How do these directorial decisions impact the meaning of the play?

Baz Luhrmann's imprint is stamped all over Romeo + Juliet, a showcase feature for the Australian director's signature aesthetic of bombast and excess. The film is the second in what Luhrmann calls his "Red Curtain Trilogy"—Strictly Ballroom (1992), Romeo + Juliet (1996), and Moulin Rouge! (2001). Like all of these films, and especially so given its dramaturgical origins, Romeo + Juliet is a sumptuous exploration of theatricality and spectacle. Luhrmann had honed his highly mannered, stylistic approach to film-making with Strictly Ballroom, a film about aspiring ballroom dancers in Australia. With Romeo + Juliet, Luhrmann offered an even more ambitious, developed example of his cinematic vision—a stylistic grab-bag that plunders from genres as disparate as the music video, the soap opera, and the coming-of-age narrative, in a way that is designed to entertain and exhilarate the viewer. Fireworks, explosions, extreme close-ups, ostentatious transitions, slow-motion, fast-motion, and dramatic color blocking are all stylistic cornerstones of Luhrmann's maximalist aesthetic.