Summary
A storm rages in Verona. Juliet lies awake in her bedroom. Downstairs, Fulgencio and Gloria Capulet accept flowers from Paris, and dissuade him from visiting Juliet upstairs in her grieving state. Romeo climbs through Juliet's bedroom window and embraces her in a kiss. They both begin to undress, and presumably consummate their marriage. In Fulgencio's study, Fulgencio reassures Paris that he now feels comfortable arranging his engagement to Juliet, and makes Paris the promise that he will make it happen that Thursday. They both tell Gloria the happy news.
The next morning, Romeo and Juliet lay naked next to one another. Upon waking, Romeo recalls the previous nights' events with a traumatic shock. He leans over, kisses Juliet, and begins to dress. She pulls him back and they kiss and cocoon themselves underneath the white blanket, sharing an intimate moment together as Romeo pledges to defy the fate set before him, before The Nurse barges in. Romeo quickly finishes getting dressed and is led out through the window just as Gloria Capulet enters the room. They share a parting kiss through the banister of the balcony, before Gloria steps outside and Romeo goes plunging into the pool below. Looking down at him, Juliet is overcome with a portentous feeling not unlike the one sustained by Romeo before the Capulet party.
Gloria tells Juliet that she is to be wed to Paris on Thursday. Juliet refuses, becoming tearful and enraged. When Gloria tells Fulgencio Juliet has refused, he becomes physically abusive, shoving Juliet asunder. When Gloria and The Nurse try to wrench Fulgencio off of Juliet, he strikes Gloria across the face, and shoves The Nurse away. He tells Juliet she will obey, or he will throw her out in the streets to beg and starve. A crying Juliet beseeches her mother to delay the wedding. Gloria says, "Talk not to me," and hobbles away. Genuinely fearing for Juliet's life, The Nurse advises her to marry Paris. Juliet instructs her to tell her parents she has fled to Father Laurence's to confess.
Juliet finds Father Laurence conferencing with Paris, who still intends to marry her. In Father Laurence's private quarters, Juliet extracts a gun from her purse and presses it to her forehead, announcing her wish to die. Father Laurence devises a plan: he will give Juliet an elixir that will render he unconscious for 24 hours, during which a funeral will be held for her. Afterward, she will escape with Romeo (who will be told of the plot as well) to Mantua. He gives her the draught, and sends her away. However, when we see Romeo in the Mantuan desert, Father Laurence's letter notifying him of the plan has not reached him.
Juliet, at home in her bedroom, ominously bids her mother farewell at night, before consuming the draught. The next morning, Juliet is presumed to be dead, and a funeral is arranged. Balthasar sees the funeral taking place, and hurries back to Romeo in Mantua. He tells Romeo that Juliet is dead, and Romeo falls to his knees crying out in grief. Deciding he must see her for himself and end his own life as well, Romeo hops in his car along with Balthasar and rushes forth to Verona. Father Laurence feels a shiver of fear, and intuits that his message was never received. Back in Verona, Romeo stops at the apothecary to acquire a lethal poison, and then leaves Balthasar to run through the city, now a wanted man, being pursued by an envoy of patrol cars and police helicopters. A shootout ensues between Romeo and law enforcement in front of the church where Juliet lays, but Romeo is able to slip away safely inside.
Romeo slowly walks down the aisle of the silent church, lit on both sides by neon-blue crosses and many glowing candles. He sees Juliet's body laying in a white shroud on the altar. He lays his gun down on a pillow beside her and bends over her body, speaking softly to her. He slides the engagement ring she gave to him back onto her finger, and holds the draught of poison before his mouth, as Juliet begins to stir to life. She watches him swallow the poison, and brushes his cheek with her fingers a moment too late. Her eyes widen as she realizes what has happened. She kisses him as he dies, hoping the poison will afflict her as well. After Romeo has perished, Juliet cries out in grief, places his gun to her temple, and pulls the trigger.
A montage of happy moments—Juliet and Romeo under the white blankets, kissing underwater—gives way to body bags being led out of the church into an ambulance. The Police Chief, looking solemn, chastises the members of both families gathered round, saying "All are punished." We return to the film's first image—the television set against a black background—except this time the television is slowly receding into the background rather than slowly emerging into the foreground. The same newscaster who began the film explains to the viewer that "There never was a story of more woe, than this of Juliet and her Romeo." The television breaks into static, getting smaller and smaller, until the screen turns completely black. Credits roll.
Analysis
The end of the film consists of falling action after the climax of the double slayings of Mercutio and Tybalt. Luhrmann imagines Mantua, the remote outpost to which the Police Chief banishes Romeo, as something like a trailer park in the Mojave Desert. Before fleeing into exile, Romeo spends the night with Juliet. Luhrmann's film exploits the irony in the fact that the Capulets send Paris away downstairs because they imagine Juliet is grieving, just as Romeo enters through the window upstairs to be with his bride. The implication of the scene has always been that Romeo and Juliet thus sleep together and consummate their marriage, but critics have speculated that Luhrmann's Romeo—whose body appears tender, weak, and badly wounded from physical altercations and a car accident—might function to challenge this assumption.
Luhrmann visually interprets their exchange about creating an "artificial night" using a white blanket, which Romeo throws over them in hopes that their time together can continue to go on despite the coming of the sun. The color white is an important symbol of purity and innocence that is often used in conjunction with Juliet, such as her white angel costume at the Capulet party, her white nightgown in the "balcony" scene, and her white wedding dress. These last few piquant moments of fantasy and dreaming underneath the white blankets in Juliet's bedroom comprise essentially the last happy moments Romeo and Juliet will spend together.
When Juliet watches Romeo plunge into the blue pool below her balcony, she has a premonition that essentially makes her aware of what the symbol represents: death, fate, misfortune. The word "fortune" rings more than once over the image of Romeo slowly descending below the surface of the pool, foreshadowing his imminent death. Luhrmann renders Juliet's confrontation with her parents over Paris's engagement proposal in a truly upsetting and sentimental fashion, another deliberate nod to melodrama and the genre of the soap opera. In the sub-plot of this sensational domestic drama, Gloria Capulet is an alcoholic, battered wife, Fulgencio is a raving, abusive monster, and The Nurse is powerless to intervene.
In keeping with this heightened, melodramatic tone, Juliet confronts Father Laurence and threatens to kill him and herself. Father Laurence's stratagem to fake Juliet's death is thus borne out of genuine fear and desperation, and Luhrmann stages the scene so that Pete Postlethwaite is addressing the viewer directly, breaking the fourth wall, while a superimposed montage of the events he is describing flashes behind him. This directorial decision showcases his mad, fearful look, and symbolizes the fact that Father Laurence is the audience's last, precarious tether to any hope of witnessing a happy ending for the two.
Luhrmann literalizes the breakdown in communication that prevents Romeo from receiving Father Laurence's letter as a logistical failure of a private U.S. mail carrier. Juliet consumes the poison (blue, for death), and is lain at the church altar surrounded by dozens of candles, brightly glowing yellow. Romeo's approach to the church is saturated entirely in cold blues, and his face as he approaches Juliet is essentially a visual tone poem, reflecting at first the warm red glow of the candles, and then the cold blue glow of the neon crucifixes, symbolizing his approach toward death. After Romeo and Juliet are both dead, the camera looks down from above, and slowly rises into the air, as if to capture their souls rising into heaven. After a brief epilogue, Luhrmann returns the viewer to the first image of the film—the anchorwoman in the television set, reading the Prince's last lines. As the television disappears and the credits begin, the song "Exit Music (For a Film)" by Radiohead plays, casting one last reflexive media moment over the closing of the film.
