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cin-e-rama: triptych format (three cameras, three projectors) employing a high, wide, deeply curved, three-panel screen, yielding a panorama that extended nearly to the limits of peripheral vision; introduced in 1952.
Visit the Readers Write Back page for this film.
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Kitsch Anyone? Romeo and Juliet does to Shakespeare's play what Clueless did to Jane Austen's novel: it modernizes and updates a classic work for the 12-18 year-old market. After seeing this loud, ambitious movie twice, I remain conflicted about it: while I was moved by it, I also think that it is a piece of manipulative fluff. It's "Teen Beat" magazine in cinemascope. Each generation reinvents Shakespeare for itself. This Romeo and Juliet is ridden with 90s kitsch. It uses Shakespeare's words, but takes its imagery from the exaggerated vocabulary of soap operas, MTV, and the art of Andy Warhol. It was filmed in Mexico City, which is an exaggeration of urban life in itself. The kitsch works well in some sequences: in an invigorating party scene, at which Romeo (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Juliet (Claire Danes) first meet, characters wear costumes that effectively communicate their personalities: Romeo wears the stylish armor of a post-modern knight, Juliet wears the foam wings of an earthbound angel, Capulet (Juliet's domineering father) wears the Caesaric robes of an august patriarch, Mercutio (Romeo's friend and the Prince's kinsman) wears the sequined dress of a drag queen, and Paris (Juliet's establishment-minded suitor) wears the dorky space-gear of a patriotic astronaut. I appreciated the way the movie updated Shakespeare's characters. In this movie, the Prince of Verona is a tough police commissioner, the Capulets and Montagues are rival gangs, the chorus is a TV anchorwoman, and Friar Laurence (Pete Postlethwaite, obviously enjoying himself) is a hip priest who trumpets the benefits of "herbs." Many of these touches are original and thought-provoking; this movie could be understood as a comment on recent racial disturbances in Los Angeles, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Miami, and Crown Heights. The problem is that I'm not sure what, exactly, it might be saying.
At a certain point during the movie, however, the many excesses began to bother me. The brashness that was at first charming soon became tiresome. In many scenes, such as the one in Church where Juliet reposes amid millions of crosses and candles, the layers of kitsch became so thick that I had trouble locating any glimmer of sincerity or feeling. The imagery of Romeo and Juliet has the puffed-up style of a television commercial. Watching this movie made me think of Thomas Carlyle, who, in Past and Present (1843), decried the effects of advertising on shoemaking: "Thy shoes are vamped up falsely to meet the market; behold, the leather only seemed to be tanned; thy shoes melt under me to rubbishy pulp, and are not veritable mud-defying shoes, but plausible vendible similitudes of shoes." At their best, movies such as Romeo and Juliet cannot create true emotions, because they themselves evince none; they can only produce "vendible similitudes" of emotions. That's just not enough for me. Rating (1-5): 3.5 1/31/97
Romeo + Juliet (1996)
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As Romeo and Juliet, Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Daines give effective
performances. The camera adores these young stars. As soft golden light plays over DiCaprio's wet hair, skinny torso, and sensuous lips, one thinks of James Dean's body and Marlon Brando's cheekbones. As the angelic Juliet, Danes looks pristine--until she smirks naughtily while considering that "other part/ belonging to a man." The single best scene of the movie occurs when DiCaprio and Danes first lock eyes through a fish tank. For a few brief moments, pure innocence and charm take command of the screen. These actors, both on the cusp of puberty, convey the wonder and the angst of two young lovers in the throes of an overpowering, but impossible, love. DiCaprio and Danes are a perfect Romeo and Juliet for the 1990's: their budding bodies are completely in sync with the
recent trend of unisex ad campaigns.