Romeo and Juliet (1968)
Like others’ positive comments about this film in which I
concur with completely; it made me feel like a teenager once again. Though I
missed it watching in school, I personally watched it at home to curiously experience
the movie. And so I was most taken by the superficial aspects of this almost
overblown production: the beauty of both actors playing the title roles, whose
many photos soon adorned my monitor; the rich costumes; and the resounding
music; but of course I was caught up as well by the lines of Shakespeare, the
ancient setting, and the high levels of action and emotion. Now, four decades
of life have passed, and I have thought that their world is so different from us
of 1968. To compare our Filipino Films with this film, the movie captured the
visual and audio clarity that we seldom see in our very old films. And I did
feel a little defensive about the elements of the film that now seemed dated,
or overdone. Yet soon, I was caught up in the eternal story of doomed lovers,
played by authentically young actors, and then to the end there was silence.
And I was utterly moved, beyond anything I remember feeling at 14; the waste of
two young happy lives seemed even harder to bear now, much more tragic than
when I was their age. Then I came to realization that adolescents truly do feel
immortal, and that therefore this story did not seem as real to me then as it
does now. Obviously a classic, this is a film that becomes even richer with
time; it should be seen by today's youth.
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