Love, passion and vice

Baz Luhrmann gives the classic "Romeo and Juliet" a future touch

By Dieter Strunz
 
 

Juliet, you are enchanting: Claire Danes plays the female lead in the Berlin Film Festival-success "Romeo and Juliet". Director Baz Luhrmann adapted the Shakespeare-material for the pop-generation.
 
 
 
 

In the decoration of two splendid Berlin Film Festival-honors Baz Luhrmann's saucy Shakespeare-production about short luck and deep misfortune of the most famous lovers in the world comes now into theaters. The young Romeo of Leonardo DiCaprio's, in many cases celebrated as cult-star, received the Silver Bear  of the Berlin Film Festival in February; for the rapid cinematic realization the Berlin Film Festival jury treated the honorable Alfred-Bauer-Award that shall be meant for works which contribute to the further development of cinematic art.
I fact Luhrmann and his team don't content themselves with an ordinary adaption of the immortal Shakepearean drama but they also burst open the story, make it suitable for the pop-generation and transplants it into an environment between today and some future time.
Somewhere in the middle of America the anchor woman knows to daily report on the permanent quarrel  of the industrial families  Montague and Capulet. When in Romeo and Juliet two kinsmen of the hostile families meet at a fancy-dress ball and fall in love, tendernesses and terrible things open up at the same time. From the Nothern Italian city Verona the play is brought into a fictitious Verona Beach, a shrill bath-paradise that has seen better times. There the knives and weapons flash, there contempt and hatred explode over and over again as if you weren't in a classical love-drama but somewhere in the streets of Hebron or Sarajevo.
The glaring,  shrieking scene of passion and vice, of conflict and unmerciful fight finds its contrast in the silent being together of the lovers which are driven by stubborness, misunderstanding and intrigue into the tragedy. The splendid honor for the nice boy DiCaprio could have gone to the charming Claire Danes either. In the remaining cast, too, are found lots of laudable performances. Secret lead in "William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet" is the camera which cares for an exhausting but absolutely eye-opening cinematic style.