Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

Humbersi The first must-see film of the year.

Lollivan It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Ava-Grace Willis Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

little_rhody Quite some time ago I saw the play R&J in New York on which this film is based. It was one of the most exciting evenings of theatre I have experienced. Theater to film transitions aren't always successful due to a shift in emphasis from language and suggestion to visual storytelling. Angels in America is wonderful on stage - not so much on screen. Here the concept of the play was changed just enough to satisfy the visual requirements of cinema but keeps the spirit of the play (sort of). They are different enough to stand apart, and at the same time it can be said this is one of the most successful screen versions of a play.If 75% of all people who rated this film gave it a 6 or better, and if 30% of all the people who rated this film give it a 9 or 10, how can the average rating be 5 point something?!

showtrmp Any gay person will tell you that one of their main problems (granted that they survived adolescence unscarred and are reasonably well-adjusted--that's a big "granted") is that there is no real "language" for romance between two men, or two women. Gay people generally hide their sexuality during the period when others are learning how to express it, and once a gay person has determined to strike out on his or her own, there isn't much in the culture to let them know how to approach another person of the same sex--what the rules are, what to say, what signals to send and how to read the other person. And most "gay movies" that try to fulfill this function are gimmicky and/or maudlin--people in them don't talk like human beings."Private Romeo" solves the problem by using the play still regarded as the last word on young romance--William Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet"--and putting the words of Shakespeare's young lovers in the mouths of two men--cadets at a military training academy. In a sort of limbo while they await orders for transfer, the cadets are (for some reason) studying "Romeo and Juliet" in their classes, and they begin to lapse in and out of the play in their daily lives, as Sam (Seth Numrich) and Glenn (Matt Doyle) meet, fall in love, and play out their destiny in a way that parallels Shakespeare in some ways and departs from it in others. Their classmates follow suit, echoing Shakespeare's world in another way--all of the roles are played by men, and several of them switch from one role to another without any fuss or directorial signaling (after Mercutio's death scene, he simply becomes Capulet).All of this is accomplished without a trace of self-consciousness. The actors behave in a way I don't believe I've ever seen in a modern Shakespeare adaptation--their movements and inflections are completely contemporary, yet the language comes out of them easily--it never seems jarring or archaic. The actors are trained (Numrich and Doyle appeared in "War Horse") so that they do the play honor yet still make it work as a modern movie. Numrich is a convincingly ardent Romeo--when he meets his Juliet at a late-night beer-and-cards bash (substituting for the Capulet ball), he circles him warily, making tentative gestures at his hand and (eventually) his lips ("give me my sin again"). Doyle's Juliet, the center of the movie, registers the moment of Glenn's surrender wonderfully, and from then on he lives only for his love. His face becomes so eager at the thought of Romeo that we long to see it stay that way--the moments when it collapses and shatters with pain become almost unbearable. None of the other students react in conventionally "homophobic" ways--Tybalt (Bobby Moreno) is just another young men left in charge who has gotten full of himself, and who thinks that Sam and Glenn's liaison will disrupt order at the academy. And Hale Appleman's Mercutio is the most ambiguous reading of that role in quite a while--during the Queen Mab speech, we can't tell whether he is cautioning Romeo against the "dream" of gay love, or whether he has a thing for him himself.Sorry to have gone on for so long, but this movie affected me in a very personal way, especially during the balcony scene--or, for that matter, any scene in which Romeo and Juliet are together. The movie does what flashier, "concept"-riddled Shakespeare films don't--it makes what now seems quaint and abstract in the play (the feud, the duels) seem electric. There is genuine tension and peril in the air, plus a tenderness that seems earned. Lines take on new meaning ("I do love--a woman", "Is love a tender thing?", and, especially, "Thy beauty hath made me effeminate"). Spoiler--no one dies here, not even the two title lovers, and yet the stakes are as high as ever. And not even the sternest Shakespeare purist could disavow this ending--especially not one who has seen too many screen homosexuals end in suicide (or too many real-life gay teens doing the same.)

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU A dream for ever and ever. To have "Romeo and Juliet" performed the way it was at the time of Elizabeth and the Globe Theatre, only with men and boys. But dream in the dream, let the boys be boys and not disguised boys, boys in drag, drag queens of sorts. What would happen if…?Alan Brown has just done it. And he pushed his boyization of the play to the farthest point possible. Late teenagers in a military academy, or rather prep school, cadets who want to go to West Point all of them. Not only do the young men play all the roles but they play them with the necessary emotion and force. Romeo and Juliet who are two young men of 17 years of age really live their love as if they were in love, because they are in love, at least they are telling us with their tears, with their voices, with their bodies at all levels of nudity, though nothing frontal, that they are in love and that they spent the night before the lark sings nude in the same bed, spooning one against the other one in the other. We are supposed to be moved by that love and by the hostility it reveals in some of these cadets, but there the film is discrete. No one dies, no one is really wounded, but the fights are real fights since cadets have some experience and training at close combat. And the atmosphere of the academy, though deserted since we only have a dozen cadets left, all the others being out on some field exercise, is reconstructed with small details here and there: the reveille, the flag going up and down, the roughness of an all male community, the showers and the washrooms, the two non-commissioned officers looking after the dozen abandoned cadets and making them march through an empty yard.But that's not the real point. We just have to believe it is real and then the love story it tells is also real and Romeo and Juliet are really in love and they really make love on their last night.The best part, and I am not going to tell you the final twist and the dreadful poison they use to close the show with some surreal event, is the end and Juliet rises from the dead and sings a song that is so true, so powerful, that comes from so far away, 1913, music by James V. Monaco and lyrics by Joseph McCarthy, sung by Matt Doyle who had been such a moving Juliet and is now a charming resuscitated Juliet. That's a beautiful idea that counterbalances the Renaissance beauty of the Pilgrim Sonnet with some modernity. Emotion I guess is in that union of William Shakespeare and Joseph McCarthy in an inspiring trans-gender film, or should I say trans-genre?You made me love you I didn't want to do it I didn't want to do it You made me want you And all the time you knew it I guess you always knew it You made me happy sometimes You made me glad But there were times, baby You made me feel so badYou made me cry for I didn't want to tell you I didn't want to tell you I want some love That's true, yes I do Indeed I do, you know I do Give me, give me, give me what I cry for You know you've got the kind of kisses That I die for You know you made me love youDr Jacques COULARDEAU

walypala I have a couple of pet hates when it comes to Shakespeare: 1. Forced constructs (a lá Kenneth Branagh's As You Like It set in feudal Japan - WTF!?!) 2. Americans (I know it is harsh but I have yet to see an American production that I've not cringed at - Did you see Ethan Hawke in Hamlet?) And then along comes Private Romeo to force a group of American military cadets into Romeo and Juliet.Shakespeare, forced context, Americans.Shakespeare, forced military academy context, hot semi-naked Americans.So I went. I was unprepared. The performances here completely disarmed me. The cast, led by (Seth Numrich - incidentally, Julliard's youngest ever drama student) is phenomenal. Their command of Shakespeare's words is masterful, finding the perfect balance between the flow of natural dialogue and the meter of the verse.Hale Appleman is especially good as Mercutio, and he relishes the early scenes, absolutely smashing the Queen Mab speech. Chris Bresky, too, who takes on the nurse's role has a lot of fun with his role, aided by some clever set up. But, in truth, it is hard to fault anyone in the cast.And the context? That's a bit more tricky.The film kicks off with the students doing a read through of Romeo and Juliet in their class. Thankfully, Brown moves away from the standard 'lives mirror performance' format, as the cadets start to slip into verse with little warning. The military academy works as a setting because the action that is taking place isn't strictly 'Romeo and Juliet'. Shakespeare's dialogue is used to accentuate the action rather than drive it. It soon becomes clear that the masked ball is not going to be a masked ball and that daughters are not going to be girls. Importantly, there are no rival houses, they are mentioned but they are not the cause of the tragedy here, that role is taken up by the undercurrent of homophobia and standard high school pack mentality.If you accept this construct then the world of Private Romeo maintains a concrete internal logic. The cadets can change roles because the speech is more important than the character. Director Alan Brown cleverly signals character changes by flashing back to the classroom scene, re-introducing the boys in the new role.Coming to the film with a solid grasp of the play will certainly benefit. Brown has pared the play back to an extremely fast moving 98 minutes and he has used many techniques to keep the pace moving. Characters are excised or collapsed into single characters, actors double up on roles, and whole plot lines are removed or altered. This is nothing new in producing Shakespeare but it is certainly less common producing his works for the screen.SPOILERS I won't deny that Brown has taken some liberties with the play. The tweaks that Baz Lurhmann made in his excellent 1996 version have been taken a step further here, with both the boys surviving. I didn't find this as jarring as I would have expected. Following on from Tybalt and Mercutio's fight (where neither die) the altered ending maintains the relationship between the traditional play and the play on the screen. Brown's decision also sidestepped the propensity of gays to die at the end of films, a comment in itself.END SSPOILERS There are of course choices that didn't work especially well; a series of lip-synced YouTube videos filmed by the cadets were effective but oddly placed and a song by 'Juliet' over the films credits needs to be hacked off the end (and will be once it reaches my DVD-r).Private Romeo is a fluid, astonishingly acted and relevant addition to the library of 'Romeo and Juliet' on film. Brown's film can sit proudly next to Zeffirelli and Lurhmann as an adaptation that has captured the true beauty of the text and adolescent love.Do not miss!