Romeo + Juliet Personal Response

Romeo + Juliet, a film co-produced by Baz Luhrmann, Gabriella Martinelli and Craig Pearce, is a 1996 film starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes. This movie is based on the 1599 version of The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare. Romeo + Juliet has taken quite a creative take on it, in this version it is very modern time. They use guns, cars, and very modern clothing. They also use old English with American accents which is a unique feature the director chose.

Personally I didn’t enjoy then film. I feel this way for a few reasons. For one, it was difficult to understand the actors in the film. Sometimes they would be very quiet so you can hear them, other times they would be too loud so you can’t understand them. With this I feel the decision to make them use old English was creative but made it very hard to understand.

Another reason I didn’t enjoy the film was because of the transitions from place to place. I think that the transitions were pretty rough. One moment they would be in one place, the next, they would be in a completely different place, without warning. I think this was one of the decisions the director wanted but I think it just wasn’t necessary and added a lot of confusion.

In the film they also left out a lot of key things from William Shakespeare’s original play. Like the fact that Paris never died. This was a key part in the play feel because from what I know, the death of Paris is one of the main reasons the families came together. Another main part is that they left out the letter Romeo was going to send his family after he killed himself. Originally he was going to send a letter to his family telling them about the marriage, and why he did what he did.