Synopsis
Love goes toward love as schoolboys from their books
When eight male cadets are left behind at an isolated military high school, the greatest romantic drama ever written seeps out of the classroom and permeates their lives.
2011 Directed by Alan Brown
When eight male cadets are left behind at an isolated military high school, the greatest romantic drama ever written seeps out of the classroom and permeates their lives.
Soldato Romeo, 罗密欧与罗密欧, 专属罗密欧, The Shakespeare Project, Soldat Roméo, რიგითი რომეო, 프라이빗 로미오, Рядовой Ромео, 大兵罗密欧
when am i gonna make out with someone as they recite shakespeare to me?
also mercutio is a problematic fave in this
u ever GAY and also YEARNING
(also wish me luck on my presentation about this today in about 2 hours fuck)
I spent most of this movie trying to tell all these white boys apart and for the first twenty minutes I had wrongly identified the gay couple... but Matt Doyle’s drunk in love smile after every kiss was adorable.
Probably should have added this one to the Showdown about experimental film a couple of weeks ago.
Boys at a mostly-empty military academy read Romeo and Juliet and then start taking on the roles (and dialogue) themselves, as the audience wonders if this is real life, imagined, or some combination of the two. It turns out to be a compelling take on the source material, familiar in some ways yet a 180-degree turn from the polished, Hollywoodized offshoots of R&J like Shakespeare in Love.
Almost all the actors are quite good, and the dorms and lecture halls of the deserted school are all put to good use. It ends up in a way that 1) you probably won’t expect and 2) is kinda refreshing for a movie with overt queer themes, especially one that’s nearly ten years old and has a budget that, more or less, is probably valued about the same as a late-model Chevy Suburban.
this is not worth three and a half stars but hey it's shakespeare made gay so i'm powerless to rate it any lower
Hale Appleman's Queen Mab monologue >>>>> 80% of the Oscar nominees for Best Supporting Actor in 2011
Scavenger Hunt #51 (08/30)
Task 4: Watch a movie about two characters who yearn for each other romantically but who are unable or unwilling to act on those feelings because of external factors.
I get why people don't see it for this one, but I have always loved this adaptation. Perhaps because Matt Doyle is the dreamiest Juliet on record. The playful eroticism of Shakespeare finally lives and it lives here.
That aside, when students are confused about the meaning of the play and certain lines in particular, I always point to this version. In particular, the "holy palmers kiss" scene. One of my Shakespeare-hating dudes went, "I found this version of it on YouTube and I get it now!!!!" and I was like, "Nice!!!"
“I doubt it not; and all these woes shall serve for sweet discourses in our time to come.”
Prviate Romeo starts out as a literature class at a military high school of young men reading Romeo and Juliet aloud, but dodges seeming contrived or worse grotesque because the young men aren't looking at each other. Soon the conceit of men reading female roles slowly evaporates when a handful of cadets are left behind and Shakespeare's lines interpenetrate into the daily conversations having in their own way taken over the lives of the remaining students. The mixing of the bard's play and the everyday social conversation of the cadets is so deftly managed that it sweeps the spectator away with its language and the cadets, now sincerely embedded in the characters. The confrontation between Mercutio, Tybalt and Romeo is…