Summary
The film opens with the image of a television set, showing a newscast about an ongoing feud between the Montague and Capulet families, and two "star-cross'd" lovers who jointly commit suicide. A title card reveals that we are in Verona—a crime-ridden metropolis in the midst of a power struggle between two warring family empires. Certain key players are immediately introduced, via freeze-frames and subtitles with their names—Fulgencio Capulet (Juliet's father), Gloria Capulet (Juliet's mother), Ted Montague (Romeo's father), Caroline Montague (Romeo's mother), Captain Prince (Chief of Police), Dave Paris (The Governor's Son), and Mercutio (Romeo's best friend). After a rapid-fire montage of images foreshadowing the violent and tumultuous events of the film, the first scene begins in earnest.
The Montague boys—Sampson, Gregory, and Benvolio—are riding around together in a convertible, as throbbing music blares from the car radio. Dressed rebelliously in punk clothes, they pull into a gas station. Suddenly, the Capulet boys—Abra and Tybalt—pull up next to them, wearing all black. Each gang reveals they are holding guns, and Abra taunts and mocks the Montague boys. In retort, Sampson bites his thumb at the Capulet boys, an insulting gesture. As the confrontation escalates, guns are drawn on both sides, and Benvolio intervenes, trying to quell the violence, telling the men to "put up their swords." A close-up reveals the brand of the gun is "Sword 9mm Series S," keeping the presence of firearms consistent with the language of the play. Tybalt, a belligerent and aggressive member of the Capulet family, refuses to comply and incites a shoot-out, which spills out into the streets of Verona Beach. The Chief of Police, riding in a helicopter, shouts through a megaphone for all of the men to throw down their weapons.
In the following scene, the Chief of Police has gathered the patriarchs and key players of the Montague and Capulet families in his office in order to broker a truce and restore order to the city. We learn that this is the third time this kind of violence has broken out in public, and that the Chief of Police will sentence whomever commits a further act of violence to death. As the scene transitions, we join Ted, Gloria, and Benvolio in the Montague limousine as they ride around looking for their son, Romeo. Benvolio explains he has seen Romeo at Sycamore Beach, and Ted and Gloria lament the fact that Romeo is often there, and seems to be in the midst of a deep depression.
The scene shifts once more to Sycamore Beach at sunset; Romeo sits on the edge of a massive derelict proscenium, smoking a cigarette. In voice-over, we hear his soliloquy concerning the paradoxical and tortuous nature of passionate love. As the Montague limousine drives by, Romeo makes his way through a dissolute array of Verona Beach denizens, including prostitutes and the homeless. Benvolio gets out, reassuring Ted and Gloria that he will fix Romeo's mood. Benvolio joins Romeo and they argue about the psychological effects of love. They pass a television set showing Benvolio participating in the film's opening fray and Romeo chastises him for it, but Benvolio brushes off Romeo's scolding.
In the next scene, we are in the Capulet offices with Fulgencio Capulet and Dave Paris. We see that Dave Paris is on the cover of TIME Magazine, a paragon of eligible bachelorhood. Fulgencio explains that honorable men such as himself should be able to keep the peace in Verona Beach, and Paris concurs. Paris asks Fulgencio for Juliet's hand in marriage, but Fulgencio recommends that he wait "two more summers," lest Juliet's virtuousness be "marred." The scene shifts to a sauna, where Fulgencio begins to talk about the decadent party that he will throw that night for Paris and the others.
Suddenly, we are back with Benvolio and Romeo in a billiard hall. Benvolio inquires and teases Romeo about his inability to forget and move beyond his former love Rosaline. He urges Romeo to forget her and let himself look at and be attracted to other women. Romeo seems unable to do so, begging of Benvolio, "Teach me how I should forget to think." A television in the billiard hall informs the men that the Capulets are throwing a massive party that night. Benvolio encourages Romeo to go to the party and meet other women. Benvolio and Romeo, along with fellow Montague Balthasar, depart the billiard hall.
We jump to the Capulet Mansion, where Gloria Capulet is frantically running and screaming throughout the house in a state of undress trying to find Juliet. Banners are being unfurled, tables set, and chandeliers lifted, in preparation for the hedonistic party about to take place. Frustrated, Gloria encounters the Nurse and orders her to "call Juliet forth to me." We see Juliet, her face plunged underneath water, staring dreamily into space. She wanders out of her bathroom in a robe. Gloria sends the Nurse away then frantically calls her back. As she's being sewn up in a corset, Gloria needles Juliet about her willingness to betroth Paris, and Juliet replies that she'll feel nothing more than she's compelled to. Gloria departs her room in a dramatic whirl of irritation and disgust. The Nurse, however, reassures Juliet that she should follow her heart, and "seek happy nights."
Analysis
The audacious opening sequence of Baz Lurhmann's Romeo and Juliet is a tour-de-force piece of MTV-style filmmaking that is designed to immediately seize the viewer's attention by evoking the seedy, frenetic energy of youth culture in mid-1990s Los Angeles, California. By updating and reinventing an Elizabethan play about dynastic gang violence within the social, cultural, and aesthetic spheres of a modern West Coast inner city, Luhrmann is also consciously saturating the play in racially and socioeconomically charged layers of political meaning that would be familiar to any news-watching American in the age of the L.A. Riots, Rodney King, and O.J. Simpson.
The film's first image—a staticky television set—immediately plunges the viewer into a late twentieth-century media environment. Given that television was arguably the most influential and pervasive storytelling medium in American culture at this moment, present in nearly every living room, the image reflects Luhrmann's desire to create a truly populist piece of commercial entertainment. The image also foregrounds the fact that television will be used as a device throughout the film to deliver information and "news" to the viewer—and also, crucially, as a way in which the play's characters receive information about each other. For instance, Romeo first hears about the opening Montague-Capulet "fray" while strolling past a television set reporting on the events, and local TV anchors advertise the Capulet party to Verona during their nightly broadcast.
The television, as an image-within-an-image (with yet another moving image contained therein), also signals the film's highly self-conscious awareness of its own theatricality as a visual spectacle. The massive, derelict proscenium on which we first see Romeo perched at Sycamore Grove is another production design element that deliberately evokes the medium of theater. The opening montage, which introduces the film's key players, is essentially a cinematic representation of the kind of "Cast List" one would find before a dramaturgical text. Written text itself—in the form of title cards, billboards, newspapers, magazine covers, and labels printed on the sides of police cars and helicopters--also enters crucially into this motley media environment, establishing a decidedly new and modern context in which the literary content of the play will emerge.
Luhrmann establishes the cultural distinctions between the Montagues and the Capulets visually through costume design. Whereas the Montagues are secular street punks with flamboyant street style, colorful hair, and foul mouths, the Capulets wear all black and adorn themselves with crucifixes and religious iconography. Their first confrontation establishes a number of themes that will pervade the film, namely religion, passion, and violence, and the connections and resemblances between them. Using a gas station as the setting for the gang violence metaphorizes the hair-trigger "explosiveness" of the Montague-Capulet rivalry. The cyclical nature of violence is an especially emphasized theme that informs a number of visual motifs—notice, for instance, the way the "Add more fuel to your fire" sign spins haplessly around and around in the gunfire. Notice, too, how the antagonist Tybalt kisses his revolver as if it were a religious idol to be worshipped.
The introductions of Romeo and Juliet immediately establish vital character traits. Romeo's characterization revolves around his susceptibility to his emotions, especially emotions felt or spurred on by the feeling of love, or lack thereof. Juliet, on the other hand, cannily resists her parents' desire to thrust her into a romantic arrangement, and is thus defined by her independence and defensiveness against any prescribed idea of love. This creates a dynamic where conventional gender roles are ironically reversed—Romeo exemplifies the sensitive, volatile qualities typically ascribed to women, and Juliet takes on the autonomous, strong-willed spirit typically ascribed to men. Gender reversal and playfulness goes on to become a significant theme of the play, especially when Mercutio is introduced.
