So, a couple of months ago was the 10-year anniversary of Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet.
I remember this release very specifically, for several reasons.
1) I was in college (omg I’m so old) and taking all the Shakespeare courses that the university offered. The professor was this amazing woman with a soft voice and hair kind of like Crystal Gayle. I cannot remember whether or not she liked the movie, but I do remember that we got a wee bit of extra credit for going to see it, and writing a short paper about how the play was interpretted. I’m pretty sure I didn’t do a good job explaining myself, because…
2) I was coming off a pretty serious crush on Claire Danes, fresh from My So-Called Life. It’s funny, because I’m not sure I wanted Claire herself, but rather I wanted Angela and Jordan, together. It’s kind of hard to explain. Anyway, during the movie I remember being so struck by how utterly gorgeous Clarie Danes was, and from that moment on it had nothing to do with Jordan Catalano and his leaning and everything to do with just plain Claire.
3) Back before my mister and I were even dating, we attended a college journalism conference in New Orleans. Whoever thought this was a good idea — having a college journalism conference in New Orleans — totally should have been fired. This was back in the days when you could drink there at 18, and so pretty much no one attended the working sessions, and everyone was drunk for an entire week. But! On the first day, there was a big room with a lot of swag in it. And one of the tables held movie posters, and one of those posters was the Romeo + Juliet one (before the movie even came out) and it was (is) awesome. I carried one home with me and framed it up real nice, and until we moved into our house last June, it has always hung either in my home or my office.
So, all that was roughly 10 years ago, and in honor of the anniversary, they have released a new edition of the soundtrack. It has six bonus tracks, all of which are pretty awesome, but what I really love is the old tracks, like “#1 Crush” from Garbage and “Lovefool” from The Cardigans. I already have the origianl version, of course, but it’s on my iPod with a gazillion other songs, and I never think to listen to it specifically. Hearing all this awesome music, all in one place, all over again, has reminded me that the movie did add something amazingly unique and modern to the story of Romeo and Juliet. And even outside of the movie, this collection of songs is a perfect time capsule for that time in my life.
