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Yup, Pacino was excellent, I thought. So was Jeremy Irons, making a lot of sense of the Antonio role and of the dynamic between him and Bassanio. Fiennes is pretty and did a fair job.
It was gorgeous to look at and the conventions of 17th century Venice seemed well drawn. But did they have black swans in those days? There's one swimming gracefully about in front of a window in one scene. I thought they were from the, then undiscovered, Antipodes.
I enjoyed it a lot. My only gripe, and who am I to cavil at Shakespeare, is that Pacino and Irons do such a good job that the jiggery pokery at the end about rings and sworn faithfulness seems an irritant. The drama would have felt much more rounded had the courtroom scene been the big finale.
It was interesting and uncomfortable to hear a strong and independent woman like Portia rattling on about Her Lord and her subservience to him, and it makes you squirm to hear the way "the Jew" is disrespected.
Pacino does such a good job that, even when Shylock is being a monster, you can understand and sympathise. Radford keeps the racism right at the fore of the picture when the play, as written, often seems to sideline that thread.
Jessica and Lorenzo could have featured a little more, as they do in the play, because they've excised some great lines of theirs, and because Jessica's situation allows another tangent from which to view Shylock and the prevalent anti-semitism. The closing shot, of Jessica fondling her ring and musing (I assumed) on her heritage, adds a lot.
Bloody good film. I'm glad it did fairly well at the box office. |
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