This romantic movie is an adaptation of William Shakespeare's tragedy play Romeo and Juliet.
As our Main Task involves creating the first five minutes and opening titles to a new film I have only watched and analysed the first portion of the film to keep my analysis relevant to what I will be doing.
This film is distributed by 20th Century Fox
CHARACTERS:
Voice Actors:
Leonardo DiCaprio = Romeo
Claire Danes = Juliet
Jamie Kennedy = Sampson
Dash Mihok = Benvolio
John Leguizamo = Tybalt
Vincent Laresco = Abra
THE TITLE SEQUENCE:
The title sequence involves showing shots of each of the main characters that have been taken on from later in the movie and placing their names and titles next to them. It is extremely quick paced before cutting to different shots of the characters. I believe it is quick paced so to reflect the drama and impact that the movie and each of the events within it has.
Music
In the introduction to the film no music is playing to place emphasis on the news reporter reading out the iconic prologue to the source text, but as her voice ends a very abrupt and dramatic sounding song bursts through the footage. I believe that this is to set the scene for a very dramatic film, but at once the manner in which it is presented with the footage also suggests a more parodical and carefree film. The track that is played is called 'O Verona' and is presented below.
When the title cards have passed, a modern sound rap song is used as a diegetic sound method coming from the radio of a car to show the modernisation of the adaptation.
ADAPTATION:
This movie adaptation stays true to the source text in terms of the characters and depth of storyline, but is placed in a modern, gangsterism phased styled setting. The dialogue is ripped directly from Romeo and Juliet, and is not modernised to fit the characters and more modern setting which . The characters are presented the same as how they originally were in the text, with them all meeting in the same manner and all characters meeting the same fate as they did in the source play, such as Mercutio dying from Tybalt's hand and Tybalt then being killed by Romeo.
ROMANCE:
This film is very heavily romantic as it follows the original plot of Romeo and Juliet. In the opening titles of the film it is made very apparent that it is a romance based film with the reading of the original prologue, which details the very romantic plot.
CONVENTIONS:
Some Romance film conventions are immediately addressed in this opening. One of these is the idea of an urban environment and we are immediately made clear that the setting of the film is in a large city as shown by the extreme long shots that show off the high-rise buildings of the city. This then allows for Romeo and Juliet to meet later on in the film.
SHOT TYPES:
This shot takes on a downwards angle, and follows immediately after one character, Abra, frightens the character shown on screen. This downwards angle is designed to show the submission shown in the fearful man, and how he may be less brave or less worthy than Abra.
A major theme in the film is the idea of identity and superiority, and in the film and original text neither of the feuding households is ever presented with more dignity or of being superior to their opponent. This is also very clearly shown in the shot types chosen as each of the characters from the different households are introduced. They are all level close up shots, and none have different angles to other characters, therefore showing no superiority over one another and each character is presented in the same way.
MISE EN SCENE:
This is the arrangement of everything in a scene.
The colours in the scenes are highly saturated, which gives the footage a very whimsical and fairy-tale esque mood to it. We do not see much of the telltale and expected balcony which would be expected in the classic story and instead see bright colours and modern scenery. A lot of the scenes are framed naturally by buildings and trees.
And thus concludes my analysis of Romeo + Juliet
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