after watching william shakespeare's romeo and juliet and moulin rouge again because i craved it [i know not why], i have decided that BAZ LUHRMANN IS A GENIUS.

his films are really works of art. pure cinematic euphoria. i get high on his artistic genius. and it's watching such films that inspires me to think about studying media and film in university. i know there's a course that combines literature and film studies and that really sounds like something i'd love to do.

moulin rouge everyone has watched [I HOPE! if you haven't please do!], but not everyone has watched romeo and juliet. i strongly urge you to. i watched it when it first came out in '96 and didn't get it much because i was too young and ignorant to appreciate it, but watching it again today - it was just breathtakingly ... i can't even describe it. the man's vision and direction is amazing. there are some parts of the text he leaves out, but he uses shakespeare's verse and the fact that he manages to fuse the old day language with his modern day 'mtv generation' film is just spectacular. and yes, the movie's title is 'william shakespeare's romeo and juliet' because luhrmann recognizes that it cannot be done any other way [as opposed to pathetic singaporean versions i've watched. 'chicken rice war' and some play which infused singlish and hardly any of the text] and the story's beauty can only be more enhanced and carried out with SHAKESPEARE'S VERSE.

the one scene though, which is really brimming with luhrmann's artistic talent and sense for film [and really, practically the whole movie oozes dramatic richness, but this ONE scene stands out the most] is the death scene. morbid as it sounds, that scene just conveyed shakespeare's idea of 'star-crossed lovers' so perfectly i couldn't believe it. it's very different from the original text, and you know that i am a traditionalist when it comes to altering shakespeare - but he did it so beautifully i could hardly fault him for it. in the shakespearan play, juliet realizes romeo is dead only after waking up and talking to the friar and then seeing him dead. in luhrmann's film, juliet stirs from her sleep and opens her eyes in such a poetic timing to see romeo downing the vial of poison. yes, she watches him die and he watches her watch him die, knowing that if the timing had not been so wretched, they could have lived and loved. that scene is just rife with tragedy in every sense of the word.

the casting is just gorgeous. i'm not a dicaprio fan - simply because i just don't like him - but after watching him act in quite a few movies, i do concede he is quite a brilliant actor and in this movie his portrayal of romeo is just divine. yes i'm praising him to the skies. the role fits him like a glove, at the start i found myself wondering why they could not have cast someone else, but after watching further, i really found that he quite outdid himself as romeo. the brooding, the passion, the lovesickness of an adolescent romeo was completely illuminated by his fluid acting. claire danes as juliet is another superb choice. claire danes made it believable that juliet was a young girl of fourteen [okay, maybe fifteen, but that's as close as it gets. tell me when in any other instance has an actress managed to portray the youth and purity of juliet so succinctly? NEVER!], she really shone as a juliet of fragility, strength and love all at once. of course, to be superficial, they really looked the part. leo's sunkissed longish blonde hair and girlish features lent him visual credibility as romeo, as did claire's simple earthly beauty to juliet. but more than that, they really acted their hearts out. they BECAME romeo and juliet. the two actors managed to capture the very essence of the love story - the youthful tenderness and impulsiveness (and just that bit of earnest almost foolish romantic notion) of romeo and juliet's love.

of course the supporting cast were wonderful as well, and i do them wrong not to talk about them. there's so much to talk about. the catholic imagery, the water images which i can't quite figure out properly, yes, THE SET!

but when it comes down to it, this story is really about juliet and her romeo.

+ posted by M @ 4:58 PM