Views on Baz Luhrman’s Adaptation of Romeo and Juliet
Capulet my name is anonymous. My topic for the IOP is based on the film ‘Romeo and Juliet by B Luhrmann . I am going to impersonate William Shakespeare with a monologue where I shall speak aloud my views on Baz Luhrman’s adaptation of my text. When I wrote this book I was attracting a crowd with very orthodoxed thnking . the idea of two young lovers going against the society merely for lust was intolerable! hence in my book they died 4 days into their courtship. Death was their punishment for going against the knomes of the society. my book was a one with a serious message put forth to the reader.
Where as the movie which was adapted frm my text seems to be moulded inorder to attract an audience with a very openmindset mindset who prefer entertainment over moral values. It had a many humourous scenes ,mercutio dressing up like a girl and dancing at the capulets party,which the modern crowd would enjoy more. The main objective of the this movie was to make money,which was done by mocking at my well known novel of romeo and Juliet.. adapting their movie from my book must have been a huge advantage for them as tthey wouldn’t have needed any script or a new story which has the risk of being disliked by the audience. hey just changed the costumes and situations into modern day ones which will obviously entertain the audience as they picture romeo as a young teenager in the days of old and not wearing a suit and smoking a cigarette on the beach.. the movie has a many differnces compared to the book in order to make the film more entertaining. in my book Juliet was 14 years old but in the movie Juliet doesn’t appear to be 14 at all. the movie makers changed this aspect of the book in their movie in order to make the scenes expressing lust more entertaining for the crowd.
But the reason I had Juliet to be so young in the book was to highlight fact that her actions were all justified by the fact that she was immature. The costumes of the actors in the movie were very western and commonly worn by the people of the new times. in my book they were meant to be dress the way the people did during the time of the book being published. instead of wearing the olden day clothes characters like benvolio were wearing hawaian shirts and romeo was dressed in a suit smoking a cigarette on the beach . scenes like this weren’t common to see in days when I wrote the book.
Instead of actually swords the charactes threatened each other with shinning pistols with the word “sword” carved on them. this aspect of the movie killed the seriousness as in the opening scene the capulets pointed a pistol at the montagues and ordered him to raise his “sword”. How will two people have a dramatic fight holding two pistols against each other? In my book this scene was supposed to be a dramatic fight . The royal prince was replaced by a police official to make the movie more relative to the modern world.
The reason my book had a royal prince was to highlight he fact that these two lovers were going against the will of the highest authority. the movie portrayed the same situation but the police official replacing the prince is another example which I saw where barz luhrman has presented a change in the film for it to be resembling a modern life situation. In two offices of the capulets and the montagues were shown in the film as tall skyscrapers where as my book was geographically set in Verona which is supposed to be a small and silent town. During the time when I wrote this book ,writers and producers would only produce works which gave some hints to make the viewers or readers to ponder over certain real life situations. but I guess times have changed and so has the mindset and the taste of the audience. they seem to enjoy mockeries instead of eye openers I feel barz luhrman has not been faithful to my text while depicting it as a mmovie because the movie simply mocks at the text if I had an option to create a film depicting my text it would have been very different not changing any scenes for it to be enjoyed by the modern crowd.
