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  • Chapter 4 - Aquatic and Celestial Space in Baz Luhrmann’s William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet (1996)

  • from Part I - Revisiting the Canon
  • Edited by Victoria Bladen, University of Queensland, Sarah Hatchuel, University Paul-Valéry Montpellier, Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin, University Paul-Valéry Montpellier
  • Book:
    Shakespeare on Screen: Romeo and Juliet
    Published online:
    10 October 2023
    Print publication:
    14 December 2023, pp 62-78

  • Summary

    In Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 screen adaptation, Romeo + Juliet, water is a significant visual element: the lovers meet through the medium of a fish tank; they float in the Hollywood pool like cosmic bodies for the balcony scene; and in death their fluid union is re-visited. This chapter argues that Luhrmann draws from the language of the play-text to conflate celestial and aquatic space in innovative ways in his screen iconography, and that these metaphorical spaces that intersect love and death, are further enhanced through the paratexts of the accompanying film soundtrack, which has had its own successful afterlife trajectory (released through Capitol Records as two separate volumes, 1996 and 1997, and re-released in 2007 for the tenth anniversary).