The Merchant of Venice

Rating:

* * * *

Verdict:

Distinguished, handsome and satisfying account of a vexed play.

The story of the merchant who raises a loan from a Jewish moneylender and promises a pound of his flesh if he defaults, has become iconic in Western literature. Is it anti-Semitic or critical of anti-Semitism? That is the question and the answer is rather in the eye of the beholder.

Certainly Elizabethan audiences would not have winced as we do at the abject humiliation visited on Shylock in the court's draconian judgement. To be outwitted by a piece of fancy legal footwork is one thing but to be stripped of one's wealth and required to renounce one's religion is quite another. To regard that as a dramatically satisfying outcome you need to see Jews as sub-human.

The play's essential problem has always been that it's part grand opera and part frothy comedy of manners, so Shylock is less a tragic hero than a fall guy. English director Michael Radford (best known for the lovely Il Postino) brushes these challenges aside. He plays it straight, giving us Shylock - Pacino's performance is gutsy and touching - first as proud man, asserting one of his few legal rights, and then as a tragic, beaten figure, before turning with jarring suddenness to the newlyweds' love games in the final scenes.

Still, what's left is a pungent meditation on the contrast between justice and mercy - between the Old and New Testaments as it were. Seen in that light it remains rich in relevance - and some of the poetry is sparkling.

This is a film at once spare and sumptuous: clever camera angles allow for a few good establishing shots in Venice but its mostly played out in interiors that are ravishing, like canvases by Vermeer or Caravaggio brought to candle-lit life. The fine cast has two Americans - Collins as Portia and Heather Goldenness, excellent as her maid Nerissa - but they display impeccable English elocution and even Pacino's Bronx vowels sound vaguely mid-European.

Mackenzie Crook (The Office's Gareth Keenan) is something of a distraction as the clownish Launcelot Gobbo but everyone gives a beautiful and lucid account of the text. It's a very satisfying version of a classic and the news that Radford and Pacino are preparing to take on King Lear is welcome indeed.

Peter Calder

Cast:

Al Pacino, Jeremy Irons, Joseph Fiennes, Lynn Collins

Director:

Michael Radford

Running time:

124 mins

Rating:

PG (contains sexual references)