romeo and juliet leonardo dicaprio full movie

One of Luhrmann’s slyest moves is introducing his key cast with freeze-frames and titles, welcoming a younger audience via soap opera stylings. The famous prologue is now read by a news anchor and the frenetic montage that accompanies it resembles a trailer more than anything else, surely the perfect modern equivalent to a theatrical prologue. It may seem unfaithful to the original text, but Luhrmann actually updates the play with some clever touches. It’s a vision never before seen in Shakespeare and one of the most thrilling opening sequences of all-time. An operatic chorus rises above the chaos as scenes of police brutality and riots flashes across the screen. It begins with a psychedelic crash zoom into the face of a pseudo-Christ the Redeemer statue, planted between two skyscrapers in the fictional LA-esque city of Verona. It’s safe to say that Romeo + Juliet offered a much-needed change of pace. Orson Welles’ 1952 version of ‘Othello’ was so faithful to Shakespeare’s original staging that he even played the lead role himself, rather than cast a black actor. Most, like Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 Romeo and Juliet or Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V, stayed true to the period, with a production and set design that could best be described as authentic. With the Globe Theatre recently rejecting artistic director Emma Rice’s boundary-pushing vision in favour of a more ‘authentic’ Shakespearean experience, it feels a good time to be basking in the 20 th anniversary of Romeo + Juliet, arguably the most experimental Shakespeare adaptation of all time.īefore Baz Luhrmann blew our minds with his incendiary take on the star-crossed lovers back in 1996, the template for Shakespeare adaptations was fairly uninspired.

Romeo and juliet leonardo dicaprio full movie