Wherefore art thou, Leonardo? America has gone crazy for Romeo and Juliet, as interpreted by two hot young stars. HOWARD FEINSTEIN reports
YOU can imagine how the media played it up: “Shakespeare’s Number One at Unite d States box office.” Romeo and Juliet, directed by Baz (Strictly Ballroom) Lu hrmann, opened in the United States on November 1 last year, and at the end of its first week reached top spot. By its fourth week it had raked in nearly $3
6-million and was still in the top 10.
Now it is set to break the record for takings on a Shakespeare film. Lest anyo ne think that Romeo and Juliet bears any resemblance to conventional treatment s of the Bard, Luhrmann clues his viewers in at the outset. The first shot: a contemporary news anchorwoman, framed by a TV set suspended in darkness, faith fully recites from the original late-16th-century verse.
Luhrmann moves the camera rapidly all over the city (fair Verona had become Ve rona Beach, Florida, even if the movie was shot in Mexico City and Veracruz), and he cuts constantly among exaggerated characters. garish objects, and even more garish objects. The aesthetic is MTV crossed with camp, a sensorial bomba rdment that meets the needs of audiences with a wide variety of attention span s. The spo ken word in this heavily pared-down text takes a backseat to the visuals and s oundtrack.
Some US critics have responded enthusiastically to the movie’s rushed kinetic feel, but most balked. Entertainment Weekly’s Owen Gleiberman wrote: “Luhrmann makes his stars the soft centre of a garish audiovisual maelstrom, a movie th
at fuses the energy of MTV, the oversaturated kitsch “passion” of film-maker K en Russel and the burnt-rubber nihilism of a glib futuristic action cartoon.”
But critics don’t pay $8,50 to see a movie; consumers do, and most of them are young. Twentieth Century Fox has wisely heralded a Shakespeare both accessibl
e and updated for the lucrative late teen/early 20s market. The booming soundt rack features Seventies retro (Young Hearts Run Free) and sentimental numbers . The look is trendy: stylised low-lifes populate the movie’s periphery; Julie t’s Capule t cousins (hyper-Cuban, dark, decked out in black) carry flashy guns and strik e model poses; Mercutio (Harold Perrineau), the best friend of hallucinogen-po pping Romeo Montague, is a high-heeled African American drag queen; and Juliet is surrounded by candles and kitschy luminous crosses. So why has the film be
en such an outrageous success? There have been various theories bandied around . Kids are drawn to Shakespeare on speed, for one. Shakespeare is the Jane Austen of 199
7, for another. Fair points.
But what clinched it for the movie is the inspired aspiring of Leonardo DiCapr io and Claire Danes, both young and beautiful enough to convince as R&J, and b oth beautiful and talented enough to make movie icons for a new generation – p erfect cover stars for magazines, to accompany the lavish advertising spend on MTV. What’s more, both actors have done sufficiently interesting work, in Hol
lywood ter ms, to make the cognoscenti take notice. What distinguishes the pair from thei r acting peers in the movies is their uncanny ability to see themselves from t he outside, a form of self-consciousness that is the inverse of Method. “I lik e to see how I come across on film. It’s different through the lens, and I lik e watching what’s been filmed that day,” says Danes. Similarly, DiCaprio says: “I guess
when I’m acting I think of myself as the camera. I’m watching myself act.”
Danes, who is only 17, is much-loved among this age group for her role as Ange la in My So-Called Life. Angela is the good, pretty girl with ups and downs. S he’s sort-of a high school outcast who doesn’t mind hanging out with the gay g uy or the girl with the drug problem. Danes’s part as the frail Beth in Gillia n Armstrong’s film adaptation of Little Women brought her critical recognition as well.
Los Angeles-born DiCaprio (22), proved his acting skill as the retarded brothe r in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? for which he was nominated for an Oscar. But his younger fans tend to see him more as a beautiful pin-up than as a consumm
ate thespian. Most of his films, however, – which include Total Eclipse, The B asketball Diaries and This Boy’s Life – have not been hits. The choice here is inspired:
DiCaprio has a delicate beauty, an almost pre-pubescent androgyny that appeal
s to his generation. He brings to the brooding Romeo a feminine sensibility (i n contrast to the ubiquitous beefcake surrounding him and Danes) that melds ni cely with the fact that fuller-faced Juliet is the decision-maker.
Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet ends as it began, with the anchor. The whole enter prise is meant to be an extended nightly news segment. This Shakespeare is a f ar cry from Kenneth Branagh’s upcoming four-hour Hamlet, or even Al Pacino’s L ooking for Richard, which grossed barely $1-million in six weeks. While it’s c ertainly fashionable for film-makers to adapt Shakespeare, one would be hard p ushed to c laim Shakespeare as a trend at the box-office. But Luhrmann and company knew w hich buttons to push. The big question for audiences will be whether or not, t o quote from Richard III, “An honest tale speeds best being plainly told”.
Romeo and Juliet opens on circuit nationwide this weekend