Who is this Shakespeare guy anyways? I mean, the guy is definitely past his prime. Am I right, people?
Kidding. Kidding. That dude is a-okay in my books. I read The Tempest in the ninth grade. I know what’s up.
The best part about Shakespeare is that the themes in his plays are so timeless that anyone can relate to them–or even reinterpret them for their own profitable gain. Remember that “new” version of Romeo & Juliet with Leonardo Dicaprio and Claire Danes (the movie that essentially cancelled My So-Called Life because Danes has gotten huge)? It was garbage–but hey, at least it proved that Shakespeare still works today.
Well, Romeo & Juliet is getting a brand new makeover–again. This time with a hasidic twist. Here is more from the New York Daily News:
In Eve Annenberg’s cinematic retelling of “Romeo and Juliet” the warring Montague and Capulet clans have been replaced by Hasidic sects. And Juliet’s famous “Wherefore art thou?” soliloquy is delivered from a Brooklyn fire escape, in Yiddish.
In fact, two-thirds of the dialogue in Annenberg’s “Romeo and Juliet in Yiddish” is in the ancient language. Subtitled in Shakespearean English, the film makes its U.S. debut Sunday at the New York Jewish Film Festival.
Annenberg’s film, a mashup of the play and the real-life story of the film’s actors, stars two young Hasids who left the close-knit Satmar community in Williamsburg and lived in a van. They smuggled weed, committed credit card fraud and fabricated lost baggage claims with airlines, a scene that opens the movie.
Ummmm…cool? Or awesome? Not exactly sure how I feel. But somehow I’m seriously intrigued.
Hasidic
Pronounced: khah-SID-ik, Origin: Hebrew, a stream within ultra-Orthodox Judaism that grew out of an 18th-century mystical revival movement.
