The Unseen Movie Review

The Merchant of Venice

Shakespeare has had a relatively tough time of it at the cinema. For every sensitive and respectful adaptation of one of his plays – like Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet or Ian McKellen’s Richard III – there will be umpteen blandly unimaginative or disastrous takes on one of these classics. Then there’s the added problem that audience tastes shift over time, so what was once considered a superb adaptation – such as Laurence Olivier’s 1955 film of Richard III – seem a couple of decades later to be laughably awful.

A lot of the problem is cultural. Al “one of the greatest actors working today™” Pacino attempted to explore this in his 1996 documentary Looking for Richard. In the course of this rather tedious film, one of the conclusions that seemed to be reached was that – as a general rule – Americans are not very good at performing Shakespeare.

Unfortunately, Pacino has not learned this lesson, and here takes on one of Shakespeare’s most complex and confusing roles – that of the vicious moneylender Shylock: poster-boy for anti-Semitic hatred for several centuries; a grotesque caricature of jewishness that would have made Hitler proud. It is a role that has previously been played on screen by actors of the calibre of Orson Welles and Laurence Olivier, and is only topped by King Lear and Hamlet as one of the most coveted parts for thespians. Pacino does his very best to live up to the greats that have gone before, but his style of acting simply doesn’t work with this material.

This is not to say, however, that this is a bad adaptation. There is a certain amount of alteration to lessen the anti-Semitic portrayal of Shylock, and help the character be slightly more sympathetic – and so more attuned to modern tastes – by making Christian-Jewish tensions an explicit part of the story’s backdrop. But these changes are – by Hollywood standards – minor, and if anything serve to flesh out the world of sixteenth century Venice even further than do the wonderful costumes and sets.

The rest of the cast – from big names Jeremy Irons (as Antonio) and Joseph Feinnes (as Bassanio) through minor players John Sessions, Gregor Fisher and the seemingly ubiquitous Mackenzie Crook – are all pretty much note perfect. It is a particular pleasure to see Jeremy Irons putting in a good performance again after several years of obscure mediocrity. It is also a joy to see John Sessions appearing in a film alongside Al Pacino, whom he has been mercilessly spoofing for the last few years in his TV sketch show Stella Street.

Despite a few dodgy moments from Pacino, this latest version of Shakespeare’s play – which was first adapted for the screen in 1910 – manages to hold its own with the best of them. Coming from director Michael Radford, who helmed the superb John Hurt-starring film version of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, this shouldn’t be much of a surprise. He has done an expert job in both adapting the play for the screen and getting the best performances he can out of his excellent cast, ensuring that not only is this well worth a look, but will probably be shown to uninterested school children for years to come in a desperate attempt to force some culture into them. They could do worse.

posted by Nosemonkey @ 12:00 AM