THE MERCHANT OF VENICE / Michael Radford (2004)

January 10th, 2005 by Scott Marks

The Merchant of Venice (2004)
Directed by: Michael Radford
Written by: William Shakespeare, Michael Radford
Cast: Al Pacino, Jeremy Irons, Joseph Fiennes, Lynn Collins, Zuleikha Robinson, Kris Marshall, Charlie Cox, Heather Goldenhersh, Mackenzie Crook, John Sessions, Gregor Fisher, Ron Cook, Allan Corduner, Anton Rodgers, David Harewood
Aspect Ratio: 2.35 : 1
Genres: Drama

Rating:

I do not pretend to speak with any authority on the subject of Shakespeare. In my youth, when all students are supposed to be brushing up on his works, I was too eager to structurally analyze Michael Avallone’s drugstore novelizations of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. series.

With the exception of Akira Kurosawa and Orson Welles, adapters tend to put the bard before cinematic discourse. This version is no better than trash like “Shakespeare in Love.” What SCTV referred to as, “good acting at its finest.” This reverence may work on stage, but not when transcribed to cinema with zero appreciation of the art form and, at times, a near-contemptuous misunderstanding of how to “open up” a play.

The film-lover inside of me wanted to bolt when the “pound of flesh” agreement was prefaced by a goat having its throat slit and a slab of meat hitting a sidewalk butcher’s scale. This type of symbolic visual underscoring would make Eisenstein choke. Were Shakespeare this clumsily obvious his fame would rank somewhere below that of Norman Krasna or Neil Simon.

The least they could do is allow you to clearly understand the generally under-recorded dialogue. Jeremy Irons, one of the most vocally gifted performers today, is reduced to Dolby-muffled mumbling. Al Pacino’s accent is pitched somewhere between Georgie Jessel and Lord Olivier’s Rabbinical patriarch in The Jazz Singer. Nothing disgusts more than being painfully made aware that an actor is acting, and Pacino’s self-consciousness should be carved and served on a platter.

He’s not the only one fails to deliver. Joseph Fiennes would be better suited to reprise the Tim Matheson role in a remake of Animal House. His fratboy good looks and irrepressible smirk add eye-candy, not depth.

Were the director more assured of himself, he would have backed the camera up a few paces to allow us to watch his players as a group, not in isolated close-ups so the morons in the back row will know they can act real good. His use of the widesceeen is virtually nonexistent and the lighting scheme simply designed to brighten, not illuminate. Instead of a filmmaker, we have of a theater buff clamoring to preserve the integrity of the play, not enhance the experience or understanding through cinema.

As for the anti-Semitism, show this on a double-bill with The Passion of the Christ and I’ll take up permanent residence under my bed. Give them credit for not trying to sanitize the original work.

In the end this film is about faces and words, not images or style. Read the play, don’t see the movie.