Retrospective Film Review

Romeo + Juliet (1996) • 25 Years Later

Baz Luhrmann’s film of Shakespeare’s play relocates the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet to modern-day “Verona Beach”.

The performances are consistently strong, the photography full of life and colour, the music is imaginatively chosen, and there’s even the odd good line from some guy called Will Shakespeare who wrote the first draft of the screenplay. But what hits home most in Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet (or William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet) is evident from the first moments, when all that’s shown is a small television screen in the middle of frame.

A newscaster begins: “Two households, both alike in dignity…” and although it’s the Prologue to the Shakespeare play, not the breathless journalism of some local hack, she manages to make it sound exactly like the latter. “From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, where civil blood makes civil hands unclean,” she continues, and the delivery is absolutely perfect, in that over-inflected style favoured by US news anchors. In the background is a “Star-Cross’d Lovers” logo.