There is a scene in the Stephen King novella Apt Pupil where a schoolteacher lectures her class on the concept of a sliding doors moment- an incident that changes someone’s life, usually related to discovering a passion or YOUR GREAT INTEREST (King capitalizes those three words). It’s dark, in the context of the novella, but I had my own sliding doors moment when I was in middle school. My version is not dark. In fact, its colour palette is nothing short of vibrant.
We did a unit on Romeo & Juliet in Language Arts class. (At the time, I noted that in American TV shows and movies, they called it “English class”. By high school, we called it “English class” too.) It was the first romance I ever read. I was that girl in every classroom who tries to be contrarian by shunning anything related to romance or dating- boy bands, Twilight, Nicholas Sparks, all of it. I had seen a single romance movie in my life. A year earlier, a student provided a DVD copy of Edward Scissorhands and we watched it on the coach bus during a school ski trip. This was at the height of Pirates of the Caribbean’s popularity. The girls loved Johnny Depp. I rolled my eyes. I would never admit it, but I ended up loving the movie. I did not cry, but the ending made me feel what I can only describe as an… existential sadness. I can barely explain it now, let alone at eleven years old. I think that was the first time I was introduced to the idea of a lifetime without your beloved due to external factors. It’s still one of my favourite romance movies.
A year later, when reading Romeo & Juliet in class, I started off relatively neutral about it. It was a romance, but at least it wasn’t Twilight. I think what I found intriguing was the act of reading a play- stage directions, dialogue. I read a lot of books as a kid, but this was new territory. The teacher pointed out to us that Elizabethan plays had fewer stage directions than modern ones.
We watched clips from the 1968 film directed by Franco Zefferelli. I enjoyed that. It didn’t seem as old as it was.
Late in the term, probably May, not long before the end of the school year, the teacher popped on the 1996 film, William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet, directed by Baz Luhrmann. I saw the late 1500s Italy in my mind transform into a contemporary Rio De Janeiro, rich in colourscapes, rapid edits, and needle drops. Rewatching it now, I realize that a lot of the Catholic imagery was a novelty for me as a kid. I wasn’t familiar with that world at the time. At 12, I knew what a screenplay was, but that movie was my first exposure to the concept of applying what’s on a page to a screen. 
That summer, I watched the movie half a dozen times on YouTube. This was the wild west days of YouTube, when good Samaritans uploaded movies in parts. I must have watched the trailer at least once a day. I downloaded songs off the soundtrack from LimeWire- “Lovefool” by The Cardigans, “Kissing You” by Desiree, and “You and Me Song” by The Wannadies. I think that last one was my favourite. I read more Shakespeare plays off public domain websites. I edited videos on Microsoft Movie Maker. It was my sliding doors moment for film. These days, I write about film for Peliplat.
William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet grossed nearly $150 million against a $14.5 million budget in 1996, but I like to think that Baz’s real long-term goal was to create a movie that would play in English classes for eternity. Its central thesis is an English class lesson- Shakespeare applies to today. Too bad TVs rolled in on carts don’t count for DGA royalties.
I got the impression that my Grade 7 classmates were neutral to positive on the film. That shifted when I got to high school.
I went to a different school board for high school. Romeo and Juliet was the Shakespeare play we studied in Grade 10. A girl said, “There’s no point to it. They’re two teenagers who date for a week and die.” A history teacher called Romeo and Juliet “the Justin Bieber of Shakespeare”. I hid my enjoyment of it.
A couple years later, I had my first boyfriend. We met at a retail job. I don’t think he had a strong opinion on the play itself, but he hated Baz Luhrmann’s film adaptation. “That was a really bad movie, in my opinion. They’re saying “thee” and “thy,” and they’re driving cars. Like, people don’t say things like that anymore.” I, once again, hid my enjoyment of it.
It was around this time that I became exposed to the idea that Romeo and Juliet (the original play) was intended as satire. The story is inspired by Pyramus and Thisbe, a Greek myth. The story depicts two young lovers from dueling families who talk through a crack in the wall between their two houses. They plan to run away together. A series of misunderstandings on the way to the rendezvous point leads to their deaths. Shakespeare’s play feels like a direct adaptation. It can be read as a satire, or an extended Renaissance-era SNL skit, if you will.
I could not find any scholarly articles presenting Romeo and Juliet as satire. If someone knows more about this, please don’t hesitate to comment or direct message me. This stuff fascinates me.
I am open to the idea of Romeo and Juliet as a satire, but the more I revisit it, including Luhrmann’s adaptation, the more I take the stance that, if you think the story is about a fling between two stupid teenagers, you’re missing the point.
Something that sticks out to me is how little affection Romeo and Juliet’s parents show for their children. Romeo doesn’t interact with his parents at all. His parents send Benvolio to comfort him when he’s depressed. Juliet’s interactions with her parents are mostly focused on her arranged marriage to Paris (by the way, I always forget that Paul Rudd is in Lurhmann’s movie. It throws me off every time I see him.) They don’t listen to Juliet’s feelings. It’s implied that they spend more time on the Montague-Capulet feud and their aristocratic goings-on than they do their own kids.
If Romeo and Juliet were an 80s movie, I don’t think it would be a romance like Say Anything, Pretty in Pink, or Dirty Dancing. A better analogue might be The Breakfast Club. Five teenagers spend a Saturday in detention and open up to each other about the personal struggles that led them there. There’s romance in The Breakfast Club. I’m famously not a fan of it, but it does capture the same universal young love that Shakespeare did 400 years earlier. The budding romances in detention likely won’t last forever, but that’s not the point. The point of the movie is to capture the ways negligent parents and teachers fail kids.
I will say, Baz Luhrmann not leaning more into the “rich celebrity parents” angle is a missed opportunity. His adaptation presents the Capulets and Montagues as families leading rival corporate empires, like in Succession. Brief montages present their kids as the subject of tabloids, like Paris Hilton or the Kardashians. There is a long history of child stars with abusive or negligent parents, from Judy Garland to Jennette McCurdy. These kids, understandably, act out. Tabloids find cases to latch onto. Celebrity media was famously cruel to Lindsay Lohan in the early 2000s. The idea of two teenagers running away from home and impulsively killing themselves due to misunderstandings that would have cleared up had they waited a few hours screams tabloid fodder. This is a modern lens for viewing Shakespeare, but I really think his original play can be read as an Elizabethan equivalent- kids with neglectful parents act out. Some things never change.
Maybe this is just what I tell myself to feel cooler about appreciating Shakespeare’s play and Luhrmann’s film. I shouldn’t need to feel cooler about it. If Romeo & Juliet is, as my history teacher once said, the “Justin Bieber of Shakespeare”, is that so bad? The first Beatles fans were teenage girls.
Baz Luhrmann’s William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet turns 30 this year. So do I. I hope it gets a theatrical re-release. I’d love to see it on the big screen. Please have it be a screening where people dress up like at a masquerade. This month, America celebrates its 250th Independence Day. Please consider watching the superior 1996 film:
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