Choose a film and post what you believe is its overarching theme. Explain why this theme seems significant. Provide examples or moments from the movie that demonstrate the theme.Include the name of the director, the film studio or distributor, and the release year. If relevant, list performer names after the director’s name.

Movie Title: Romeo and Juliet (1996)

Director: Baz Luhurmann

Starring: Leonardo Dicaprio

CIaire Danes

Brian Dennehy

Distributor :20 th Century Fox

Release year : 1996

The 1996 film “Romeo and Juliet” prominently explores the theme of conflict, which serves as the driving force behind many of the story’s challenges. While the movie also delves into themes such as love and social class, the central conflict between the Montagues and Capulets significantly influences the narrative.

One pivotal moment illustrating this conflict is the death of Mercutio. The film employs the technique of Pathetic Fallacy to enhance the emotional weight of this scene, making it particularly impactful. Mercutio, who is both Romeo’s best friend and the prince’s cousin, plays a crucial role in highlighting the consequences of the feud. His tragic demise in Act 3, Scene 1, is essential for the audience to grasp the depth of the conflict, affecting all characters in both realistic and unexpected ways.

The scene opens with Tybalt and Mercutio and later includes Romeo’s presence. At the start, the tension grows more gripping as the act continues. Mercutio’s famous line, “a plague o’ both your houses,” highlights how the conflict devastates a key character, helping viewers grasp the conflict’s impact.

This is reinforced by a stormy, distressed atmosphere that mirrors the scene’s dominant emotions, with pathetic fallacy allowing natural elements to provoke vulnerable feelings. The death scene is characterized by despair, amplified by weather to make it more memorable for the audience. This is further illustrated when Mercutio’s death drives Romeo to seek revenge on Tybalt.

The extremity of rage is evident in Romeo when he unmindfully shot Tybalt and followed up with an extremity of guilt. The director has applied the former technique accordingly to extend the impact of the conflict on the characters. In both the events, Pathetic Fallacy is used to aggregate the subject of the scene causing depth to the conflict, therefore making it more memorable.

The principal plot of the movie is the death of Romeo and Juliet, this scene makes the conflict memorable by the significant use of practical lighting. This feud between the Montagues and the Capulets has been alive for years, but this heart-rending incident unites the two families. The plot in the storyline of the movie is when Romeo kills himself seeing her true love dead, preventing the young couple from living another day.

Capulet’s words, “As rich shall Romeo’s by his lady lie; poor sacrifices of our enmity” proves how the unfortunate tragedy ceases the conflict of the predecessor. This scene is considered to be memorable as the scene is decorated by the use of practical lighting. The specific lighting is mainly used to establish the mood and create realism. To be noticed, the lighting uses candles, lamps, and artificial lighting sets. In this particular scene, the purpose of practical lighting is to trigger an emotional feeling amongst the audience and help picture the scene for the viewers to remember.

The plot accentuated the effects of the conflict on the story and left a mark on this memorable event by the use of visual technique, practical lighting. It caused the audience to visualise and understand the unexpected outcome of the movie, Romeo and Juliet. The director’s purpose of using practical lighting is to raise the melancholic mood of the couple’s death and to create a mournful reality that the audience will deem memorable.

The conflict in Romeo and Juliet impacts people to this day. The setting of Romeo and Juliet took place in a time where peace was absent. Extreme measures were taken. Lives were missed and hatred was consumed. The passionate love between Romeo and Juliet, came to pass in the wrong time and place thus shortly diminished into something ugly. “What, drawn and talk of peace? I hate the word as I hate hell, all Montagues and thee.” This is a well known line from the character Tybalt in the film. This quote highlights how humans expose brutality and inhumanity while facing and indulging in conflicts. This essay focuses on the theme of conflict in the remarkable movie Romeo and Juliet by using different visual and verbal techniques to do so.