I think you’re running with that Versace crack to prove a point that this is some flashy, unsubstantative, tinkering-for-the-sake-of-tinkering modernization. I’d argue the exact opposite – that without leaning too hard on it, Luhrmann has used the designer threads, the casual drug and gun play, the Papa Capulet-sponsored Bacchanalia, to frame the text very much in the now – a monied now of absent parents who overindulge then rule with an iron fist and their overprivileged children, desperate to give meaning to their lives.
You ask: “Where’s the love? Where’s the lust? Where’s the poetry? Where’s the diction?”
The love is there, alright, and so is the lust – those two kids are pawing at each other something fierce in the pool scene. That lust is tempered later with something far more solemn – in the wake of their secret marriage, his unfortunate slaying of her cousin, and also the fact that these two kids are embarking upon the scary/exciting rite of first sex.
But there’s a reason Luhrmann plays their morning-after as a romp: Because these two kids, flush with new love, are just that – two kids.
The poetry’s there, too – Luhrmann may have truncated the text, but that’s still Standard Bard everybody’s spouting, and the diction – well, possibly you’re too hung up on the plummy, theatrical enunciation of those yawning Shakespearean Actorly Actors. There’s worth there in Leo and Claire’s sometimes-stumbling but newborn interpretations.
But how now, Rosenblatt: You haven’t done much but attack Romeo + Juliet. Where’s your own impassioned defense of the traditional adaptation? Go on — sing you the praises of those Actorly Actors with their plummy, theatrical enunciations. I’m eager for it.
This article appears in August 15 • 2008.
