DOUBLAS BOOTH AND HAILIEE STEINFELD IN ROMEO AND JULIET

Another, prettier Romeo

Notably this new film of Shakespeare's classic romantic tragedy has a young English actor called Douglas Booth who has a particularly pretty face. This may ultimately be its claim to fame just like the bare butts in Zeferelli's version, which however unlike this had some big scenes that really sang. What happens to the dialog early on this time is that it's spoken "naturally," meaning they seem to have forgotten they're reciting not only poetry, but some of the most famous poetry in the English language. The guy who wrote Gosford Park, and so on, Julian Fellowes, did the rewrite, and he seems to have left out and moved around a lot. They didn't (intentionally anyway) change the plot or "update" anything. The settings are authentic and lovely. This is an Italian production with an Italian director, unknown to English speakers, Carlo Carlei, and they shot the film actually in Verona and Mantua in real and regal Italian renaissance gardens, palaces that are distractingly gorgeous but provide nice things to look at while the language is being buried. Unfortunately this may be the way a lot of young people experience the play now and they won't hear the words.

Eventually Douglas Booth gets into his part and puts some English on a few of his lines, but only a few of the actors seem to have classical Shakespearean backgrounds. Damian Lewis as Lord Capulet laying down the law to Juliet when she balks at marrying County Paris seems from another, more emphatic and caring, school of acting. But everybody has a different idea of how to do it. Ed Westwick, of Gosspi Girl, plays Tybalt as deep-throated and bombastic. As Juliet, Hailee Steinfeld, the young girl who starred in the Coens' remake of True Grit is very sweet. She is lovely, but unfortunately her beauty is overshadowed by Douglas Booth's glowing skin, chiseled cheekbones, etc., etc. It's not clear that she and Romeo ever quite come together. It's like an opera: they sing their arias next to each other. It doesn't help that the balcony scene is in a location so grand Romeo comes from several storeys below to get to her. Kodi Smit-McPheee is another young actor from a movie, the dreary film of Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Though he's only around seventeen and looks younger, though he's tall, he plays Romeo's friend Benvolio with fluency and commitment -- an actor of great natural gifts. With his fluidity and naturalness surely this kid is going places.

Then there is Stellan Skarsgård as the Prince of Verona, who seems stolid and crude; of course he doesn't have an English accent or put one on convincingly. And the same is true of Paul Giamatti as Frian Laurence. It's a collage of different nationalities and different acting styles. There are Italians too, including the well-known Laura Morante as Mrs. Montague. There are some extra bits of business added in the tragic final scenes that are more physical and vivid but borderline creepy. The influence of Dario Argento? But this is a very straight, pretty version that doesn't take risks, at least not intentionally. Zeferelli was taking more risks when he made his version, with the sexiness, the physicality of the (also pretty, but better integrated) young actors, the romantic prettiness of the music in the masked ball sequence, and so on: it was 1968, a time of taking chances, and these things then were new.

This isn't such a time, but it also doesn't seem to be a time when there is much respect for Shakespeare. As a result it's hard to remember anything but the courtyards, the topiary garden, and the many glowing frescoes, and the way the scenes of Frian Laurance don't look like a monastery but like the Vatican, only better. The kisses and stabbings and poisonings are staged well as action, but they are not integrated with, and made subservient to, the poetry, so they are not truly Shakespeare. Even if as Tasha Robinson suggests in her review in The Dissolve, Fellowe's shortening and alternation of the text distorts some of the play's most basic meanings, the movie still probably isn't quite as horrible as some of the critics are making it sound. But it isn't truly good or memorable or admirable either.

Carlo Carlei's film version of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, 118 mins., premiered in Los Angeles 24 Sept. and opened 11 Oct. in the US, UK, and other English-speaking countries.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.