Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet (1996) does not belong to William Shakespeare. Sure, perhaps the original story was his, but certainly not this treatment of it. No, this feels too much like a garish disguise—too much like pop cultural potpourri. After all, there was an 'and' in Shakespeare's title and here there's just that misplaced mathematical symbol. So, why, pray tell, despite all this, does Luhrmann, an eccentric Australian auteur with an eye for high camp, claim that his R+J, in all its vulgarity, belongs—actually belongs (like Coppola's "Mario Puzo's" The Godfather [1972], for example)—to the playwright-to-end-all-playwrights, Bill Shakespeare?

Actually, to be honest, he's not far wrong. Though Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet is certainly not the same as Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, the manner in which the former has adapted the latter's tragedy does suggest a certain loyalty—a kind of faithfulness in revisionist's clothing, if you will. Now, this is not to say that Romeo + Juliet is particularly faithful to its source text, mind you (it hacks it to pieces with almost reckless abandon, in fact), but rather that the idea and spirit—not even of Romeo + Juliet, but of Shakespeare himself—is very much alive in Luhrmann's work. In this respect the piece becomes, like David Cronenberg's Naked Lunch (1991), a faithful though almost completely analogous adaptation of the writer's method if not his work.

[Shakespeare] was an entertainer, someone who wrote to pull in a paying audience, many of whom could not read and write. In his day he was as popular as any TV series is today. (1)

Luhrmann approaches his 'modernisation' of Shakespeare's text with a mind to (a) entertain the present-day masses, as Shakespeare did in his day, using (where applicable) quasi-Shakespearean methods (the use of popular music and the combination of 'low-brow' comedy and 'high-brow' tragedy) (2) and (b) to 'cinematise' Shakespeare (hence the liberal hacking away at the text) by employing a number of symbols and iconographic images (Luhrmann the semanticist!), which a modern audience with a highly advanced sense of visual literacy could instantly decode and understand.

Take, for example, one of the film's most visually inspired sequences, the gunfight that takes place between the Montague and Capulet 'boys' at the gas station in the film's opening scenes and the pseudo-televised newscast montage that directly follows it. Taking the 'gist' of the scene—'a fight breaks out' (3)—Luhrmann supplies the audience with countless visual, iconographic and generic 'clues' that (should) allow them to transcend the language of the piece and intuitively understand what's going on. He chooses to do this, in this instance, by channelling the Spaghetti Western and, later, the 'live news feed' of a CNN or ABC. (4)

Not very subtle, of course, but it gets the job done. From this, a receptive audience can deduce that (a) there is a violent rift between these two groups that (like the rifts that occur in Westerns) is as much about pride (and the tarnishing of it) as it is about anything else and that (b) this rift has substantial effect on the society that surrounds it—after all, it makes the news! (5)

Luhrmann, like Shakespeare, is an entertainer, and a master manipulator of human emotions. Even the sequence mentioned above (a major set piece, but a minor scene in terms of the film's overall narrative progression) can be seen to jump from slapstick (the Montague boys) to generic parody (the gunfight) to intense drama (the newscast), jerking the audience around to wonderful emotional effect as it does so—very much, as it were, like Shakespeare's writing did (and does). Thus, in 'cinematising' Romeo and Juliet (and, indeed, in adding the 'plus sign' to the title), while remaining true to this fundamental aspect of Shakespeare's work, Luhrmann ultimately adapts the methods, ideas and spirit of the playwright while the play itself comes second. Purists may kick up a fuss, of course, but it's a more than valid method—and as far adaptations go, it's a more than valid revision.

Notes

1. Thomas P. Shakespeare: Page and Stage. Available online at http://www.longman.co.uk/tt_seceng/resources/shakespeare.htm; accessed on October 25, 2004.
2. A technique that is also used to great effect in Bollywood pictures and in Luhrmann's own Moulin Rouge (2001). Truly, a combination of the 'high' and 'low' can be said to democratise the cinema…
3. Taken from a ShakespeareNet act breakdown. Available online at http://shakespearenet.net/romeojuliet/rjbreak.htm; accessed on October 25, 2004.
4. His 'clues,' visual or otherwise, include:

WESTERN

1. music in the vein of Ennio Morricone's Spaghetti Western scores;
2. the substitution daggers and swords for guns;
3. whip-pans, cantered frames and zooms à la the films of Sergio Leone;
4. a 'Mexican stand-off' à la Reservoir Dogs (d. Quentin Tarantino, 1992);

LIVE NEWS FEED

1. helicopter shots;
2. handheld photography;
3. video and static filters;
4. superimposed television network logos.

5. The sequence, of course, especially the latter part of it, conveys far more information than I have discussed here—information about the corporate nature of the Montague and Capulet families, for example, or the giant Christ statue that sits in the middle of Luhrmann's Verona, suggesting a major conflict between the contradictory forces of religion and commerce. I could go on for hours…