Baz Luhrmann's Directorial Infidelity in "Romeo + Juliet"
Part 1: The Wedding Venue
Argument
In Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 film Romeo + Juliet, the highest grossing Shakespeare film ever, the lovers get married in a big, beautiful church. Where do they actually marry, according to Shakespeare’s text? In Friar Laurence’s small, windowless “cell.”
Everything we did in [Romeo + Juliet] was about being inspired by Shakespeare… Everything is text based. —Baz Luhrmann
This November 1st is a significant date in the world of Shakespeare studies: the 25th anniversary of the release of Baz Luhrmann’s MTV-style version of Romeo and Juliet starring Leonardo Dicaprio and Claire Danes.
This isn’t just any Shakespeare movie. It’s the highest grossing Shakespeare film of all time, a hugely popular and influential film, and one that continues to be used widely in classrooms.
It’s also a film with “Shakespeare” in its very title, Luhrmann having called it William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet, as you can see above.
That wasn’t bold. It was audacious. The Moulin Rouge man claiming deep knowledge of Shakespeare.
And gave rise to what you’d expect: a reaction in the scholarly literature, where the experts responded by pointing out the film’s many blatant infidelities.
By showing that he cuts approximately 2000 of 3000 lines! Or almost 70% of the text.
That he transforms key scenes almost beyond recognition.
That he tells the story he wanted to tell, his primary text be damned.
Except that:
I’m making that up.
It’s what ought to have happened—and didn’t.
Some film critics panned the movie. For example, Roger Ebert said,
I have never seen anything remotely approaching the mess that the new punk version of “Romeo & Juliet” makes of Shakespeare's tragedy.
But scholars? The only reviewers with the knowledge to point out and call out the film’s many significant distortions and deviations?
Mostly, they took the opportunity—to participate in its popularity. To be as cool and edgy as the down under director himself. To call it a “very fine” movie and say nothing about meaningful changes to or departures from Shakespeare’s text, like the editor of the current Norton critical edition of the play (ix).
About time someone took this bad boy and gave him a good debunking.
Here, I want to take a close look at the wedding venue in the film and text, respectively. Film first.
The Film
The first camera shot says everything. We’re in a massive, beautiful, well-lit church. The camera pans down from the 100ft vaulted ceiling to show a boys choir singing from the balcony. Below, if you look closely, you can see Friar Laurence standing before the altar, Romeo standing near the front with his man, Balthazar, and Juliet walking up the aisle:
Note that the space is immense, yet far from vacant. Rather, it seems almost filled with bodies.
In a subsequent shot, we’ll see at least two more figures: Juliet’s Nurse and a man in black (apparently a bodyguard).
These guests aren’t just there but play an important role, looking on admiringly. The Nurse is very moved by the ceremony, hurrying toward the front, her face filled with excitement and awe. As Juliet approaches, Romeo’s man gives him a sympathetic look.
As such, the lovers aren’t alone in their feelings. Others recognize the trueness of their sentiments.
The church may be mostly empty, but the viewer never gets that impression. The opposite: people are featured in almost every shot.
In fact, Luhrmann is so insistent on peopling the church that he produces a blooper, or goof. Specifically, in one shot, the Nurse and guard can be seen walking up the aisle. In the next, they’re seated near the front. In the next again, they continue walking up the aisle (min 57).
Of course, goofs happen. Still, this particular goof seems highly revealing: Luhrmann doesn’t seem to want us to notice the absence of guests. He doesn’t want a shot of the people-less pews—and so doesn’t allow one.
Summing up:
Luhrmann depicts a wedding that largely conforms to Western marital norms. It takes place in a church. There’s a groom with his best man. There’s a bride who walks up the aisle. There are guests. There’s music.
The text
So, how does this compare to what we find in Shakespeare’s text?
Is Shakespeare’s church similarly big and bright and beautiful?
Not quite.
In fact, there is no church.
Rather, the lovers marry somewhere else altogether.
In a house of prayer—but a much smaller one.
Where?
In a “cell.”
You read that right. A cell.
And this isn’t a point of ambiguity. It’s a point of emphasis.
For example, Romeo tells the Nurse that Juliet
shall at Friar Lawrence’ cell
Be shrived and married. (2.4.185-6)
Later, immediately before the event itself, the Nurse draws further attention to the venue. After returning from her meeting with Romeo, she instructs Juliet,
Hie you hence to Friar Lawrence’ cell.
There stays a husband to make you a wife. (2.6.73-4)
And ten lines later:
Hie you to the cell.
Here’s a screen-shot, so you can see for yourself.
The words above are the last of 2.6. When’s the wedding? In the very next scene—in 2.7. As such, “cell” is nearly the last word—before the sacrament commences.
Bizarrely, Luhrmann actually includes the first of these two lines, his Nurse telling Juliet,
Hie you hence to Friar Lawrence’ cell.
Then has her hurry off—to a cathedral.
(Is the cell where the Friar both works and sleeps? Are there furnishings? How old are they? Is there a desk? A lamp? A bed? Is the cell 10’ by 10’ or more like 5’ by 5’? If there is a bed, is there, perhaps, a stained pillowcase?)
Can Shakespeare have been unaware of the unromantic connotations of such a place? It’s hard to think so. In Lucrece, a poem written about the same time as Romeo & Juliet, a “cell” is the dwelling-place of sin personified. As Lucrece rails against Opportunity, she says,
And in thy shady cell, where none may spy him,
Sits Sin, to seize the souls that wander by him. (881-2)
A “shady” place, where Sin sits alone, pitying himself and looking for diversion—in the corruption of others.
A lightless locale—and a peopleless one. Which brings us to the next point.
The Nurse, Balthazar, the security guard, the choir director plus choir—all are absent from the wedding scene as it appears in Shakespeare’s play.
Juliet goes to the cell alone, unaccompanied by the Nurse, let alone a security guard.
Romeo goes without his man.
The boys choir? It’s absent too. I double-checked.
There aren’t a dozen or more bodies. There are three. There’s the Friar. And the lovers. Period.
There are no guests.
No friends.
No family members.
No music.
No color.
No beauty.
There’s the most unromantic, most depressing thing imaginable. A small, empty, poorly lit room.
One couple get married in the biggest, most awe-inspiring church in town.
The other? A monk’s quarters.
The ascetic equivalent of the prison cell.
Therefore, Luhrmann’s scene isn’t a departure from the play. It’s a distortion. A complete distortion.
The normalization of an abnormal event.
The romanticization of a couple not actually romanticized by the text.
It’s hard to imagine a wider divergence from the text. That is, until we arrive at the culminating and defining scene of the lovers’ suicides.
Coming up next.
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I read Romeo and Juliet in school and remember enjoying it. So when the move came out years later I was very keen to see it. But when I did a lot of the original text I had forgotten. As such the move rewrote the book in my mind. Such a pleasure to read this and remind me how much more depth and intrigue the original script had. I just picked up a copy and started reading the original again. Thanks for the inspiration.
I guess any Shakespeare is better than no Shakespeare. Who knows, it might get kids interested enough to dig deeper. I wouldn't generally expect Hollywood to follow the script too closely at the best of times, and this DeCaprio vehicle made me feel like it was really written by a quorum of media trend analysts. Who knows? If I was going to recommend a recent teen-Shakespeare flick, I'd say "10 things I Hate About You."