Ever visit an old grade school or middle school you once attended? Doesn’t it all look smaller now?! I recently had a similar experience when hunting down a movie I wanted to watch again for tattoo ideas…
The annoying fact is that even though the movie is a completely modern interpretation of Romeo and Juliet, the language is still “Old English” -and just as annoying as I remembered it from studying it in high school! Every single word uttered required intense concentration just to understand it. God I hate Shakespeare. Anyways, one point of interest I always remembered from watching this movie 10 years ago was that the friar had this “massive” tattoo of a Celtic cross covering his back. I always thought that was real hardcore and felt that it would be a cool idea if I ever lost enough weight to be able to take my shirt off in public again with no shame. So… I recently found the movie again and started looking for that tattoo… well it’s a LOT smaller than I remembered it! Check it out for yourself…
Here you see the scene where the Friar is talking with the children about the wonders of plants or something… I think it’s funny that you can see that the kids are actually looking at his tattoo and not paying attention to him!
Now I will still admit it’s a bit large but it’s NOWHERE near as large as I remembered it!
Still, this movie does have some redeeming qualities to it. There is one of the most touching and well-shot “love at first sight” scenes I’ve ever run over…
Claire Danes has never looked so beautiful! Shot through the aquarium with all it’s low light and brilliant color was just genius.
The scene pulls back only slightly to show them both looking at each other with their reflection showing well in the glass…
Then the camera slowly moves to the other side of the aquarium -no trick cut shots here- and shows the exact same thing from the other side! From a cinematography standpoint, I can’t imagine the difficulty in lighting alone this must have caused. Still, the shot is one of those “movie moments” that I will always remember fondly, even if the friar’s tattoo is a bit small for my taste!