Part 3: Five More Changes to the Final Scene
Part 1: The Wedding Venue
Part 2: The Suicide Scene
Argument
Luhrmann departs from Shakespeare’s text in five more significant ways, all of which are deeply ironic, reversing Shakespeare’s own changes to the original story.
Believe you me, we're not the first butchers of the Bard.
—Baz Luhrmann (DVD Extras: Audio Commentary by Baz Luhrmann et al)
1. Luhrmann cuts Romeo’s murder of Paris
Luhrmann himself described his final scene as “beautiful” and “serene,” and indeed it is. But the beauty and serenity are only possible because he cuts a major event: Romeo’s murder of Paris. In Shakespeare’s text, the final scene goes as follows: Romeo arrives at the Capulet tomb, finds Paris mourning Juliet’s death, tells him to leave, starts a fight with him when he doesn’t—“Then have at thee, boy!” (5.3.70)—then stabs him through with his sword. Subsequently, multiple characters see Paris’ blood on the ground, the count himself “steeped in blood” (5.3.150). To eliminate this event is massively consequential, first because this is Romeo’s second homicide in as many days. Second because of its close proximity to his suicide, Romeo killing himself a mere fifty lines later. And third because of the explicit sinfulness of the act. Specifically, in threatening Paris, Romeo exclaims,
Put not another sin upon my head
By urging me to fury. (5.3.62-3)
Thus, the deed is these things exactly: an act of unrestrained “fury” and a grave “sin.” And not just “a” sin. “Another” sin, suggesting a multitude. This—right before he commits the ultimate one! Below, I’ll comment on the irony of this edit, Shakespeare having added the murder to the story as he found it in his principal source.
2. Luhrmann makes Romeo patient
In the film, Romeo, having escaped the cops, finds refuge inside the church where Juliet’s body lies. After taking a few moments to rest, he begins to move hesitantly forward toward the open casket. As the screenplay says,
Romeo walks slowly down the aisle, each painful step bringing him closer and closer to the sleeping girl (135).
This Romeo moves “slowly,” even meditatively. And yet his measured pace stands in stark contrast to the text, where Shakespeare’s Montague moves as quickly as possible. For example, the instant he hears of Juliet’s death, Romeo hires “post-horses” to get to the tomb (5.1.27). Balthazar urges him to think before he acts—“I do beseech you, sir, have patience. / Your looks are pale and wild and do import / Some misadventure”—but Romeo replies, “Tush, thou art deceived” (5.1.28-31). Once inside the vault, he calls on the poison itself to take effect “now at once,” a redundant phrase that emphasizes the extreme haste with which he acts (5.3.117). Subsequently, the Friar will say he killed himself “some minute” before Juliet woke up (266). To have Romeo move “slowly”? One wonders once again what Luhrmann would have done if he’d deliberately sought to flout the text.
3. Luhrmann makes Romeo pious
Luhrmann’s Romeo appears deeply reverential throughout the final scene. For example, he looks up multiples times. At what? The statue of the Virgin Mary above the altar. First as he opens the inner doors of the church, out of habit or deference or both. Second upon approaching Juliet’s body, when his tear-filled eyes turn up and stay up for 5+ seconds, in a kind of pious complaint. And third as he takes his life. In particular, as he lifts the vial to his mouth, Romeo gazes upward for a full 10 seconds. A snapshot:
You can see the vial near the bottom of the screen, the earnestness in his eyes. The expression, the gesture: these aren’t those of a young man acting hastily or thoughtlessly, much less profanely. The opposite: he’s acknowledging a higher power—and appealing to it. My fate, our fate lies in your hands, he seems to be saying. But Romeo—pious? Pleasant as it might be, this characterization bears zero resemblance to the young man in Shakespeare’s play. For example, Romeo calls his murder of Paris what it obviously is—a “sin,” as we saw above. In addition, he calls himself “desperate” multiple times. For instance, he warns Paris, “tempt not a desperate man” (5.3.59). “Desperate” is an extremely significant and loaded term, conveying not just hopelessness and recklessness but something worse still: damnation—a topic I’ll take up another time. Explicitly sinful, explicitly desperate—and multiple times over. And what does the Baz have Romeo doing? Looking serenely, earnestly heavenward.
4. Luhrmann gives the lovers their own time and space
In the final part of the film, the lovers have our exclusive attention for a full 10 minutes. They’re alone together in the church, and their time goes uninterrupted. In terms of sound, there’s either rich, spiritually charged silence, or melodic orchestral music, both of which function to maximize the audience’s sympathy with the couple. Yet these too constitute gross digressions from the text. To start with, the tomb is far from unoccupied. Rather, it’s filled with skeletal remains. As Juliet says, the tomb’s where “the bones / Of all my buried ancestors are packed” (4.3.41-2). In addition, there are the “bloody” and even “festering” bodies of Romeo’s murder victims, Tybalt and Paris, as I discussed in Part 2. Nor is the lovers’ time uninterrupted—not even close. Rather, they’re intruded upon three separate times! First by a 20-line dialogue between the Friar and Balthazar (5.3.121-43). Second by a 10-line dialogue between the Friar and Juliet (153-165). And third by a brief interaction between Paris’ servant and a watchman (173)—a dialogue that interrupts Juliet’s death-speech! Therefore, the lovers’ time is completely fragmented. It’s not hard to see why a director would want their final moments to be both continuous and exclusive, but to do so is again to go directly against what we find in Shakespeare’s text.
5. Luhrmann cuts the shipwreck imagery
Luhrmann keeps Romeo’s penultimate words, where he gives Juliet one last kiss. But he cuts his ultimate, where he likens his suicide to a shipwreck. Specifically, he cuts Romeo’s cry,
Come, bitter conduct, come, unsavory guide!
Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on
The dashing rocks thy seasick weary bark! (5.3.116-18)
As I’ve argued in an article on the nautical motif, Romeo’s “pilot” here is Cupid, the blind god over to whom he handed “steerage of [his] course” near the end of Act 1, just before the Capulet ball (1.4.119). Did you know this about Romeo’s fate—that just seconds before his wife wakes up, he hurtles himself precipitously upon the “rocks”? That his suicide’s a self-inflicted shipwreck? A rash, ill-judged journey resulting in disaster—it’s the most important motif in the play! And one that makes no appearance in the film.
Ironic reversions
To conclude, I want to return to the director’s claim of authenticity and point out something deeply ironic about all five of the changes discussed here, namely, that they reverse Shakespeare’s own changes to the story as he found it in his principal source, Arthur Brooke’s Romeus and Juliet, a 3000-line version published several decades before his own (1562 and 1595, respectively).
For example, in Brooke, Romeus arrives at the tomb—and enters to be with Juliet. He doesn’t murder Paris, doesn’t find him there at all. Only Shakespeare has this happen. Therefore, to cut the homicide is to reject Shakespeare’s version in favor of the original.
Similarly, in having Romeo move “slowly,” Luhrmann’s Montague resembles Brooke’s far more than Shakespeare’s, Brooke’s Romeus exhibiting no sign of haste.
Similarly again, whereas Romeo’s play-concluding conduct appears nefarious and even damnable, Brooke’s Romeus is deeply pious. For example, in his final speech, he kneels and prays to God for 7 lines, begging him for mercy (2674-80). Thus, to have Romeo look reverently upward—to have him hold the gaze of the Virgin Mary as he downs the contents of the vial—is again to revert back to the earlier telling.
And whereas Shakespeare denies the lovers exclusive time and space, Brooke mostly gives them the same. Toward the end of Brooke’s poem, the Friar does arrive and urge Juliet to come with him, but he speaks only a few lines before fleeing. Juliet then speaks to Romeo for almost 50 lines without interruption (2731-60, 2773-88).
Finally, while Shakespeare’s Romeo deliberately wrecks his bark, Brooke’s Romeus successfully steers clear of the rocks, saving both himself and his marriage. Thus, to cut the Montague’s calamity-at-sea is again to abandon the Shakespearean for the pre-Shakespearean telling of the story.
A to B—then back to A. That’s the pattern, again and again, and involving the most significant of events.
Can you imagine? The director takes what’s most definitively Shakespearean—his own careful reworking of the Romeo & Juliet story—and systematically undoes it, nullifying his unique imprint on the story.
Then uses his name to promote the film, advertising it—nay, entitling it—as “Shakespeare’s” own.
Just because you’re illiterate doesn’t mean you’re stupid.
The Butcher of the Bard
Does it seem unfair to be so critical of Baz’s unfaithfulness to the text?
It appears to have been what he expected—and knew he deserved!
How’s this for a nickname? The “Butcher of the Bard.”
What do you think? Too harsh?
It’s his own coinage.
What he and his co-screenwriter, Craig Pearce, called themselves as they sliced and diced their way through Shakespeare’s verse.
And.
What they wore on their heads as they wrote.
In Pearce’s words,
We used to joke that the critics would call us “the Butchers of The Bard” – so we figured we would just own that idea. We even had caps made with that embroidered on it, which we’d wear while we were writing.
Some things you can’t make up.
To judge by this remark—to judge by this self-accusing sobriquet—Luhrmann knew very well he’d savaged the text, and expected to be savaged in turn by the professional readers of Shakespeare, who would see what he’d done and call him out for it.
What happened instead?
Multiple Academy awards.
Also a little too perfect. A little too apt.
I appreciate your tracing of the history of the story's source, one with which I was not terribly familiar. Shakespeare's addition of the murder of Paris adds such delicious moral ambiguity to the climax of the play, and despite the fact that I enjoy butchering the Bard as a hobby, Luhrmann's choice in this case has always baffled me, as it actively makes the story less interesting.
Interesting post on Romeo and Juliet! I haven't seen Luhrmann's version, but your critique did remind me of another writer he butchered: F. Scott Fitzgerald.
There were many things to like about Luhrmann's "The Great Gatsby" (my favourite novel). His depiction of the era was over the top, yes. To be "faithful" to reality wouldn't convey the wildness of the time -- it would look way too staid by today's standards. By using stylized, hyperbolic, art deco-based imagery, he was able to make the audience feel what it was like during that era better than any true-to-life depiction could. So kudos on that.
But there were at least two changes he made that I disagreed with. One was choosing to have Nick so tramautized that he's in mental health crisis, struggling over ethical elements of the story and how he felt about them. (Really?)
The other falls in line with your argument against his interpretation of Romeo and Juliet -- changing the text. He drops what is probably the most quintessential line in the book (aside from the last line): "Her voice is full of money." Gatsby says. Either Luhrmann doesn't understand the story or he's wilfully butchering it to suit his own artistic vision.
Don't get me wrong -- I'm not *morally* outraged he did this. Any adaptation is going to make changes to suit the next medium, and I believe whole-heartedly in artistic licence. But the adaptation should at least convey the spirit of the source material. Otherwise, why bother? (I guess that makes me *artistically* outraged... lol)
In this case, as I said at the time, he ended up with a lesser Gatsby rather than a greater one. (Insert groan here...)
In all fairness, most (maybe all) Gatsby scholars agree that there has never been a good movie adaptation of this book -- I wonder as many of them do if there ever could be. But Luhrmann's was, in contrast to your summation of Romeo and Juliet, a little less perfect and a little less apt than the source material.
~Graham