Living under water is used to good effect. This is why Juliet has to see a LIVE Romeo at the end. Some of the experiment works since we get the message of the difference between what we see and what is true. And what acting skill they have from film is all in the face, not the tongue. Both Romeo and Juliet are incapable of performing the poetry anyway: they are children learning on the job. I imagine Baz directing the players to not worry so much about the poetry. The solution is to convert all the metaphors from language to vision. So here is the solution to the problem on how to make a film (which is primarily a visual medium) out of a play that leverages poetic language. These Latins are superficial visually and not verbally. He deliberately straddles the border between apparent truth and satire. Baz adds the additional dimension of the people being captured by the superstitious underbelly of the Church. It works because these stereotypes are powerful memes which attract many hosts which perpetuate their underlying truth. In this film, the director has exaggerated the Latin macho ethic to have the same effect 16th century Londoners would get. Today, we roll those up under the relatively crude notion of stupid Latin macho. Latins in his day were considered: Foppish: Quick to violence (a stereotype that has been inherited by blacks today, but to Londoners, Italians were nearly Africans): Incredibly proud especially as regards slights to masculinity: Obsessed with weapons. Italians to Shakespeare's England were a comical people, and his setting of the play there would have encouraged the audience to bring heavy stereotypes to the drama. But here we have some interesting choices. While it cut some valuable language, sacrificed to the gods of contemporary patience, it is by far the better version.

Zefrelli made his own choices in the earlier film these were relatively conventional.

But alas it suffers from another blessing which is also a curse: the story itself is so powerful that one can build any sort of film or play or whatever around it and have it be likely to work. So among the plays, this may be one of the hardest to film.

This is not Shakespeare's best play, but it has his best poetry that's because the play is ABOUT language, about the difference between what something is and the language used to describe it.

Play of romeo and juliet script