Comparing William Shakespeare's Romeo And Juliet

Romeo and Juliet Research Paper

William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is now a major term of romantic tragedy over two feuding families between Capulet and Montague. Based on William Shakespeare’s work, there are two different versions of this story. While Franco Zeffirelli’s version conveys an old fashioned style of Romeo and Juliet, on the other hand, Baz Luhrmann’s version demonstrates a modernized version having characteristics of fancy clothes, loud music, and modern atmosphere. Comparing and contrasting these two versions, I prefer Baz Luhrmann’s version in the balcony scene, Act 2 Scene 2. In this scene, Romeo and Juliet get to know their feeling towards each other and make promise to marry. The review from Peter Travers says
A brief summary before scene 2 is that in the Verona city in Italy, Romeo is son of Montague and Juliet is daughter of Capulet. Montague and Capulet are the two conflicting families for a long time. However, Romeo and Juliet fall in love when they first met. In the scene two, it describes late night after the party in Capulet’s house, where Romeo and Juliet first met. After leaving the feast from the house, Romeo looks for Juliet instead of going home. He climbs up the Capulet’s houses wall and sneak out into their orchard. Even though his friends, Benvolio and Mercutio call him, expecting that he would not have gone far yet, Romeo does not answer to them. Romeo then just says, “He jests at scars that never felt a wound.” In other words, it is easy for someone to joke about scars if they’ve never been cut. This saying means that Romeo is hurting because he loves Juliet, but his friend hasn 't been in love so he can 't understand his pain. Romeo enters the house and Juliet
He uses modernized technology in the scene, which we can find in elevators that Juliet appears instead of being on a balcony, and CCTVs, that guards watching for strangers. Also, to show a modern version of the balcony scene, Romeo and Juliet wore costumes for party. In this version Romeo climbed up a fence, although in the classic version he climbed up a tree and over a wall. The guard also came in when Romeo and Juliet were in the pool. This added more tension that Romeo would get caught. In addition, it is more colorful than Franco Zefferelli’s version. Moreover, the way Romeo and Juliet talk they still use some of the same context of the traditional story but is easier to understand because it is modernized. Luhrmann uses film techniques to help make Shakespearian dialogue understandable to a modern audience. He uses techniques such as camera work, appearance and props to convey the idea of a higher power creating sudden love of Romeo and Juliet. The director also uses slow motion shots, low angle shots and close ups. Romeo wore a night costume giving the affect that he was Juliet knight in shining armor and Juliet wore an angel costume giving the affect that she was Romeo’s angle. Romeo did not find Juliet on the balcony, Juliet was on the lower level by the pool talking to the stars about how much she misses and love’s