Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet: A Film Review
The story of Romeo and Juliet is one of the most celebrated and most popular work that made William Shakespeare known in the world. It has been produced and published in different versions: as a play, different film versions, and even songs derived from the story had been produced. Making it very popular even in today’s time.
In Zeffirelli’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, the film was striking enough to have its viewers feel sympathy about the fate of the two young lovers. The actors who portrayed the characters did a great job in bringing the characters into life. Leonard Whitting as Romeo who was very good looking and the way he delivers his lines would give the female viewers the infatuation that I even felt while watching; Olivia Hussey as the ever loving Juliet, was very good and that her pairing with Leonard was really perfect.
If to align the movie with Shakespeare’s original script, there are selected scenes that are removed from the film that I have observed such as the part Capulet instructs one of his servants to hand out invitations for the ball in their home, it was not in the film but the scene managed to work without including that specific scene. Another scene that was not included in the film but worked out would be when Paris visited Juliet in the Capulet’s tomb, since I hated Paris’ role, this scene without him worked well on Romeo because the atmosphere was very dramatic, that I feel bad and tensed because he did not know that Juliet was only asleep.
However, there are some scenes that I wished Zeffirelli still included in the film, such as the part wherein Romeo bought the poison while being exiled in Mantua, I guess it can be paralleled when Juliet was desperate to escape her marriage to Paris that helped Friar Laurence create that sleeping potion. If I only based on the film and did not read the script, I may wonder where Romeo got that poison. Another would be one of the final scenes, when Friar Laurence revealed everything in front of the Prince, the Capulets, the Montagues and the rest, that scene was very important for me, because he was the lone witness to the relationship of both Romeo and Juliet, he supported and even officiated the marriage of the two, and that everyone who heard Friar Laurence’s statements began to give nods or understand why that tragedy happened, and feel bad for the two families.
Towards the ending of the film, I was waiting for the reconciliation of the two families, but only to be disappointed of the ending, Romeo and Juliet may be both placed together inside the tomb, but their families in the film looks as if they don’t care or pity each other but only grieves over their lost child. But in the original text, through the statements of Friar Laurence, Page and Balthasar, the Prince uses the chance to make the two families forgive each other and to at least give tribute to the forbidden love of Romeo and Juliet.
It also possesses the theme of fate, as the two lovers were met by fate – the two did not even know that their families hated each other, but their love sprung out of that hate. Another would be the involvement of time as if the time is against them and they need to do many things as early as they can (such as marrying the day after they met). Throughout the film, it mostly revolves on the fate and love of the two for each other that not even death can separate them.
Overall, the film of Zeffirelli did a great job in creating Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, basing from the settings, characters, they were all good as if Shakespeare handpicked the actors himself, and the language though in old English, sounded okay while watching it, as if I was taken back in time and I am witnessing firsthand the love story of the two. I was really amazed by Hussey’s beauty because she really looked as if my imagination for Juliet.
Zeffirelli may remove some scenes based from the original script, but I enjoyed watching the film, felt bad over Mercutio’s death, hated Tybalt, and loved the Nurse. Since he did not pushed included the reconciliation of the two families towards the ending; the ending for me is okay providing the silences of both families in the end, but I was expecting for more, so my overall review for the film is that the actors did a great job portraying their characters, the way speak their lines were very poetic and dramatic, the scenes in the film were carefully chosen which of which are to remove and exclude, though it did a great job for the film to become a powerful one.
