Watching last year's 2021 Steven Spielberg (co-producer and director) movie brought back lots of memories as a high school teacher in South Auckland (in the last century) in the early 1990s where I'd read the script in book format with my senior English classes and then watched and studied the 1961 movie production.
Having also taught Shakespeare's 'Romeo and Juliet' in high school with senior English students was also interesting as the themes were very similar having been based on similar conflicts of love between two people from different cultures i.e. white American and Hispanic (Puerto Rico). I thought it was very important to expose students to a variety of literature.
I would definitely recommend this movie to watch and study as it keeps very close to the original 1961 movie, in fact, one of the actresses who play the Puerto Rico female lead in the origin movie plays the shop keeper (originally male) in the 2021 production, some 50 years later. Simply amazing!
Is it a sad love story, just like the Romeo and Juliet story, but it reminds us of the prejudices and stereotypes that we often have of other cultures, often perpetuated by the media and that we often don't know much detail about.
This movie reminds me that often there's a lot at stake and when prejudice and stereotyping leads to hate crimes and violence then inevitably it will often lead to the death of loved ones. Perhaps it's a reminder to always teach about diversity through understanding, respect and humility otherwise someone or people get hurt...
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