In 16th century Venice, when a merchant must default on a large loan from an abused Jewish moneylender for a friend with romantic ambitions, the bitterly vengeful creditor demands a gruesome... Read allIn 16th century Venice, when a merchant must default on a large loan from an abused Jewish moneylender for a friend with romantic ambitions, the bitterly vengeful creditor demands a gruesome payment instead.In 16th century Venice, when a merchant must default on a large loan from an abused Jewish moneylender for a friend with romantic ambitions, the bitterly vengeful creditor demands a gruesome payment instead.
- Nominated for 1 BAFTA Award
- 2 wins & 7 nominations total
- Aragon
- (as Antonio Gil-Martinez)
- Director
- Writers
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaThe bare-breasted prostitutes were not put in the film to make it more risqué, but rather to add a note of historical authenticity. Venetian law at the time required all prostitutes to bare their breasts because the Christian authorities were concerned about rampant homosexuality in their city.
- GoofsIn Venice in 1598 a woman with no head-dress and her hair flowing loose would be taken for a whore, yet this is how Portia frequently appears.
- Quotes
Shylock: I am a Jew! Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be - by Christian example? Why, revenge. The villany you teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard - but I will better the instruction.
- ConnectionsFeatured in 'Merchant of Venice': Shakespeare Through the Lens (2005)
- SoundtracksWith Wand'ring Steps
Composed by Jocelyn Pook, Lyrics by John Milton
Arranged by Jocelyn Pook
Performed by Baroque Strings Quartet Ensemble, featuring solo vocals by Andreas Scholl
Harp: Siobhan Armstrong
Psaltery: Harvey Brough
Lute: Elizabeth Kenny
Published by Shylock Ltd / EMI Music Publishing Ltd
© 2004 Decca Music Group Limited
(p) Jocelyn Pook Ltd. /2004 Decca Music Group Limited
The situations and characters that result are extremely rich, and those are the things we notice and remember. They are rich because of the massive talent in how the small turns of phrase support the larger containing notions.
When the plays were performed in the form Shakespeare understood, there were essentially no sets or props and the actors' priorities were to convey the language. He knew nothing of the modern notion of acting where actors create characters, characters drive situations and situations define or illuminate a larger context. That's all backwards from his magical tradition.
So putting on a Shakespearian play today is a challenge of high order, at least doing it in such a way that the genius of the thing shines through. Otherwise, you have something of which we have hundreds of thousands of examples from lesser talents. It is made ever harder because actors believe Shakespeare was created for them, and actors together with other trades who appreciate their perspective control many creative decisions today.
Matters are much worse when conveying Shakespeare to film. The "language" is different bigger including a growing vocabulary of visual language. And the actors are even more unavoidable.
In "Merchant," Shakespeare's big notions had to do with deviation from law in as many forms as he could fit into the play. Foremost among these was the "law" of the dramatic form; this play famously mixes tragedy and comedy. In tragedy, the characters accidentally fall into the machinery of the universe and get ground up, often accelerated by what they "must" do. (In film that would be "noir.")
In Shakespeare's comedies, the characters understand the rules and are able to play with them without hazard for their amusement. (A film equivalent would be screwball.) So one large notion of dealing with law is the very construction of the play: two different notions of law, one within and the other without. Lynch in "Blue Velvet" would similarly have two genres as conflicting characters.
Shakespeare of course piles dozens of other problems with laws, rules and norms into his story: the Venetian legal system, religious prescriptions, and on and on, even down to the duties of a daughter in carrying out her father's eccentric will.
The magic isn't in any of this, impressive as it is. The magic comes in how he constructs the language and metaphors that dart in and out of the various issues and perspectives. Sometimes a metaphor is captured by itself. Sometimes it stands outside itself. Sometimes it even mocks or annotates itself. Its as if he created molecules that have the same lives as the galaxies and then let all the stuff in the middle (people, cities, religions) just emerge but with rich commentary on the laws of emergence.
We do have very good film adaptations of Shakespeare. "Prospero's Books" is a terrifically deep understanding of the spoken and cinematic languages and the self-reference of explicitly portraying the playwright. Branaugh's "Hamlet" appropriately subordinated images and actors (both excellent in his case) to the narrative in the language. Godard's "Lear" is also good, completely translating and discarding the language. Luhrmann's "Romeo and Juliet" takes the kinds of risks with cinematic poetry and magic the source does with language.
Now this. Much has been made of the anti-Semitism, and some about the overt homosexuality. Both are social constructions much younger than this play. For London audiences, no people they knew could be more cartoonish than Italians: foppish, superficial and lacking introspection. This play is anchored on two characters: the aging gay merchant of the title and a rich, ripe orphan virgin. Both end up in differing intrigues over love for the same pretty boy. Both intrigues involve rules, law and money and the writer has them interact.
The Jew and his daughter are secondary, no more important than the contents of the boxes and portrayed no more ruthlessly than the Italians around him. His engagement is more a device to introduce religious law outside that known to the audience. We add the anti-Semitism here, something the adapter decided to accentuate.
This is a nice movie. Everything about it is pretty. Even the modern constructions of characters by Pacino and Irons have a prettiness to them, As an ordinary movie (like say, "Amadeus") it is a reasonable filler of time if your life is lacking in prettiness.
But the source has something far richer to feed us with, the ability to be in a story and think about that story: to break our narrative eye into dozens of fairies, some of which dance outside the engagement and some that are swept along. None of that conveys here. We are instead locked into a single narrative thread, despite many cinematic techniques from others that would have allowed otherwise.
Radford chooses the gold box. We have the sex, not the love. Our ships are lost.
Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.
- tedg
- May 19, 2005
Details
- Release date
- Countries of origin
- Official sites
- Languages
- Also known as
- William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice
- Filming locations
- Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg(only Venice film set)
- Production companies
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
Box office
- Budget
- $30,000,000 (estimated)
- Gross US & Canada
- $3,765,585
- Opening weekend US & Canada
- $69,868
- Jan 2, 2005
- Gross worldwide
- $21,560,182
- Runtime2 hours 11 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 2.35 : 1
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![Al Pacino, Jeremy Irons, Joseph Fiennes, and Lynn Collins in The Merchant of Venice (2004)](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMGJiNGUxZGYtM2U2YS00ZjJlLThlNjQtYTVkNWUxZGRmYTk4XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMTMxMTY0OTQ@._V1_QL75_UX90_CR0,0,90,133_.jpg)