A. Nurse
a. characterization
b. character
c. stays true to the original character
B. Plot
a. flat character
b. suspense/cliff hanger
c. no coming of age
C.Place
a. time
b.location
c.cultural background
2. Summary
The way to find out if a film adaptation stays true to its original story tends to be focused on whether it has the same time of events or the same characters, nevertheless, to truly see if a movie adaptation has managed to stay true to its original version it's trough the justifying of circumstances that arrived trough the plot. An easy way to prove it is to see if a character place in the plot stays true to the original no matter the changes in time or location, in this essay I will attempt to prove why does the nanny in Romeo + Juliet film adaptation stays true to his original character (in Romeo and Juliet William Shakespeare’s original version) by analyzing the main aspects of fiction we have mention before: the characterization of the nurse, her role on the plot, and the place and cultural background of time and location she's put in.
First of all we have to describe the characterization of Juliet's nurse trough the film. When we first see her we see she's kind of chubby and has red hair with white hair all over, revealing her not so young age, she seems to have trouble walking due to her weight and love for food. Another part of her characterization can be described regarding her manner of speech, in which we can quite easily distinguish her accent when calling Juliet in a way that seems almost complete Spanish, by this we can also complement her exaggerate gestures when talking or when making facial expressions of surprise, unreal anger, tiredness, etc. On the other hand, we can see that her character seems to really care about Juliet's well-being, because she would go search for Romeo even though she knows he's a "formal enemy" of the Capulet, nevertheless, regarding the nurse under pressure we can see that she would no longer do as Juliet would wish her too, but rather stay true to her masters and to her nature of regarding Paris as a much better partner for Juliet due to the amount of money he has. As a whole, we can declared that both character and characterization stay true to the original story because even though the characterization seems to be a little way off it balances it later justifies itself due to the time and location we are being put in trough the adaptation.
As the Nurse character remains equal to the original story, the plot in which she is set would also remain intact. The fact that we can still describe the nurse as a Flat character tells us that she is as in the original story only helping the movie to build up suspense. The nurse would never have a significant change trough the story but rather would help as an archetypical character (insert in the story to full-fill the only task of helping the main heroine) to drive the story to its first cliffhanger, which would be telling Juliet that Romeo is one of the Montague. By seeing that the original dialogue of the movie is kept intact in the movie we can also proof that it hasn't lost integrity.
The place in which the movie it's set, including time and location, are another of the points to keep in mind when adapting a film, in Romeo + Juliet case we can see that the time and location have changed to a much modern and in a way decayed version of Verona, making circumstances change in order to maintain a justification of events. In the nurse case we can see that her cultural background is all the way focus on reminding us of the American families that even nowadays still leave their children's care to the also nowadays called nanny stereotyped as a foreigner just like in Juliet’s case.
In conclusion, we can see that this modern version of Romeo + Juliet keeps its fictional setting by maintaining a justified plot and characters (in this cased analyzed by the nurse) but also by justifying his new time and location. Swords and status are replaced by guns and political power, making this adaptation stay true to the original one because even though we are used to think in the story of Romeo and Juliet as this old-set story of tragic love we cannot denied that Romeo + Juliet (the film) remains also a story focused on the same theme, a tragic love story.
