On the Fence : Extra!

archives


Tuesday, February 01, 2005

 
Shylock as a symbol, but not as a human

Friday, January 21, 2005
J. Kelly Nestruck
National Post
Arts & Life

THE MERCHANT OF VENICE

The latest film version of The Merchant of Venice begins with a lingering shot of a Torah burning, as the painstaking research that director Michael Radford has done into the treatment of Jews in 16th-century Italy scrolls across the screen. This prologue may not be particularly relevant to the comic drama about to unspool -- certainly Shakespeare didn't write the play as a ripped-from-the-headlines inquiry into Venetian anti-Semitism -- but it does act as an important audience advisory: Put your helmets on, ladies and gentlemen. You're about to get bludgeoned over the head repeatedly.
To be fair to Radford and his talented cast, The Merchant of Venice may be the most difficult to direct in the Shakespearean canon, particularly in our current politically correct times. The play is a convergence of two old folk tales that could, and perhaps should, be films of their own. First, there's the famous story of a Jewish moneylender named Shylock, who, having recently been cheated out of daughter and ducats, demands a pound of Christian flesh from his debtor Antonio when he defaults on a loan. (After adjusting for inflation and exchange, that's about 120 pounds in today's Christian flesh.) Then, contrasting with this dark tale of vengeance and out-of-control money markets, there's also the lighter fairy tale of a jet- setting (gondola-setting, maybe?) heiress named Portia, who is yours for the marrying if you just pick the right treasure chest. Striking the right balance between these two parallel narratives is a little bit like trying to cram a Schindler's List subplot into an episode of The Bachelorette.
In the modern era, Shylock has become the focus of any retelling of The Merchant of Venice, and this film is no exception. With Al Pacino in the role, Shylock is, unsurprisingly, more victim than villain. We are told that Shylock terrorizes his daughter Jessica (Zuleikha Robinson) -- which is apparently why she runs off with his cash and a dashing, long-haired gentile -- but in his scenes with her he seems like the kindliest widower father since Atticus Finch. He even seems not so bad as he prepares to slice .454 kilograms off Antonio, who, played by an emaciated Jeremy Irons, clearly doesn't have a gram of flesh to spare.
Like many a director before him, Radford seems oblivious to the fact that making Shylock a stand-in for all oppressed Jewry past and present transforms him from an imperfect person bent on revenge into a mere symbol. No wonder Antonio and his amicos treat him as less than human: he is. Shylock's demotion to marionette isn't helped by the performance given by Pacino, who in attempting some sort of Eastern European shtetl accent accidentally ends up sounding like a speech-slurring Yoda. If us you prick, bleed do we not?
For those who prefer subtlety to puppetry, at least there's Antonio -- the quietest title character in Shakespeare's oeuvre. While professors of queer studies have relentlessly attempted to turn him into a gay Shylock over the past decade, the character remains a complex human first, a man in love with a man second.
The object of Antonio's ambiguous affection is Bassanio (Joseph Fiennes), for whom he ill-advisedly borrows 3,000 ducats to bankroll his wooing of Portia. As a playboy who knows how to pull his sugar daddy's strings, Fiennes pulls off the impressive feat of making his character equal parts repugnant and charming, selfish and loyal. As Portia, the object of Bassanio's affections, Lynn Collins does a good job on the sassy romance bits but is a little weak in her famous courtroom scene, kind of like one of those assistant district attorneys who only lasts a single season on Law & Order. (Also, she has hair that miraculously grows back to its full length just a few hours after having chopped it off to go undercover as a man.)
Perhaps the most satisfying performance comes from Mackenzie Crook, best known as Gareth from BBC's The Office, whose scenes as the comic-relief clown Lancelot Gobbo are very comic and provide much-needed relief from the often overly fraught Shylock scenes.
It's perhaps too much to ask for a director to take a chance and make a Merchant of Venice where a victim can also be a villain, to just let Shakespeare be Shakespeare and let audiences figure out what to think on their own.
No such mercy here. Solid as it is, the quality of this Merchant of Venice is strained by its dull obviousness.
posted by J. Kelly 8:54 PM


This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?