Romeo And Juliet Comparison

The play Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare is about a story of two star-crossed lovers in the middle of a family feud which will ultimately make them lead to their death. The play takes on two different forms made by the directors named Franco Zeffirelli the creator of the 1968 Romeo and Juliet movie taking place in the 16th century and Baz Luhrmann the creator of the 1996 variant taking place in the mid-90s. This essay is will be focusing on how the two renditions of the final scene of the play from the two directors are very different in their own way compared to each other. More specifically the way Juliet is ‘dead’, the lead up to the entering of the tomb and the final part of act five scene 3.
The first comparison of the scene is …show more content…
This part of the scene also has a lot of differences compared to each other. The Zeffirelli version of Juliet’s death shows her as being completely ‘dead’ with no movement at all except for maybe some partial breathing, she also wakes up long after Romeo has killed himself. However, in the Luhrmann version Juliet has much more movement. Juliet is shown slightly breathing, but also acts as if she is about to wake, such as the subtle hand twitches and, later on, the heavy breathing. When she wakes up, she does so in the midst of Romeo killing himself with the poison where she proceeds to try and stop her. The Luhrmann interpretation also gives Juliet’s dialogue a bit of a reverse as in Juliet is saying her lines while Romeo is alive and in pain rather than when he is already dead give the viewer a bit of a sadder feeling knowing Romeo was able to hear what Juliet had to say. The method in which Juliet kills herself is also different. The Zeffirelli rendition makes Juliet take the dagger from Romeo's body to stab herself so she dies, which is true to the play with the camera showing that she dies. The Luhrmann version, on the other hand, takes a slightly different approach to her death by making Juliet find and take Romeos gun, which was laid beside her so she shoots herself in the head but the camera cuts away so you don’t see her actually die. These deaths also lead directly to the final part of the

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