1.5 and 2.1 - Romeo and Juliet�s first meeting
The moment Romeo and Juliet meet, all masks seem to fall away, all prior emotions fade into nothingness, and all games become earnest. - Steven Greenblatt
Both Zeffirelli and Luhrmann recognised that the first meeting of the title characters provides �a major opportunity for artistic license for any director, either on stage or in film� . Both subsequently decided to use song to illustrate the subtext of their interpretations, cutting between a singer and the lovers� first contact. In Zeffirelli�s version, Romeo pulls away his mask when he first sees Juliet dancing to deliver the �O, she doth turn the torches to burn bright� speech (1.5.41-7), before hurriedly hiding behind it when he sees Tybalt. Henceforth, Romeo is depicted as attempting to initiate some form of contact, participating in the Maresca where a circle of women are enclosed by a circle of men. This arrangement highlights Zeffirelli�s structuring of the scene as an awakening of sexual desire for both characters, but with subtly different connotations. Romeo, having resumed his mask, makes a conscious effort to get close to Juliet in an almost predatory fashion. In contrast, Juliet though intoxicated by the dance (she spins out of the Maresca during its climatic stages), attempts to seek out Romeo with a innocent, wide-eyed curiosity. This culminates when a singer takes centre stage and proceeding to deliver a song that juxtaposes fire (male passion) and ice (female purity), before affirming the inevitability of death and the decline of youth, bearing distinctly carpe diem sentiments (and prefiguring the lover�s tragic destiny) . The most poignant sequence occurs during this song, where Zeffirelli alternately cuts between the (masked) Romeo and wide-eyed Juliet searching for each other among a crowd who are all too enraptured by the singer�s performance to take any notice.
Luhrmann�s version of the scene appears to self-consciously evoke many of the visual techniques of Zeffirelli, but suggests a subtly different reading. Firstly, it is Romeo rather than Juliet who suffers inertia and intoxication on the dancefloor: there is far less the sense of DiCaprio�s character being a sexual predator. Rather, Luhrmann seems to make the sex drives of the two lovers roughly equal, in an attempt to emphasis the pure, balanced nature of their love . Again, Romeo discards his mask before his first sighting of Juliet, but he does so coincidentally, to wash his face after recovering from the drug Harold Perrineau�s Mercutio had given him earlier, and never puts it back on. Poignantly, the lovers� first sight of each other is through water, specifically the tank that separates the male and female restrooms. Here, Luhrmann establishes a visual motif for the lovers that will be returned to: Romeo and Juliet�s love seems to take place in an underwater world where all obstacles to their love momentarily dissolve. Romeo�s washing of his face serves to create a visual parallel between himself and Juliet (the first image of Danes� Juliet in the film � with the exception of flashforwards � shows her face underwater), that ultimately draws them together. This visual metaphor works in similar way to Zeffirelli�s shroud, returning repeatedly after this encounter in the balcony, consummation and tomb scenes to imbue the events with an increasing sense of inevitability. As Loehlin persuasively contends, �Luhrmann�s aquatic insulation of the lovers leans towards sentimentality, but it is actually part of the film�s fatalism. Romeo and Juliet�s love literally has no place for this world � Luhrmann reminds us of this repeatedly through brutal editing that shatters his lovers� idylls� .
Luhrmann�s choice of music is also highly important in this scene. Choosing to replace Zeffirelli�s �What is youth?� score with two adamantly modern tracks, namely �Young hearts run free� and �Kissing You�, Luhrmann consciously encourages an experienced audience to compare them to the Zeffirelli. By repeatedly cutting between the lovers and the singers, Luhrmann�s mimicry of Zeffirelli is quite blatant. Young Hearts, with its lyrics �never be hung up / hung up like my man and me� seems to echo the carpe diem sentiments (albeit less forlornly) of �What is Youth?�, whilst �Kissing You� stresses the need for lovers to be together . Yet before we have the opportunity to get bound up in comparing, Luhrmann undercuts the whole comparison he himself sets up by snapping to a partygoer at a urinal. Again, Luhrmann�s duel attitude to the film becomes most evident: whilst acknowledging and engaging with the inevitable academic debate concerning the sources for his film, he is also ready to deflate and make fun of any audience attempting to treat it as overtly meta-cinematic �art-house� Shakespeare. Throughout the film, Luhrmann never sacrifices the assistance of the storytelling to indulge in making obtrusive gestures to Zeffirelli for their own sake.
2.1 - The Balcony
The staging of the balcony scene - the iconic image of Shakespeare�s play - again demonstrates Luhrmann�s delight in acknowledging its performative history (specifically Zeffirelli�s} and using that consciousness to forge his own reading. He borrows heavily from Zeffirelli in his choice of shots, with an almost perfect rendition of his predecessor�s initial establishing shot of the garden and a later shot of the window. Yet in both cases Luhrmann proceeds to gloriously undercut the convention, �freeing the young actors from expectations of grand and lyrical passion� and injecting into the scene spontaneity that surpasses Zeffirelli. On Romeo�s first entrance, his approach of the balcony is suddenly interrupted by the flash of security lights; his subsequent scurrying into the shadows allows the tone to become more light-hearted after the recent discovery that his beloved is a Montague. Similarly, whereas Zeffirelli�s Juliet finally emerges through the window, here the Nurse makes an unexpected entrance. Hence, while Zeffirelli�s young performers struggled under the burden of attempting to give as faithful a rendition of the scene as they could, Luhrmann subtly integrates moments of low comedy to relieve the building expectation on his performers.
