as her distraught husband -- unaware that she is awake -- swallows poison and dies in her arms.

While Danes is an excellent match for DiCaprio, the audience loves, hopes, lives and dies with his Romeo. When the fear and confusion drift from his newly dead face, Luhrmann's high-voltage movie comes to a slow, deadening halt.

And although the task is scary as hell, Juliet knows that without Romeo there is really nothing left to do but reach for that gun.

by Samantha Bornemann
Published 11.96
in the Daily Northwestern



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