“Passion is a positive obsession. Obsession is a negative passion.”
Last night, Joey and I briefly discussed Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet. She didn't like it; it is the film that turned me onto Shakespeare. We agreed to disagree (after all, she has no heart, this was proven to me when she failed to cry or feel much of anything in front of Dead Poets' Society) and left it at that.
Today, I was walking home from work when Craig Armstrong 'Balcony Song' came on my iPod. And it reopened the let's-call-it-a-badly-closed-wound-for-the-sake-of-imagery, which is why I'm here, rambling again. Because this movie, I find, is good in more ways than simply 'Shakespeare'. I was just listening to that instrumental piece, which has made a deep impression on me, and my breath almost caught in my throat at times, on account of the feelings that are associated with it.
When I first saw that movie, I was in England for ten days. I was thirteen. Following a non-subtitled movie would already have been tough, but I did not understand a word of Elizabethan English. I went into the cinema thinking 'okay, so they're going to fall in love, and then they're going to commit suicide, yaddi yaddi yadda.' I came out having cried, not just for them, but mostly for Mercutio. I did not understand a word of that movie, and yet it had that much of an effect on me.
In the six months that followed, I had found the friend of a friend who owned a bilingual edition of the play, and started teaching myself Elizabethan English. It is from that time that, to this day, some, what, seven years later, I still know lines from that play by heart.
There was just something about that movie, about how it managed to capture the essence of the play in ways that have nothing to do with Shakespeare's wonderful writing. It was the acting, the directing, the soundtrack. It captured so terrifyingly well that feeling of elation that comes with finding somebody you connect with. I do not want to use the words 'true love', or 'love at first sight' - I haven't believed in them in a long while, and I don't think that that is what Romeo and Juliet portrays. But it's so powerful, even to this day, what this movie evokes to me, the feelings associated with it.
So yes, I just wanted to rant, for a while, because if I do it at Jo, you just won't care, love, will you? PS: I do love her, and she has a heart. Even though she didn't cry in front of DPS.
In only slightly Shakespeare-related news, I wish it were possible to icon the utter hotness of the sound of Octavian breathing in that scene, but alas, I had to make do with Antony and Cleopatra.
Make do? Who the hell am I kidding, Puresex was wearing eyeliner. Mhmm. Feel free to grab!
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Today, I was walking home from work when Craig Armstrong 'Balcony Song' came on my iPod. And it reopened the let's-call-it-a-badly-closed-wound-for-the-sake-of-imagery, which is why I'm here, rambling again. Because this movie, I find, is good in more ways than simply 'Shakespeare'. I was just listening to that instrumental piece, which has made a deep impression on me, and my breath almost caught in my throat at times, on account of the feelings that are associated with it.
When I first saw that movie, I was in England for ten days. I was thirteen. Following a non-subtitled movie would already have been tough, but I did not understand a word of Elizabethan English. I went into the cinema thinking 'okay, so they're going to fall in love, and then they're going to commit suicide, yaddi yaddi yadda.' I came out having cried, not just for them, but mostly for Mercutio. I did not understand a word of that movie, and yet it had that much of an effect on me.
In the six months that followed, I had found the friend of a friend who owned a bilingual edition of the play, and started teaching myself Elizabethan English. It is from that time that, to this day, some, what, seven years later, I still know lines from that play by heart.
There was just something about that movie, about how it managed to capture the essence of the play in ways that have nothing to do with Shakespeare's wonderful writing. It was the acting, the directing, the soundtrack. It captured so terrifyingly well that feeling of elation that comes with finding somebody you connect with. I do not want to use the words 'true love', or 'love at first sight' - I haven't believed in them in a long while, and I don't think that that is what Romeo and Juliet portrays. But it's so powerful, even to this day, what this movie evokes to me, the feelings associated with it.
So yes, I just wanted to rant, for a while, because if I do it at Jo, you just won't care, love, will you? PS: I do love her, and she has a heart. Even though she didn't cry in front of DPS.
In only slightly Shakespeare-related news, I wish it were possible to icon the utter hotness of the sound of Octavian breathing in that scene, but alas, I had to make do with Antony and Cleopatra.
Make do? Who the hell am I kidding, Puresex was wearing eyeliner. Mhmm. Feel free to grab!
1.
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3.
4.
5.
6.
7.