After the introductory scenes quickly showing the daily life of eight young cadets/high school students at a private military academy, there is a transition scene from reality to some kind of alternative reality. The reality is school life, including reading Romeo and Juliet in class, with each boy taking on a character and reading the character's lines out loud. The alternative reality is the acting out by the eight boys of Shakespeare's play throughout the day and the night, using the original text.
Have the cadets fallen into some kind of fantasy, thinking they really are the characters from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet? Or are they just acting out the play? Or are they acting out the play using the Method acting technique where the actors make themselves into the characters they play? Have they taken on the task of acting out Romeo and Juliet to give two gay lovers a chance to openly express their love? Or are they acting out Romeo and Juliet because its theme of love suppressed by family and society leading to tragic consequences is s a good symbol of modern day gay love among boys who are expected by society's authorities to be masculine and straight?
The boys have the school to themselves, all the authorities and the other cadets having gone on a field exercise. So acting out the play is not going to run into the school's reality. They are free to live in their alternative reality.
The transition scene happens when Hale Appleman's character recites the lines from Shakespeare's play about the tiny fairy that enters a person's mind and transports the person into a state of enchantment, infatuated love. The fairy lines are clearly a reference to psychedelic drugs, a modern reality indeed.
I think the transition scene would have worked better if the entire group were sitting around taking a drug, with Hale Appleman then reciting the lines and each boy declaring that he has become possessed by a character in the play. Instead we see Hale reciting the lines to another character as they move down a staircase.
At any rate, the boys proceed to act out the play, supposedly with a gay infatuation on the part of the boy playing Romeo and a boy playing Juliet.
Is the gay thing really about a gay romance? Or are the boys playing Romeo and Juliet just playing the roles in the play? The kisses are passionate, the gay love apparently real. But the two characters call each Romeo and Juliet and Juliet is everywhere referred to as a woman by all the other characters. The movie makes more sense if seen as the boys being drug possessed, acting out the characters they are possessed by.Then it would make sense for two gays boys to choose the parts of Romeo and Juliet.
One wonderful aspect of this movie is hearing Shakespeare's lines recited with clear articulation and energy in normal American adolescent accents. There's none of the Anglophilic obsession so common in Shakespearean acting.
Another wonderful aspect is the powerful acting of Hale Apppleman. Go Hale, you need to be seen more!
Overall, a very good effort to use Shakespeare effectively. There are clear influences from other movies, including the soldier scenes in Scotland from the movie 28 Days. I think the movie would have worked far better if influenced by the movie Were the World Mine where the use of a drug (a love potion) makes the transition works better, the transition from from every day external reality to another reality where one's inner potential for love is fully expressed.
Have the cadets fallen into some kind of fantasy, thinking they really are the characters from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet? Or are they just acting out the play? Or are they acting out the play using the Method acting technique where the actors make themselves into the characters they play? Have they taken on the task of acting out Romeo and Juliet to give two gay lovers a chance to openly express their love? Or are they acting out Romeo and Juliet because its theme of love suppressed by family and society leading to tragic consequences is s a good symbol of modern day gay love among boys who are expected by society's authorities to be masculine and straight?
The boys have the school to themselves, all the authorities and the other cadets having gone on a field exercise. So acting out the play is not going to run into the school's reality. They are free to live in their alternative reality.
The transition scene happens when Hale Appleman's character recites the lines from Shakespeare's play about the tiny fairy that enters a person's mind and transports the person into a state of enchantment, infatuated love. The fairy lines are clearly a reference to psychedelic drugs, a modern reality indeed.
I think the transition scene would have worked better if the entire group were sitting around taking a drug, with Hale Appleman then reciting the lines and each boy declaring that he has become possessed by a character in the play. Instead we see Hale reciting the lines to another character as they move down a staircase.
At any rate, the boys proceed to act out the play, supposedly with a gay infatuation on the part of the boy playing Romeo and a boy playing Juliet.
Is the gay thing really about a gay romance? Or are the boys playing Romeo and Juliet just playing the roles in the play? The kisses are passionate, the gay love apparently real. But the two characters call each Romeo and Juliet and Juliet is everywhere referred to as a woman by all the other characters. The movie makes more sense if seen as the boys being drug possessed, acting out the characters they are possessed by.Then it would make sense for two gays boys to choose the parts of Romeo and Juliet.
One wonderful aspect of this movie is hearing Shakespeare's lines recited with clear articulation and energy in normal American adolescent accents. There's none of the Anglophilic obsession so common in Shakespearean acting.
Another wonderful aspect is the powerful acting of Hale Apppleman. Go Hale, you need to be seen more!
Overall, a very good effort to use Shakespeare effectively. There are clear influences from other movies, including the soldier scenes in Scotland from the movie 28 Days. I think the movie would have worked far better if influenced by the movie Were the World Mine where the use of a drug (a love potion) makes the transition works better, the transition from from every day external reality to another reality where one's inner potential for love is fully expressed.