Film: William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice
Wednesday, January 12th, 2005 11:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tamaranthWhile I'm not working, I want to post at least brief reviews of the stuff I'm doing / seeing / hearing instead. It's only the 12th and I'm already behind!
Last Friday we went to see William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. At least that's what it said on the film certificate, though it's more like Al Pacino's Merchant of Venice.
I don't know the play that well, but I didn't spot any glaring cuts. It's quite a slow film -- though at just over 2 hours, though, so they must have missed out quite a bit of the text -- and very smoothly paced. Gorgeous locations, beautifully shot. Jeremy Irons is an excellent, and suitably ambivalent, Antonio: Joseph Fiennes suitably Romantick as Bassanio: Lynn Collins (who?) looked stunning as Portia, and carried off the 'young doctor' very well too, with very masculine body language and a nasty little moustache. I really liked Heather Goldenhersh as Nerissa, Portia's maid: she had a distinct air of naughtiness, easy to imagine her as a willing accomplice in all sorts of girlish foolery.
Al Pacino, as Shylock, was astonishingly good. His accent did slip in moments of extreme passion, but not too badly. The play's set up (and I suspect the film script was edited) in such a way that it's quite easy to feel sympathy for Shylock, losing his daughter and being 'tricked' by the Christians: but Pacino simultaneously manages to make him unlikeable.
The film doesn't shy from the anti-Semitism of the time: there's an opening scene, without dialogue, of a Jew being thrown into a canal, and throughout the film there's a current of hostility.
There's also a wonderful feel of 16th-century Venice: the constant entertainment -- topless whores on the balconies, consorts of musicians in the galleries -- the darkness poorly illuminated by flickering torchlight, the mix of splendour and poverty.
(The music, allegedly, is all by Jocelyn Pook: yet I'm certain I heard a fair-sized chunk of Landi in there. It's all very pleasant, anyway, apart from the opening scene where we are informed that this is an Historical Drama by the ubiquitous Wailing Female, a la Troy, King Arthur etc etc.)
Recommended, though not for excitement value.
Last Friday we went to see William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. At least that's what it said on the film certificate, though it's more like Al Pacino's Merchant of Venice.
I don't know the play that well, but I didn't spot any glaring cuts. It's quite a slow film -- though at just over 2 hours, though, so they must have missed out quite a bit of the text -- and very smoothly paced. Gorgeous locations, beautifully shot. Jeremy Irons is an excellent, and suitably ambivalent, Antonio: Joseph Fiennes suitably Romantick as Bassanio: Lynn Collins (who?) looked stunning as Portia, and carried off the 'young doctor' very well too, with very masculine body language and a nasty little moustache. I really liked Heather Goldenhersh as Nerissa, Portia's maid: she had a distinct air of naughtiness, easy to imagine her as a willing accomplice in all sorts of girlish foolery.
Al Pacino, as Shylock, was astonishingly good. His accent did slip in moments of extreme passion, but not too badly. The play's set up (and I suspect the film script was edited) in such a way that it's quite easy to feel sympathy for Shylock, losing his daughter and being 'tricked' by the Christians: but Pacino simultaneously manages to make him unlikeable.
The film doesn't shy from the anti-Semitism of the time: there's an opening scene, without dialogue, of a Jew being thrown into a canal, and throughout the film there's a current of hostility.
There's also a wonderful feel of 16th-century Venice: the constant entertainment -- topless whores on the balconies, consorts of musicians in the galleries -- the darkness poorly illuminated by flickering torchlight, the mix of splendour and poverty.
(The music, allegedly, is all by Jocelyn Pook: yet I'm certain I heard a fair-sized chunk of Landi in there. It's all very pleasant, anyway, apart from the opening scene where we are informed that this is an Historical Drama by the ubiquitous Wailing Female, a la Troy, King Arthur etc etc.)
Recommended, though not for excitement value.
