Time Enough at Last
Time Enough at Last
For The Love of Love Itself
May 28, 2021
A Girl, A Guy, A Lovely Thing
How often has it occurred to you that Romeo and Juliet is exquisite, if not perfect?
Romeo and Juliet has been beloved, we imagine, since William Shakespeare wrote it in the 1590s having been inspired, according to Wikipedia, by The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet by Arthur Brooke in 1562 and Palace of Pleasure by William Painter in 1567.
And the inspirations for those works are believed, at least believed from our perspective, to stretch back forever.
The particular Romeo and Juliet we present here is the one that was written by Shakespeare, inspired by Brooke and Painter, crafted by human weakness, and directed by Franco Zeffirelli. His 1968 film starred Olivia Hussey as Juliet and Leonard Whiting as Romeo and a screenwriting credit is also given to Franco Brusati who must have faced a prickly literary hurdle to properly tweak something so precious and examined.
Or maybe by now, and likely by 1968, the tale of Romeo and Juliet was so widely known and performed that most liberties are accepted and forgiven. If you are not going to make a change or two then really what’s the point of doing it?
Our memory of reading the play gives us one very distinct difference between Shakespeare’s words and Zeffirelli’s film which is that the movie’s two deadly duals are harrowing scenes of action, sweat, and detail whereas in the play (again, if memory serves) those scenes are short and simple - “Mercutio falls.”
But we must be reminded that Shakespeare was not a novelist. He wrote for the stage and so, maybe, that’s all he needed to write, knowing full well that the director and actors were going to bring the scene to life.
Those episodes of violence, anger, and mayhem are the first true gut punches of Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet. We know that death awaits but it lurks not only for star-crossed lovers but also for those in their orbit. We see Mercutio (John McEnery) and Tybalt (Michael York) caught in a conflict that suddenly spins from feud to fatality. The anger, the pain, the horror, the shock of young people dying on a city street. Those images are as continuing as the doomed love and senseless hate that led to them.
The love cannot overcome the hate. At least it could not for Juliet, Romeo, Tybalt, and Mercutio. The Montagues and Capulets went on to become friends? Maybe. But only after the Prince “lost a brace of kinsmen.”
Romeo and Juliet is a masterful film because it shows us how to remember the love and also to be haunted by the violence. Those dead boys on those city streets.
And a young boy crashing a party.
Honesty overtakes us here when we put ourselves behind Romeo’s eyes at his first sighting of Juliet and while the unfolding of time emphasizes that Juliet and Romeo were still children (my God, how young they are) we still feel Romeo’s trance, caught in the smoldering innocence and beauty of Olivia Hussey.
It’s just so stupid, isn’t it, that they took one look at each other and fell in love? That doesn’t happen. That doesn’t happen. That happens all the time and don’t you deny it. If you’re young, admit that it happens. If you’re old, remember that it happens.
It’s spring and good gracious God that girl is pretty. Stay up late, laugh with friends, and dream of nightswimming in her eyes and waking up in her arms.
The scene in which Juliet and Romeo see each other and fall in love is set to the song “A Time For Us” and there a few moments in any movie where music matches emotion so well. “A Time For Us,” turns out to be a brief time for Juliet and Romeo, but an enduring work of elegance for the rest of us.
Just a little more time. That’s all we want, isn’t it? A few more moments on the verdant asphalt of youth, love, and hope, warding off the desolate stretches of life yet to come. --TK
Wednesday, June 2, 2021