 The anti-Semitism evident in The Merchant of Venice has made it the only major work by Shakespeare never to have been produced by a major studio. It is therefore natural that many of the reviews of this first big-screen adaptation focuses on how successfully the director, Michael Radford, and Al Pacino, who portrays the Jewish moneylender Shylock, come to grips with the issue. A.O. Scott in the New York Times argues that it is an "impossibility " to "dispel the taint of blood libel from the play," despite obvious efforts to do so. In order to stage the play at all, he suggests, is "to allow its uglier qualities to continue to complicate its gorgeous flights of rhetoric and its brilliant inquiries into law, loyalty, the ethics of making promises and the quality of mercy." Moreover, Scott praises Pacino's performance. "He restrains himself here," Scott comments, "emphasizing Shylock's grief as much as his viciousness." But Jami Bernard in the New York Daily News argues that Pacino's performance "can't overcome the play's ugliness." Likewise, Bob Strauss in the Los Angeles Daily News concludes that Pacino's downplayed performance may humanize Shylock, "it can't dispel the unsavory stereotyping on which the play depends." On the other hand, Claudia Puig in USA Today argues that "Pacino's spectacular rendering of Shylock" allows the audience to feel "compassion for him because of the cruel way he is treated, without condoning his own terrible desire for vengeance. |
