*** (out of ****)
Starring Al Pacino, Jeremy Irons, Joseph Fiennes, and Lynn Collins
Directed & written for the screen by Michael Radford, from the play by William Shakespeare
2004
131 min R
Engaging if choppy and uneven, and some of the fault is Shakespeare’s. Shakespeare’s comedies are harder to adapt to the screen than his tragedies for the simple reason that there is seldom a single main character in a Shakespeare comedy. Film lends itself to single-lead dramas, like “Hamlet,” “Richard III,” “King Lear,” and “Macbeth.” The tragedies have single throughlines, the comedies have several, and always feel kind of messy. (Speaking of messy, “Merchant of Venice’s” production design follows the current trend of emphasizing the dirt and murkiness of the past – the costumes are beautiful yet worn and in need of a wash.)
Jewish usurer Shylock (Al Pacino) lends money to the titular merchant Antonio (Jeremy Irons). Antonio needs the money so that his young friend Bassiano (“Shakespeare in Love’s” Joseph Fiennes) can afford to woo wealthy orphan Portia (Texan newcomer Lynn Collins). Among “Merchant’s” four leads there are at least three storylines, and each could have turned the other two into subplots. But director / screenwriter Radford let’s them all play out with full value, even keeping a subplot about Shylock’s daughter running off with a Christian. While we understand how they connect narratively, I was at something of a loss as to how they connect thematically.
At first I thought it was money: no one calls “Merchant’s” Jews “Christ-killers” or anything else bad, EXCEPT to ridicule and hate them for practicing money-lending (pre-Reformation Catholicism forbade usury; Protestantism made it okay, giving birth to modern capitalism; also, church-condoned capitalism was the death sentence for Roman numerals, which are simply too cumbersome to handle compound interest, but I digress). Shylock bemoans the loss of his money as much as the loss of his daughter. Bassiano’s first mention of the girl is as a solution to his financial woes. By adding a gay subtext between Bassiano and Antonio it makes the hetero romance one of pure convenience and explains Antonio’s willingness to sign away a pound of flesh.
(But wait, you say – you can’t add a romance to a Shakespeare film, because that knocks it out of balance! Romances among the dramatic, upper-crust characters always has to be balanced by a comical romance among the bungling, lower-crust comic relief. Radford knows this and lets an otherwise unimportant servant shoot unrequited, lovelorn glances at Shylock’s daughter. Balance is maintained.)
But my theory of money evaporates when the boy and the girl seem really in love and Shylock’s revenge is anything but good business. Then my wife explained that the unifying theme is mercy. Shylock refuses to show mercy to Antonio and, as a result, Shylock’s best laid plans are ruined. Portia shows mercy to Bassiano for losing her ring and she is rewarded.
And it is fitting that the theme of Shakespeare’s controversial “Merchant” should be mercy: the virtuoso courtroom sequence is a coded battle of philosophies between all that is best and worst in both Christianity and Judaism. Jewish Shylock demands that the letter of the law be followed and that his actions be on his own head, whereas the Christians around him call for mercy, following Christ’s teaching that no one can be justified in the eyes of God, and it is only by grace that we are saved.
Christian Shakespeare makes (SPOILER!) the Christians victorious and mercifully spare Shylock’s life. But Shakespeare slyly includes Shylock’s forced conversion to Christianity as part of their “mercy,” slipping in a criticism of Christianity’s history of conversion by the sword. Shakespeare clearly prefers one philosophy over the other, but he and Radford also slap anti-Semitism in the face; by humanizing Shylock (and Pacino is nothing if not empathic), any form of Jewish persecution is in direct opposition to the spirit of Christian charity, which is ultimately what saves everyone in “The Merchant of Venice.”
Finished Sunday, July 29, 2007
Copyright © 2007 Friday & Saturday Night
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