The Merchant of Venice

[selenak]

A friend lend me The Merchant of Venice on DVD - the most recent version of Al Pacino as Shylock and Jeremy Irons as Antonio. Which was interesting to watch, and, as all versions of the play, frustrating at the same time. Because it's impossible to stage or film. After the holocaust, but I wonder about the before as well, because the tradition of a

Comments

[likeadeuce]

I recall having a similar impression of the movie -- with a side of "why exactly is he making this anyway?" -- I'd guess it's because Pacino wanted to play the part.

I confes to not actually having read this one -- or rather to having made several forays into the first act and not getting much beyond that. I recall Stephen Greenblatt has an interesting discussion of the Lopez case in "Will in the World." I ought to reread that and then read the play.

[selenak]

Nah, Pacino didn't come on board until later, so it can't have been that. (Though I don't doubt he wanted to play the part.) Oh, btw, priceless dialogue from commentary:

Michael Radford: Al's not a hit it on the first take kind of actor. He usually needs until take seven or so, and...
Lynn Collins: You never gave me more than two or three.
Michael Radford: Well, you're a classically trained actor. He's a method actor.

[shezan]

It's always a pleasure reading your LJ, and doubly so when you write such reviews (and the anecdote on Krauss is a beaut.) I only saw TMOV on stage once, a competent but forgettable RSC production in the 90s, but I remember this BBC programme, the title of which I can't recall, which had famous actors playing one after the other Shakespeare scenes for the purpose of comparing their "vision" of the text. Of course, you ended up comparing performances, and the most striking of those was David Suchet's Shylock, who played him as a soft-voiced, subtly menacing foreigner, eventually driven despite his wiles against the wall to the point of near-suffocation, and who acted CIRCLES around the more straughtforward, almost politically-correct Patrick Stewart. (Being the son of a Jewish father and a CofE mother, anda convert to Roman Catholicism himself, Suchet probably allowed himself the luxury of exploring every nuance of social alien-ness. He did that tooin The Way We Live Now, which alas was a rather bad series

[selenak]

Playing Shakespeare. I have the interviews based on that as a book!

Also, yay, or rather, je suis hereuse.*g*

[londonkds]

The ending with Jessica and the ring was v v weird. The only implication I could think of was that Shylock was somehow being set up for a fall by Tubal, which is not only a really bizarre concept but makes one wonder what the point of it could be.

On the other hand, I thought that it was a pretty good directorial choice in terms of making Act V mean something to make the motivation for the ring trick so blatantly Portia's suspicion that Bassanio was romantically in love with Antonio.

More generally, my suspicion regarding Merchant has always been that Shakespeare was intending to write an antisemitic play but was too essentially decent a human being to manage it properly.

[shezan]

More generally, my suspicion regarding Merchant has always been that Shakespeare was intending to write an antisemitic play but was too essentially decent a human being to manage it properly.

I think that's a very shrewd insight.

[selenak]

I listened to the director's commentary on that one, and Radford said it was because Jessica never gave away her ring (as opposed to the men giving away theirs), Shylock just imagined she did in his distraught rage and grief. Whether he means to say Tubal was a hallucination of Shylock's as well I don't know, but it's just - weird. To put it mildly.

Yes, agreed on Act V meaning something by making the relationship between Bassanio and Antonio romantic.

my suspicion regarding Merchant has always been that Shakespeare was intending to write an antisemitic play but was too essentially decent a human being to manage it properly.

I'd say "too great an artist", but it could be either. Does that mean Marlowe wasn't, btw?

[londonkds]

Well, Marlowe was always happier to go for the cheap shock. David Fury of renaissance drama, if you like. Although I've seen "Jew of Malta" on stage, and it gave me the impression that just about everyone was a complete shit.

[skywaterblue]

I actually really liked this when I saw it in the theater. I haven't seen it since then, but I thought overall it made the best of a bad deal. And was pretty stunned by how well Pacino did it, and how interested I was in the 'other crap' going on in what was the main story but by now has become anything but the point of staging Merchant.

Even then, though, I did go WTF about the ring.

[selenak]

how interested I was in the 'other crap' going on in what was the main story but by now has become anything but the point of staging Merchant.

Yes. I had seen productions which went for a homoerotic subtext before, but none made the connection to Portia's motives and the fifth act as clear, and made so much sense.

Al Pacino was awesome.

[selenak]

In one of the stage productions I have seen - which also went for a homoerotic subtext, but one-sided on Antonio's part - the final tableau was, after Portia, Bassanio and everyone else had left, with Antonio alone on one side of the stage and Shylock, with packed suitcases and apparantly about to leave Venice, on the other; the two outsiders. But what the film added was really connecting Portia's development to this as well; at the end, you get the idea that while she still loves Bassanio, she is disillusioned about his motives.