Franco Zeffirelli and Baz Luhrmanns Romeo and Juliet :: William Shakespeare

Franco Zeffirelli and Baz Luhrmanns Romeo and Juliet         Sex, drugs, and force-out ar usually a potent combination, and only William Shakespeare could develop them into a masterful, poetic, and  elegant story.  In the play, The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, all these aspects of teenage life hook on the reader or watcher.  It is understood that Hollywood would try to imitate this chef-doeuvre on screen, and it has done so in 2 films Franco Zeffirellis 1968 Romeo and Juliet and Baz Luhrmanns 1996 William Shakespeares Romeo and Juliet.  The updated Luhrmann picture outdo captures the essence of Shakespeare for the present-day viewer.  Through the ingenious use of currentization and location, patch preserving Shakespearean language, the spirit of Shakespeare emerges to captivate a large listening.         Shakespeares plays were designed to align to any audience with this in mind, Baz Luhrmann c reated a film that applies to the modern audience through this updating. Luhrmann modernizes Romeo and Juliet, through constant alterations of the props, which entice the audience into genuinely face the spirit of Shakespeare.  First, the movie starts with an prologue masked as a news mail on television.  This sets the scene of the play by illustrating the violence occurring between the two wealthy families, the Montagues and the Capulets.  In Zeffirellis film of Romeo and Juliet, the prologue takes the form of a dry cashier relating the story of the Montagues and Capulets over a backdrop of an Italian city.  For most modern viewers (especially teenagers), the Luhrmann picture is fast-paced, keeping the spectator intrigued, while the Zeffirelli picture is sour and dull, an endless maze of long and boring conversations, foreshadowed by the prologue.  In Luhrmanns film, the actors, alternatively of carrying swords with them, hide guns in their shirts and wield them expertly.  The death of Romeo and Juliet is (as always) blamed on the mark office, for not delivering the letter properly.  And, to be politically correct, Mercutio appears at the Capulets ball refined as a large woman.  The actors in Zeffirellis version of Shakespeare wear colour tights and bulging blouses thus they appear more comical because they are outdated.  By modernizing these aspects of the play, and reconstructing the prologue, Luhrmann creates a movie