For now these hot days, is the mad blood stirring. — William Shakespeare in “Romeo and Juliet”
`William Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet,” starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes as two cool, poetry-spouting kids in a world gone crazy, drags one of the best-loved classic plays so furiously into the 20th Century you can almost see skid marks.
Sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll are the keynotes in this hopped-up update, directed and co-written by Baz Luhrmann (“Strictly Ballroom”). In Luhrmann’s almost feverishly inventive hands, the Bard’s soaring romantic drama of star-crossed lovers in a feuding, hot Italian city becomes a gang-banging, car-crashing, pill-popping, rock ‘n’ roll, sex-and-action movie.
As in every version of the play, Romeo and Juliet, of the violently feuding Montague and Capulet families, fall madly in love at first sight at the Capulet costume ball. This leads to stunningly lyrical love scenes and a bloody duel between Juliet’s hothead cousin Tybalt (John Leguizamo) and Romeo’s foul-mouthed buddy Mercutio (Harold Perrineau). Two corpses and a banished Romeo result. And, when Juliet’s nurse (Miriam Margolyes) and Romeo’s mentor, Father Laurence (Pete Postlethwaite), try to patch things up, tragedy beckons.
The play has been filmed several times, most successfully by Franco Zeffirelli in a smash-hit 1968 version that features a teenage Romeo and Juliet (Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey), nudity, spectacular sword fights and a seemingly gay Mercutio (John McEnery) in lush, beautifully photographed Renaissance Italian settings. It also was done for MGM by George Cukor and by Renato Castellani (a very good, if now largely forgotten 1954 film). And it’s the inspiration for a legendary Broadway show: the Leonard Bernstein-Stephen Sondheim youth-gang musical, “West Side Story.”
Nobody, though, has beaten Luhrmann in jazzing up “Romeo and Juliet” and pitching it toward a youth crowd; “West Side Story” is staid by comparison. This is an adaptation where Romeo pops pills, smokes cigarettes and shoots pool with Benvolio; where Mercutio is a black drag queen and quick-draw artist; where Tybalt (the “King of Cats”) has cat monograms on his leather jacket; where the elder Montagues and Capulets drive around in chauffeured limousines; and where Juliet’s suitor is a smirking yuppie.
Luhrmann probably would not be offended if you called his movie MTV-style Shakespeare. With co-writer Craig Pearce, he’s cooked up a lurid spree that seemingly takes place in Miami (the film actually was shot in Mexico City and Vera Cruz), a city run by rival Mafias.
In this hot town — where so much mad blood is stirring, you wonder how anybody can last a day — the Montague and Capulet gangs also hold gunfights in gas stations and eyeball bikinis at Verona Beach, and the local boys choir cuts loose on “When Doves Cry,” by The Artist Formerly Known as Prince.
The play formerly known as “Romeo and Juliet” somehow survives all this, largely because Luhrmann and Pearce have had sense enough to keep their collaborator’s poetry — or most of it. But it’s a struggle; the movie is exciting and exasperating by turns.
It was Zeffirelli who sold the idea of using a teenage Romeo and Juliet (their ages in the play). Cukor’s 1936 film, by contrast, had a 43-year-old Romeo (Leslie Howard), a 36-year-old Juliet (Norma Shearer) and a 54-year-old Mercutio (John Barrymore). Few then thought that casting dubious. Today, it would be almost impossible to make a movie “Romeo and Juliet” without casting actors as young as Zeffirelli’s — or as Danes and DiCaprio.
One of the best things in the movie, in fact, is the fresh-faced youth and sweetness of the leads. Danes is more comfortable with her lines than is DiCaprio. She has translated them admirably to suburban middle-class princess talk. But they mime well, gaze at each other marvelously. When Luhrmann changes the balcony scene to a fully clothed romp in the pool, it works because of the actors — and perhaps because the imagery and mood suggest “Rebel Without a Cause.”
Still, only Postlethwaite and Margoyles, as the thoughtful friar and bubbly nurse, give what you could call complete performances. Perrineau, who has one of the play’s great acting parts as Mercutio, is hamstrung. The drag act seems a stunt, and the scenarists have puzzlingly excised some of Mercutio’s funniest double entendres — like the “bawdy hand of the dial” line, in which McEnery reveled.
Tybalt is a smaller part, but it can often steal the play — as Michael York (in the 1968 movie) and 19-year-old Orson Welles (on Broadway) did. John Leguizamo, a chameleonic actor, plays Tybalt as a not-so-bright, narcissistic psychopath. It works, but barely.
On the other hand, there’s Paul Sorvino as Fulgencio Capulet, who gives a performance so bizarre that, even though “Fulgencio” was Cuban ex-dictator Batista’s name, it’s hard to figure out what nationality Capulet is. At times he could be an Eastern European ventriloquist from Mexico trying to make it on the Borscht Belt.
Item by item, the movie’s nonstop updating may strike you as good or ingenious — as in the prologue and epilogue, done in the form of chirpy mechanical newscasts (by Edwina Moore). Or the way Romeo’s failure to get Juliet’s letter is blamed on lousy postal service.
But other “improvements” pale. When Romeo breaks into St. Peter’s to see Juliet’s body, he’s pursued by police helicopters and is pulling along a hostage, holding a gun to his head. Yet as soon as he gets inside, the cops take a breather. To accommodate the last scenes?
“R&J” makes sense only as a patchwork of modernisms. It’s fun — sometimes spectacular fun — but it’s easy to drift out of the film entirely, let the big movie visual buzz drone on without you.
Though I like this film no more than Al Pacino’s Shakespeare documentary “Looking for Richard,” I’m strongly in favor of both movies as ideas. Shakespeare deserves to be constantly performed, reinvented, replayed. He is no more harmed by “R&J’s” absurdities than by last year’s fuzzy Edwardian “Richard III,” with Ian McKellen.
And one of the craziest things about “R&J” is that Luhrmann may really be right. Kids who think Shakespeare is dull (an attitude worth pitying) may dig this new version, which might be called “Rome and Jules.” What can you say? Parting is sweet, dude.
”ROMEO & JULIET”
(star) (star) 1/2
Directed by Baz Luhrmann; written by Craig Pearce & Luhrmann, based on Shakespeare’s play; photographed by Donald McAlpine; edited by Jill Bilcock; production designed by Catherine Martin; music by Nellee Hooper; produced by Gabriella Martinelli. Luhrmann. A 20th Century Fox release; opens Friday. Running time: 2:00. MPAA rating: PG-13.
THE CAST
Romeo Montague …………………….. Leonardo DiCaprio
Juliet Capulet …………………….. Claire Danes
Mercutio ………………………….. Harold Perrineau
Juliet’s Nurse …………………….. Miriam Margolyes
Tybalt ……………………………. John Leguizamo
Father Laurence ……………………. Pete Postlethwaite
Ted Montague ………………………. Brian Dennehy
Fulgencio Capulet ………………….. Paul Sorvino
