Water Motif in Romeo and Juliet Movie Essay Example

📌Category: Entertainment, Movies, Plays, Romeo and Juliet
📌Words: 623
📌Pages: 3
📌Published: 02 April 2022

“The beauty you see in me is a reflection of you.”(Rumi) Reflections are important, whether it be self-reflection, real reflection, or seeing yourself in others. Some people care about how they look, some people want to forget their past, and some people find themselves in each other. In Romeo and Juliet, the director uses the water motif to show reflections.

Near the start, the water foreshadows Romeo and Juliet’s meeting, and also their insecurity of being alone. After the fight scene, Romeo is at the beach alone. This scene expresses a calm and lonely scene, where he is desperate for something different in his life. This beach allows Romeo to calm himself and think about the fight and his girlfriend. Next, Juliet is in the bathtub, and she is alone and longing. Bathtubs usually have bubbles, which hide the water and the reflection created by it. Since Juliet cannot see the other half of the reflection, she does not yet know who she is, and what or who the other half of her is. When Romeo goes to the party and into the bathroom where he first meets Juliet, he throws his mask into the water. The mask shows who he thought he was, but realized that he did not want to be that person. Shortly after he ditched the mask imitating the half of him, he met Juliet through the fish tank, and they instantly fell in love. The start of the film shows how the lovers lacked the other half of themselves until they met. 

In the middle of the film, Romeo goes to Juliet in the balcony scene. When Romeo arrives at the Capulet’s house, there are waves from the pool water reflection on the walls. The director uses this to show the turbulence of Romeo and Juliet’s love. The reflection becomes distorted, which foreshadows the distortion of reflection at the end of the movie. After the wave reflections on the walls, Romeo scares Juliet unintentionally, and they fall into the pool together. This shows how they see themselves in each other and are reflections of each other. Their linkage is strong but not yet perfect. After they fall in, a security guard looks at the cameras, and Romeo has to hide under the water. This represents the suffocation of being in different houses, in which it is hard to get together. Although they see themselves in each other, the water reveals that they are constricted by being in opposing families. The pool scene or balcony scene shows their similarity, but also that their families are causing them to not be fully together.

Near the end of the movie, the lovers separate and lose their reflections. At the beach, it starts to rain and thunder. The rain causes reflections in the puddles but also creates ripples in those same puddles. When the rain arrives and distorts the puddles, it foreshadows that Romeo and Juliet’s love would soon end. After the rain comes and Benvolio dies, Romeo is enraged and shoots Tybalt, a Capulet, and he falls into a fountain. When Tybalt falls into the fountain, he causes ripples in the reflection. This also foreshadows that Tybalt dying is the main cause of Romeo and Juliet’s separation. Then, the camera raises and reveals the rain is coming from a religious figure. This religious figure had seen what Romeo had done and caused the ripples in the reflection. The rain coming from the figure was breaking the reflection in the water and therefore breaking their connection. The connection between the lovers disappears through the murder of Tybalt.

Water in Romeo and Juliet is to show how the characters reflect on themselves and others. Throughout the movie, water shows how Romeo and Juliet see themselves in each other and how their love is the smoothness of the water. When the water ripples, they get farther and farther away from each other. Maybe that is why it is hard to love. We are not looking for our self-reflection, but rather the people we like.

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