I'm hardly a Shakespeare expert, but I have seen and enjoyed quite a few film adaptations of his plays and recognize the monumental genius of his work that stands as the foundation of drama and story in western culture. The trick with these adaptations is to make Shakespeare's brilliantly crafted language clearly understandable to us 400 years on. The best films, imho, are the comedy Much Ado About Nothing, which is easily the most accessible adaptation yet, through it's beautifully enunciated performances, and then the stark tragedy Titus. which draws more heavily on it's superb visual presentation.

So what about The Merchant of Venice? Well, I hadn't read it nor seen any stage or film productions of it, have you? So I can at least vouch that this review is relatively free of preconceptions. First, it is supposedly grouped with Shakespeare's comedies - well the way it is played here, it seems to be clearly in the tragedy camp - it's hardly laugh out loud funny, like Much Ado - this is not a happy, feel good tale. The main theme seems to be the nature of law, and how it is rooted in our individual ethics and then in our real world behaviour, and it is a very deep meditation on this not altogether logical progression. The acting is solid throughout, each of the main characters spoke their parts clearly and such that I was drawn into empathy with their lot. It was especially enjoyable to see Al Pacino blustering on in his full Venetian regalia, and I'm always happy to see the lately underused Jeremy Irons. On the downside, the story is exceedingly complex to take it all in on the first viewing. I think, I would now benefit from reading the play and some modern day analysis of it, then seeing the movie again. Quite a commitment, and one I didn't feel the need to do after seeing the above two mentioned adapations. So, is the play itself, that much more complex, or is it a fault in the adaptation? I'm not sure, but I would be willing to give this play and production further opportunities to entertain and educate me in the years to come.

4 out of 5.

Shakespeare was a playwrite of both royalty and the public. He was on the cutting edge.

If he were alive today, I'm pretty sure he would have really dug Romeo + Juliet.

To me, that in essense is what Shakespeare would have been about. Not the tired retelling in wonky costumes.

I also think he would have enjoyed Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (tho not Shakespeare!).

The 2000 version of Hamlet with Ethan Hawke and Bill Murray wasn't that great.

i enjoyed titus too! i think it was shakespeare's first known play - certainly his first tragedy; and the film really captured the raw bloody quality of the original. as well as the interesting visuals, there's some great direction and some really good performances. did i dream this, or did it get panned by the critics? i seem to recall that the problems with the film were pretty much the problems with the play... although purists (as ever!) might have found the 5th Element-style visuals hard to stomach



comedy = funny and tragedy = sad are modern uses. in dramatic/ literary terms, there are whole books devoted to these, and their meanings alters over time. perhaps the way shakespeare used "tragedy" and "comedy" had more to do with how the plays ended - either with the social order collapsing (symbolised by a death) or being reaffirmed/ restored (commonly, but not always, symbolised by a marriage). i don't know much about the merchant of venice, but if you forget about poor shylock, perhaps the "winner" of the play is The Law? however bad we feel for the hero, the social order *is* reaffirmed - for better or for worse. hamlet (a tragedy) is a contrast: with his own downfall, the prince brings everything crashing down around him. at the end, fortinbras has to march into denmark with a whole new social order, because hamlet's pretty much wrecked the old one.

a play that ended with something like a marriage is more likely to be lighthearted + funny, which i guess is where the modern meaning comes from. i don't really know much about the comedies, to be honest

i hadn't caught the film yet, but it sounds good, so i might give it a shot...

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern is excellent, Stoppard and SHakespear would shake hands, but above that I'm sure they'd part their merry ways so to speak. I don't think Shakespear would have loved the spin-offs because they challenge authorship and he was very much about himself. Sure he may have loved Romeo + Juliet as long as it was still referring back to him and not Pyramus and Thisbee, the little known tale that is the source for his star-crossed lovers. He'd like it as long as it reinforced his name, which all these modern-day settings still do. I doubt he would have encouraged it otherwise. I don't think he was all that much a modernist as much as he was a literary scholar maybe, but still there is a small difference.

As to Front of House and Bradley, I think by definition a Comedy of his ends in a sort of celebratory marriage, and didn't necessarily enforce comic treatment of characters along the way. Much Ado has some people that lose out and die also, and what of The Tempest, the ending isn't clear there either, and such characters as Caliban and the two lost sailors go about in sillyness, but not necessarily with silly/fun outcomes. I don't know, I keep tragedy to death and comedy to marriage and don't usually think that classification holds much in terms of deeper content. Though Romeo and Juliet die, they are with eachother, and finally end an ages long family feud, so I guess that's positive, but it is considered a tragedy.

true, true. the fact that shakespeare fooled about with the genres so much doesn't make the issue any clearer for us mere mortals (e.g., the tempest and a few others are sometimes lumped together as "the problem plays," tho' i can't remember why... and romeo and juliet has lots of elements that clash with the "scholarly" definition of tragedy). but i think that's part of the charm with shakespeare. genres don't always have much personality. i heard that a lot of scholars rate timon of athens as his finest, most pure example of a tragedy, but imho it's pretty flat and artificial. tho' it contains one or two speeches which i really liked. i'm sorry to say most of his plays, apart from my favourites, have started to blur in my head

has anyone ever made a film based on the sonnets, i wonder?