ROMEO AND JULIET : BOOK vs. MOVIE

This will be like a review and a conparison between the movie and the book of Romeo and Juliet. At the begining I didn't like neither but after seeing the film I can confirm that the adaption of the book that we read is much better than the film ... Anyway, for doing this task we will focus in some sections and talk a bit about them.

The first one is the setting, where and when does the story take place? 

In the book it is located in Verona, a town of Italy meanwhile in the movie it is in the United States of America. The town is also called Verona but isn't just Verona, now it is called "Verona Beach". Of course the two don't elapse at the same time ... The original story pass in the 14 th century and the new 6 centuries after, at the 20 th.

Then we can compare too the imagery, the symbols, metaphores ...

I'm gonna talk about the movie symbolysm because in the book we read there is nothing to stand out ... One of the symbols I want to highlight is the night, it represents that the love between Romeo and Juliet must not be seen by anyone and they need to keep that in secret. Two other important symbols are the water and the fire, obiously they are opisites. The water means the pure love between the two main characters, there is water in all the romantic scenes : in the aquarium when they meet each other, in the swimming pool where Romeo goes to speak with Juliet ... It means the freedom to, that's why Tybalt fall in a  fountain when Romeo shoots him, it's like this scene wants to show us that the couple of lovers will be free of threats, but we all know that's not true ... On the contrary of the water, the fire means the violency, the shoots of the guns ...

You can see some more symbols in the fancy dress party, for example: Juliet wear's an angel dress, because she is Romeo's angel. His cousin Tybalt is dressed as a devil, because he is evil and loves fighting. Romeo wears an armor like a knight, and with that armor he will defeat all the problems that push him away from Juliet. Paris's dress is important too, he is dressed as an astronaut, that represents he is in the moon and knows nothing of the current situation.

There is is diferent language : 

The book is writed in prose, with modern english, but the only character that speaks in prose in the film is the news reporter who tell us what's the story about. All the other characters speak in verse and it's a bit problematic because sometime you can't understand the dialogues.

Another diferences between the movie and the book are the objects and some elements that changed with time.

The most noticeable are the swords, in the movie they are guns, there is obious too that in the 20th century the people drives by car, while in the book they rode a horse to move theyself. Insted of two important families as in the book, in the movie the Montagues and the Capulets are two important corporations. The same happens with some characters that are not too important, they're "updated" in the movie for a better fit. Lady Montague dies of a depression in the book, but in the book she stills alive. Of corse there are lots of diferences, so I lend these ones here and I let you the find the reaming.