Amazon.co.uk Review
Rarely has The Merchant of Venice, one of Shakespeare's most complex plays, looked as ravishingly sumptuous as in this adaptation, directed by Michael Radford (Il Postino). In a decadent version of renaissance Venice, a young nobleman named Bassanio (Joseph Fiennes, Shakespeare in Love) seeks to woo the lovely Portia (Lynn Collins), but lacks the money to travel to her estate. He seeks support from his friend, the merchant Antonio (Jeremy Irons); Antonio's fortune is tied up in sea ventures, so the merchant offers to borrow money from a Jewish moneylender, Shylock (Al Pacino). But Shylock holds a grudge against Antonio, who has routinely treated the Jew with contempt, and demands that if the debt is not repaid in three months, the price will be a pound of Antonio's flesh. The Merchant of Venice is famous as a "problem play"--the gritty matters of moneylending and anti-Semitism sit uncomfortably beside the fairy tale elements of Portia and Bassanio's romance, and some twists of the plot can seem arbitrary or even cruel. The strength of Radford's intelligent and passionate interpretation is that he and the excellent cast invest the play's opposing facets with full emotional weight, thus making every question the play raises acute and inescapable. Irons is particularly compelling; kindness and blind prejudice sit side by side in his breast, rendering the clashes in his character as vivid as those in the play itself. --Bret Fetzer, Amazon.com
Customer Reviews:
Great drama, disappointing comedy........2007-03-28
A great problem with Shakespeare comedies is that they are difficult to translate to the big screen. Whilst MOV is not, strictly speaking, a comedy perhaps (not sure if Ben Johnson classified it as such), it nevertheless is imbued with much comedy. The casket scenes with the unsuitable suitors, for example, might have been more amusing and similarly so the denouement - portia and nerissa's discovery of the traded rings.
Dramatically and visually speaking, however, this film version is a treat - particularly in the courtroom scene while Pacino and Irons as the play's perhaps two most important characters are in fine form.
Al Pacino's shylock interpretation is played as a particularly miserable usurer Jew: an embittered wretch moulded by Venetian cruelty and oppression. His bargaining for the pound of flesh at the beginning of the play is suitably ambiguous regarding whether or not it is intended to be taken seriously and whether or not his offer to Antonio is in fact an act of generosity given that the loan, if repaid in time, would be interest free.
It is easy to sympathise with the character's need for revenge given that which befalls him thereafter, but his seeming complete inability to forgive during the courtroom scene makes us rather side with the ostensibly more merciful venetians again...until they decide to completely humiliate him and take half what he owns and forcibly convert him to Christianity. This is brought out in this film production with Portia shown to be the main instigator of a fairly aggressive form of Venetian justice.
The juxtaposition of Antonio and Shylock as extreme examples of venetian society is clearly in evidence here. The former symbolizes unbounded generosity, even beyond his means; the latter symbolizes extreme tightness with all things monetary; both, however, are clearly afflicted with weltschmerz perhaps owing to their inability to find some measure of acceptance for that which represents the opposite to which they value most.
In this sense the friction between the two values, necessary for any democratic society to be functional and viable, is clearly expressed. The miserly usurer depends on the merchant, the libertine merchant depends on the usurer, and the entire superficial liberal ethos of the rest of society depends on both - the scapegoat and the martyr.
The denouement is done well enough although again is short on comedy. We understand well enough the need for the new generation of venetians to grow to embrace the responsibility that is required of a democratic, open society - a theme clearly resonant for modern western societies.
charismatic but unbelievable.......2007-03-03
I could give it three and a half stars but not four. One for Pacino (and Irons). Half for making Shakespear watchable for the first half of the film. Half for the benefit of the doubt on losing my suspension of disbelief for the last half of the film (the film had lost me emotionally but my mind was still working intellectually). Half for making me think about the issues in the play and half for making me think about Shakespear and his contemporary audience. The last half would be another benefit of the doubt to Shakespear himself who always seems to disapoint me when i watch a play but makes me think for a while afterwards and in retrospect the play grows on me.
kill the writer! ;-).......2007-02-28
Well, yes - as the other reviews say, it does look sumptuous, much of the acting is spot on and Pacino does his best with the hammiest, nastiest racial stereotype in English literature. Honestly, if this were being made today no studio would touch it and Will Shakespeare would be writing episodes of The Bill to make ends meet. Bah humbug.
Full-length adaptations of Shakespeare almost never work other than to expose how far modern drama has moved on. Merchant may be beautfiul but it's VERY long and once the big 'pound of flesh' scene is over the endless dual identities and plot contrivances really wear thin. It may have worked 600 years ago in the round, but on the big screen it feels thin and lightweight, diminishing rather than enhancing some undeniably classic verse.
I'd really like to see this and Bill's other racist epic, Othello, given the Baz Lurhman treatment. Romeo & Juliet was a masterful reinvention of great material, this isn't on either count.
Hath a Jew not eyes.......2006-11-18
Al Pacino is unbelievable in this film. Portias performance was not the best, and her sub role when she was disguised as the "lawyer" was pretty poor and dragged on.
Pacinos rendition of the "Hath a jew not eyes" monologue was second to none. The films pace can run out at times but overall I think it is very interesting, and anybody interested in Drama should watch this basically for Al Pacinos Excellent standard.
Worth seeing just for Pacino's Shylock.......2006-08-04
Al Pacino delivers a stunning performance as the humiliated, embittered Shylock coming back to claim his own with a vengeance. It's worth watching the film just to hear his anger reverberating in the courtyards of the rich mansions of intolerant Christians. We feel compassion and even some slight justification for his desire for Antonio's heart; however, the director makes sure that the sympathy is balanced and though initially I could understand Shylock's fury, his own stubborn lack of mercy saves him from a complete humiliation...if it wasn't for Shylock's dark, relentless side I don't think his fate could possibly have been acceptable to a 21st century audience.
What I didn't like was the fact that Jessica did not shine as brightly as she could have, her role being cut considerably to make room for Portia and Bassanio. At the same time, the Portia - Bassanio bits dragged on for too long, with excessive music interludes during which nothing at all happened; this simply slowed the pace down unnecessarily and chould have been cut down slightly to keep the audience's interest up. Don't get me wrong, the music was beautiful, it was just too long and the pace suffocated as a result.
Overall though, a film well worth watching - whether you like Shakespeare or not, it addresses issues of religion, race and nationality so relevant today, once again proving that Shakespeare is timeless!
Customer Reviews:
Product Great - Amazon BAD.......2008-02-14
Ok, love shakespeare, excellent set of DVD, recomended. But I would not purchase it from Amazon again. In fact I don't think I will be purchasing from Amazon EU again.
I tried to complain about the seller Amazon s.a.r.l, who is the company that does business in the UK, for sending me mail shots from British Gas and Bupa in with my package. I cannot use either of them as I am not a UK resident nore was the sending address a UK address, but they still felt it was fine to send me down to the recycling place.
When I tried to complain the first time I got "thanks for your suggestion" when I was looking for answers, and "send a letter to this UK address if you want to take if further" when I asked for them to answer my questions.
I am still at a loss to understand why I should send a letter to a company that only does business on the WEB to a UK postal address, when the company in question is not registerd in the UK, it is in some dodgy tax haven somewhere else in europe.
All in all not impressed with AMAZON, very impressed with shakespeare.
Remember you have been warned, AMAZON will try to profit from you twice, once from the sale, once from the mailing work they do for 3rd parties. And then when you try to complain they ignore you or create hoops of fire to jump through. Not a customer facing company after all...........
Customer Reviews:
Sure beats my credit card's terms.......2005-12-28
After the high school English Lit experience, I've never been a Shakespeare fan, so I've rarely seen any of those of his works that've been put on film. Mired in the bliss of almost total ignorance, I'll yet foolishly suggest that this Big Screen THE MERCHANT OF VENICE is perhaps the most sumptuous cinematic adaptation of any of the Bard's plays to date.
If you're completely without Cultcha and you don't know the plot, it's late 16th century Venice and the import-export merchant Antonio (Jeremy Irons) borrows 3,000 gold ducats from the Jewish moneylender Shylock (Al Pacino). The money goes to Antonio's chum Bassanio (Joseph Fiennes), who'll use it to impress and win the hand of the Babe of his dreams, the orphaned heiress Portia (Lynn Collins). But, Antonio suffers ruinous business setbacks and can't repay. So Shylock, remembering the public contempt shown to him by Antonio in the past and recently humiliated by the desertion of his only daughter to a Christian lover, insists that Antonio pay the penalty stipulated in the terms of the loan agreement, i.e. a pound of his own flesh, literally. And Shylock is prepared to go to the Duke's court to argue the legality of his case under existing Venetian statutes. Things look bleak and potentially painful for Antonio.
Filmed in Luxembourg and the decaying glory of Venice, THE MERCHANT OF VENICE is an extraordinarily lavish feast for the eyes. At times, as I found myself losing the thread of Shakespeare's flowery dialog, I found immense satisfaction in the production's glorious costuming and sets.
Pacino, who, in the past decade, has played cops, the Devil, a pro football coach, and a blind lecher, steals the show with an Oscar-worthy performance. He's perfect as the world-weary, embittered, vengeful loan shark literally and figuratively spat upon by the city's Christian majority. Indeed, the film's creators have done a superb job depicting a Jewish usurer's anachronistic social position in that time and place, i.e. both needed and despised at the same time. And Collins is a revelation as the clever and beautiful Portia, the one character in the piece with any brains compared to the hormone-driven and doltish males around her.
Besides the obvious lessons of the story, which are don't co-sign a loan with your best friend, don't play loose with your wedding ring, and always go for the cheaply wrapped gift box, I was left pondering the perceived anti-Semitism of the plot. Indeed, had the play not been written by Shakespeare, and thus considered a "classic", but rather something churned out by a Tinseltown hack and put on celluloid, the Political Correctness Police, regardless of the historical facts, would be howling about stereotyping to a degree that would perhaps dwarf the outcry over Mel Gibson's PASSION. The joyful prospect of that alone makes this a film worth seeing.
UK DVD:
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