Release: Now available on DVD
Running time: 138 minutes
Rating: M (nudity)

Although there have been many television versions of The Merchant of Venice, Michael Radford’s 2004 version (which has taken five years to reach our screens) is the first film production since the silent age. Although people often point to the characterisation of Shylock as being a significant issue for filmmakers, I have found that the play is hindered by its disjointed, conflicting tones: it is a light romantic comedy and a dark revenge drama, and the two elements never quite gel.

Al Pacino is the Jewish loanshark Shylock, who still holds a grudge against Antonio (Jeremy Irons) for spitting in his face. When Antonio needs to borrow money from Shylock so that the young Bassanio (Joseph Fiennes) can win the affection of the beautiful young Portia (Lynn Collins), the loanshark agrees- on the condition that, if Antonio forfeits the bond, Shylock may take a pound of flesh from him.

Radford has made a decent stab at the story, but, unfortunately, he has made a film that is neither great art nor great entertainment, occupying an uncomfortable middle zone usually occupied by other British middlebrow filmmakers like Alan Parker and Oliver Parker. It is a serious film made by an obvious serious filmmaker (he went to Oxford University, after all)- but the good intentions of the filmmaker cannot lift the film’s dullness and mediocrity.

Unlike, say, the work of Julie Taymor or Kenneth Branagh, it often seems as if Radford is throwing large chunks of the story onto the screen without much of a feel for film’s visual possibilities. The film works in certain stages, especially the powerful courtroom sequence which becomes the centrepiece of the film, but I would wish that Radford had dispensed with the sub-par Much Ado-style comedy of Bassanio and Portia’s courtship for even more of Pacino’s Shylock.

Pacino gives a very successful performance in his first fully-fledged Shakespearian role on film (he also directed and starred in the 1996 doco Looking for Richard in which he and a group of actors explored Richard III and performed a number of the play’s key scenes). Pacino robs the role of its potential hatefulness to deliver a fully-fledged, emotionally raw human being- he may flawed, but, then again, no one in the play is wholly innocent. Shylock is not simply a villain or a caricature, but a textured and tragic figure whose pain is as affecting as his thirst for revenge is resolute.

Unlike Pacino, the other performances are certainly not as naturalistic or effective; the words do some seem to arise as naturally from the other actor’ mouths as it does from Pacino. Irons gives a stiff, inconsistent performance as Antonio, proclaiming his lines rather than speaking them. Joseph Fiennes is pretty good value as the joyful, sweet Bassanio, who is generous to a fault (especially with other people’s money). But Texan actress Collins (True Blood, X-Men Origins: Wolverine), whilst beautiful, is a bit of a blank slate as the lovely Portia.

The Merchant of Venice is a handsome, but dull film. Cinematographer Benoit Delhamme (who also did good work on Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and The Proposition) gives the film a beautiful, storybook quality to the visuals whilst also maintaining a dark, realistic look for the external Venetian world making for a worthy, but forgettable Shakespearian experience.

Andrew Moraitis