Spotlight

Spotlight Date: 16-May-10
Spoiler Rating: Medium

Romeo and Juliet (1968)

It is appropriate that the title characters of Romeo and Juliet are teenagers since their story drips with a hysteria typically ascribed to hormone-addled high schoolers in love. Sure, all of Shakespeare's tragedies are over-the-top, with emotions at a fever pitch and minds abuzz with complex schemes, but this one has a distinctly adolescent feel. As in shows on The WB (or panels of the Peanuts comic strip), the adults in Romeo and Juliet seem distant and ineffectual. In this world feelings and actions are equated with life and death. Young men persist in gang warfare despite a strict law forbidding the crime. A girl resorts to the dark arts to keep the boy she wants. Everybody whines if their pride or project is crossed. It is fortunate, therefore, that when Franco Zeffirelli filmed the Bard's classic he tried to make it accessible to all. His picture features comely stars in gorgeous locations, and its action speaks for itself even when the language might confuse a modern ear. It is quite watchable for an essentially overwrought tale.

Most people know the background of the romance even if they don't know the details: how Romeo (Leonard Whiting) and Juliet (Olivia Hussey) come from Italian families locked in a feud. They are in fact children of the rival clans' leaders, seemingly primed to perpetuate a tradition of hate. They meet when Romeo crashes a masquerade at Juliet's house and instantly fall in love. Vowing to wed later that night, they quickly carry out their plan with the aid of Juliet's maid (Pat Heywood) and a meddling monk (Milo O'Shea). But no sooner has the happy event taken place than everything comes undone. Juliet's father betroths her to another man, not knowing of her elopement, and a new outbreak of fighting leaves two youths dead, one at the hand of Romeo. There follows an avalanche of sorrow involving banishment, bitter tears, scary potions, and suicide.

The lovers' swooning is of course idealized, which suits Whiting's golden boy looks. (He is a ringer for Zac Efron.) The real heat comes from Hussey, a newly opened flower with a palpably human, i.e., fallible and tempestuous, core. Her earthiness grounds the story even as her beauty elevates it, and the human element is echoed in a few sweaty fight scenes and interactions that reveal a character's individuality. A notably twisted moment finds the wag Mercutio (John McEnery) staggering around with a mortal wound while his friends laugh because they think he is joking (ouch). The movie conveys the impression that the cobbled streets of Verona, like modern malls and gym classes, are populated with hotheads and hotter hearts whose passion must lead to dramatic ends.

Copyright © 2010 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.