William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice

Arclight Films, 2004, Certificate PG
Starring: Al Pacino, Jeremy Irons, Joseph Fiennes,
Lynn Collins
Screenplay and direction by Michael Radford

The Dukes, Moor Lane, Lancaster
Sunday 13 and Monday 14 February 2005

Not one for me, but the sell-out audience loved it

Different aspects of Venice
Shakespeare's early play The Merchant of Venice was perhaps written as a diversion whilst he was concentrating on the rarely-seen three parts of King Henry VI. It probably dates, on internal and external evidence, so say the scholars, from around 1596, as the opening of the film rightly states. An earlier version of the plot was at least a couple of centuries old then, and the anti-Jewish elements in the play – as depicted in those useful opening sequences - can be traced back in Europe for over a millennium now.

Thus Venice (La Serenissima) probably had the first Jewish ‘'Geto' [the film's spelling] in the world. That city was, in Shakespeare's time, one of the wealthiest and most colourful cities in Europe, due mainly to its role as one of the most important trading centres of the then known world.

Yet Italy and Spain were,"to Jacobean minds, exotic, venal hotbeds of vice, corruption, popery, violent death, scandal and Machiavellian intrigue. Shakespeare and others of the time set many of their non-historical plays abroad'. So anyone who knows the play or the period even vaguely can reasonably expect some colour, passion, excitement and perhaps some Bohemian partying among the young, wealthy, merchant classes of the time. This brilliant background atmosphere makes a good contrast with the play's darker side – the broody, vengeful and bitter Shylock (Al Pacino), and the context of the raillery against the Jews which Shakespeare makes much of.

A complex play?
There are many ways of looking at this play. Some have seen it as a predominantly gay play with Bassanio (Joseph Fiennes) and Antonio (Jeremy Irons) as lovers, other as anti-Semitic propaganda, others as a tear-jerking love story between Portia (Lynn Collins) and Bassanio, and yet others as the prototype ‘courtroom drama'.

There are undeniably moments in the play of deep, heroic and noble passion; "Hath not a Jew eyes … If you prick us, do we not bleed?' (for Jews, read blacks, gays, the Roma etc). There is also great dignity and epic rhetoric in Portia's immortal assertion that "The quality of mercy is not strained..'

Then again, some critics dismiss it as a structurally weak, or ‘problem' play, whilst others, myself included, think it has some of Shakespeare's finest poetry, and ample scope for rich comedy to counterbalance the more ‘tragic' elements of the tale. Read up the two Gobbo characters, and the two unlucky Moroccan and Arragon suitors et al for comic balance.

A good film?
What, then, of this very new film version? Does it add to our understanding of the play and, above all, is it a good piece in purely cinematic terms? I have to admit I am not sure about these questions, because this screening raised more doubts for me than it gave thrills or frisson.

First, I felt it looked very, very drab and colourless indeed. Where were the parties, the Carnival, the high-spirited japing and the ‘rich comedy' I noted above? All seemed rather grey, one-dimensional and monotone. Sure, there was some good playing from Irons, Pacino et al, but the ‘crowd' scenes struck me as forced, flat and feeble.

Next, the plot was quite drastically butchered. Some of the ‘finest poetry' I so love can be found from the delicious beginning to Act 5 Scene 1, but that was brutally cut and lumped in as a ‘time-passer' before the pivotal trial scene began. Most of the comic bits were simply absent, either through cutting or woeful underplaying.

Where were the Gobbo characters, father and son? And the gobby Gratiano should come across like the fiery, maverick and brittle Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet, not as a lethargic, ageing and bored yuppie-passé. Several of the best lines in the play were also missing.

Portia the sharp
Wealthy heiress, sharp girl and ‘heroine' of the tale Portia says dismissively of one of her suitors that "he bought his doublet in Italy, his round hose in France, his bonnet in Germany, and his behaviour everywhere.' Later she says, at her luckless Moroccan suitor's departure, "A gentle riddance … Let all of his complexion choose me so.' Racist - yes. Look, too, at the religious tension so clearly depicted.

Sound, sight and sensuality
Why was there so much music in the film – especially during some of the best passages of dialogue? The music was in fact mostly good, occasionally haunting, but it was just there too much of the time. Although the diction and clarity was generally fine, why too was so much of the text whispered? Shakespeare is always clear about his asides and who is addressing whom. So even in cinematic terms, it looked as if some glossy-weekly cineaste poseur had decided that ‘whispering was the new dialogue'. Ugh.

The whole film seemed to have been shot in Venice, and who could fail with such an evocative, erotic and sumptuous setting? Exterior, indoor and close-up sequences were carefully filmed but, again, nothing seemed to sparkle. The dramatic tension of the crucial court scene, somehow, was not fully explored. The audience should be on the edge of their seats in sheer suspense and fixation.

"There was no feeling here of any exciting, mysterious location', I once said of another stage production set in a similar place and period. Nor did I feel with this film any real, deep engagement with the characters, despite some moving moments from the title role of Antonio (Irons, with talent, but now twenty years too old). Pacino's Shylock was impassioned and dignified enough, but Warren Mitchell (‘Alf Garnett') did it so much better in Leeds some years ago. Patrick Stewart (Star Trek's Capt. Jean-Luc Picard) would have been a good choice…

This film disappointed me. It was too little of a good thing. Too old (the cast), too dull (the lighting? or the screenplay?), too dour (no comedy), too long (I'd rather have the lines than director Michael Radford's sometimes ill-judged pauses), too slow (pace is everything in Shakespeare). Too many woosses, wimps and wets.

A tragic obsession
Yet despite the cuts and my other reservations, I gained a new insight into the play. Whilst Shylock makes for reconciliation of the Jewish and Christian tensions, what triggers his obsessive drive for revenge (as in the ‘Jacobethan' revenge tragedy genre) is the abduction of his daughter and the theft of his jewellery. I had not noticed this so clearly before.

After his losses, Shylock moves inevitably on towards self-destruction and the tragic aspects of the play merely end after the trial. On the other hand, the romantic-comic elements of the plot gently, wittily and sensually unravel into happiness all round. Except, curiously enough, for the merchant Antonio, who is just left alone at the end (like Shylock), his final destiny uncertain.

A sell-out success?
These, though are personal impressions. And apparently not those, seemingly, of man others there on Sunday night. To my great surprise The Dukes was full, completely full that evening. The box office queue extended out of the main doors and down the street. Many were turned away. School parties, I though, and ‘A'-level set text … but no, the audience was mixed socially, gender-wise and in age terms too. (Possibly because both the mainstream cinemas have failed to schedule screenings of this, Pacino's latest – Ed)

Coming out afterwards (slowly, inevitably, with so big an audience), the comments and buzz afterwards were clear indicators that most people seemed to have really enjoyed it, and were singing its praises. And I can't knock that – good for them, the film, The Dukes.

Funny old things, people, the arts …

Copyright © 14 February 2005 Michael Nunn

Click to watch a trailer of The Merchant of Venice here.
Director Michael Radford comments on the film here.
Read some mixed review of the film here.
Look at some useful background to the film here.