Not your mother’s Shylock

Last Sunday afternoon, the Last Amazon and I did a rare thing. We went alone to the movies without the boys. They were farmed out with friends so that we could watch Michael Radford’s film version of The Merchant of Venice. The Last Amazon has already read the play in preparation for third term English and had asked the million dollar question. Ironically enough, it was the question that I too had to grapple with 30 odd years ago in High School English; how is this play a comedy? I didn’t see the humour then and thirty years later, I still don’t get the jokes. I used the standard stock reply in cases of children asking questions that I can’t answer – let’s wait and see.

We were waiting our turn to purchase tickets when the Last Amazon began a rant of her outrage on the Bard’s treatment of Shylock and the ungrateful daughter. We were surrounded by seniors at the matinee viewing who smiled benignly and indulgingly on her tirade until she said some things that struck a cord with all of us. She said imagine that the Christians were Nazi’s – then how would you feel about Shylock’s fate or what could be worse than a child who steals? That wiped the smile of everyone’s face.

It’s with those words in my ears that we sat down to watch The Merchant of Venice. Radford’s Merchant of Venice is no comedy but rather a dark tale that indicts the Christians for hedonism, bigotry and hypocrisy. Al Pacino gives a magnificent performance as Shylock and does something that I have yet to see before. Shylock, no longer personifies the evil greedy Jew but rather a man scorned and reviled without just cause. In the famous trial act wherein Shylock gives his famous speech “if you prick us do we not bleed” his judgment at the hands of the merciful Christians results in the loss of his property, his ability to make a living, and his G-d. Radford shows that Venetian Christian mercy runs on hypocrisy wherein they know that man cannot live on bread alone but by every word of G-d. He is so stripped by the Christians that nothing is left but an empty husk of a man. We see Shylock’s end as he stands outside the courtyard of the temple alone wherein the door to the Lord is closed in his face.

The cinematography is beautifully filmed and edited. The costumes and set design is simply magnificent. The language of the Bard flows and one hardly notices that English is not spoken in this archaic way anymore. There are a few light heartened movements in this Merchant of Venice. Overall the cast fails to live up to Al Pacino’s Shylock which dominates everything.

Would I see this Merchant of Venice again? Absolutely, although I will wait for the DVD to be released. Currently playing at Cineplex Odeon Theatres.