The Merchant of Venice

This was probably one of Shakespeare's weaker plays, at least based on the evidence presented here. There seems to be no point to the movie, other than pointing out that Jews were persecuted and prostitutes bared their breasts in 16th century Venice. With Shakespeare, what's most important is the words, not the plot. Unfortunately, the words are often not clearly enunciated in this lavish but dull and heavy-handed production. Irons is the worst offender, mumbling his lines in a lackluster performance. Pacino is typically blustery as Shylock, but his New York accent is hard to overlook. Fiennes is just too limited an actor to be interesting.

I just saw this at the Toronto International Film Festival in the beautiful Elgin Theatre. I was blown away by the beautiful cinematography, the brilliant adaptation of a very tricky play and last but not least, the bravura performance of Al Pacino, who was born to play this role, which was perfectly balanced by an equally strong performance from Jeremy Irons. The film deftly explores the themes of love vs loyalty, law vs justice, and passion vs reason. Some might protest that the content is inherently anti-semitic, however they should consider the historical context of the story, and the delicate and nuanced way in which it is told in this adaptation. 9/10