NationStates Jolt Archive

So I just rented and watched the 2004 version of Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice", starring Al Pacino, Jeremy Irons, and Joseph Feinnes.

I must say, I am impressed. The script is highly edited and downplays the romantic comedy between Bassanio and Portia and focuses more on the plight of Shylock. Though they did cut out Shylock’s line: “I hate him because he is a Christian” (booooo! to the screenwriters)

I am aware of the antisemitism surrounding the play, but, as a Jew, looking at it objectively and watching Pacino's very sympathetic portayal of Shylock what I see in this film is sublime in the damnation of the human condition.

All in all, not too shabby a film. Go rent it. Enjoy!

So I just rented and watched the 2004 version of Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice", starring Al Pacino, Jeremy Irons, and Joseph Feinnes.

I must say, I am impressed. The script is highly edited and downplays the romantic comedy between Bassanio and Portia and focuses more on the plight of Shylock. Though they did cut out Shylock’s line: “I hate him because he is a Christian” (booooo! to the screenwriters)

I am aware of the antisemitism surrounding the play, but, as a Jew, looking at it objectively and watching Pacino's very sympathetic portayal of Shylock what I see in this film is sublime in the damnation of the human condition.

All in all, not too shabby a film. Go rent it. Enjoy!
Would ruin the play. Ha, I like to have my own little version of it, and once I see any version of any of shakespeare's plays I always read them in that version's voice. Ruins it :(

That said, I've always thought as shylock as the hero-of-sorts, a man that is simply trounced upon and hated by everyone, forced into doing what he does by society (ala frankenstein's monster).

I once saw a theatre group perform every Shakespeare play ever written in three hours (abridged obviously), now that was memorable. :)

Not that I want to reveal myself as a Trekkie, of course... But a Star Trek book called "Dark Mirror", by Diane Duane, featured this extract from The Merchant of Venice as written by a Shakespeare in a hostile parallel universe:

"And hath this Shylock not such right to justice, as much as any other man in Venice? Did not Antonio, the merchant there, know well enough the rigour of the bond when first its terms were named? Yea, though he did, did he not laugh and bind himself therewith, no matter that he did not love the Jew? And now Antonio comes and mercy asks, in lieu of justice in this noble court. What, shall the weight of our old dreadful law be bent by mere soft pity and fond loves? The oak bowed, while the reed stands by and mocks? The quality of mercy must be earned, and not strewn gratis on the common ground as pearls for rooting swine, to any fool who staggers eye-blind into his own folly and cries 'oh, pity me', lest mercy's self grows cheap and tawdry from her overuse."

Not that I agree with the sentiment, of course, but I always thought it was a really cracking alternative. :cool: