I had seen West Side Story a long time ago so I had almost no memory of it so I went in mostly fresh. I had heard it was good and after watching it I have to agree. It was a really good movie. It was also amusing hearing songs that I had heard before and finding out they're from this movie. But it left me with two big thoughts. Firstly Baz Lurhmann's felt a bit inspired by West Side Story, especially the opening sequence of his movie.
The Other interesting aspect for me was the changes that were made. One specific change seemed so small, but on reflection, has such a large impact on the meaning of the story. And that change, was the removal of parents. In West Side Story (WSS) the only real parental figures we see are Doc, and the police. And none of them are treated with any respect by the gangs.. In Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, much of the blame lies on the adults who did nothing to actually prevent the violence between their households from taking place. There was a lot of responsibility placed on them to uphold the peace and their failure to do so, caused the deaths to occur. But by removing those authority figures the blame for the deaths shifts from them to the gangs. They made the choice to pick fights and while death was never actually intended, they are the only ones are responsible for it. They lose any opportunity to hide behind the fact that it was their house's or families feud and have to accept that they were responsible for the deaths. It creates a very different dynamic because in Romeo and Juliet, the blame was on their parents for not ending the feud, and much of the tragedy lies in the fact that if the parents had ended their feud the violence could have been avoided. But in WSS the blame lies, if on any outside force, society itself. It creates a dynamic where those responsible (the gangs) seemed to have no power over what actually occurred. This makes the violence seem more inevitable, and in that light, makes the deaths more tragic.
Now on to Warm Bodies. Honestly, went in to it extremely skeptical. It did not seem like the sort of movie I would like. By the end I... I.... I didn't hate it. For the most part, while finding corny I enjoyed it. The main character was interesting as his zombie friend had some hilarious lines. However the main female lead, while attractive, I hated. Alright to be honest, I had been listening to the unabridged audio recording of World War Z (which is completely amazing and I highly recommend) and that work is a lot more serious and more recognizes hard choices have to be made sometimes. Which is why I absolutely despised the girl. She whines about her dad killing zombies, things that had been willing to kill everyone. She whines about getting medicine and worrying about the safety of the community. She whines about having to be checked for infection after she was out in zombie infested territory. She comes off as an obnoxious bratty character and considering this is supposed to be based off Romeo and Juliet the fact she didn't die is extremely disappointing.
Speaking of it being based off of Romeo and Juliet, I can kind of see it. Honestly if it was not for the balcony scene I probably would disagree. Right now, I honestly stuck with whether the balcony scene (and some of the other events) make this movie based partly of Romeo and Juliet or whether just the balcony scene was an homage to Romeo and Juliet and the rest was just a romance.
No comments:
Post a Comment