Like most of Shakespeare's plays, there is more than one story at work here, and if your only familiarity with Shakespeare's "Merchant of Venice" is your last high-school production you probably think it's all about Portia and her romance with Bassanio. This storyline is usually the most popular with teenagers and it does play an important role in pushing the action forward, but it is not the meat of Michael Radford's movie. Instead, this version focuses brilliantly on the conflict between Shylock and Antonio.
It is difficult to imagine a more complex and dark story arc than the one about the clash between these two. Is Antonio the hero? Or is it Shylock? Or is this a contest between villains? One, Shylock, a much despised and downtrodden man, the victim of a lifetime of anti-Semitism, essentially loses his soul and relishes what he sees as his one chance for revenge upon his oppressors in Christian theocratic Venice too much. The other, Antonio, seems like the perfect example of clean and virtuous Christian nobility - a status he has used to routinely degrade and humiliate Shylock while freely making use of his services as a moneylender when it served his interests to do so.
Most productions are unable to capture the depth of these characters, but Al Pacino and Jeremy Irons are superb. Pacino is tormented and angry and is probably not someone you would want to socialize with, but still you can feel the essential craving for justice that underlies it - a justice he deserves. Irons' Antonio would probably make a wonderful dinner companion - handsome, witty, and cultured - and yet there is superciliousness and a hypocritical streak in him that cannot be ignored.
By the time the trial is over, and Portia's legal arguments have spared Antonio and denied Shylock his pound of flesh, the audience is so deeply involved with both characters that no outcome would be completely happy. Perhaps that is why Shakespeare let the romantic storyline play on, to lighten the gloom with some comic relief and a more pleasing finale.
This may not be a version of the play that will appeal youngsters, but it should keep an adult at the edge of his/her seat, and leave them with a much greater appreciation of how REALLY GOOD Shakespeare was as a writer.
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Top reviews from other countries
Amanda McKay
Bon produit et livraison efficace.
Reviewed in France on April 20, 2023
Jose E.
Fantástica aunque de aquí a poco seguro que lo prohíben
Reviewed in Spain on June 5, 2019