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January 21, 2005/Shevat 11 5765, Vol. 57, No. 21
New film reimagines Shylock
LIEL LIEBOVITZ
The Jewish Week
The Bard has always been big in Hollywood.
Even though he died in 1616, William Shakespeare remains a prolific screenwriter: Ever since 1900, when a French filmmaker shot a stage version of "Romeo and Juliet" with a movie camera, there have been nearly 600 cinematic adaptation of Shakespeare's work, a number that grows exponentially if one counts the scores of movies loosely inspired by his many plays.
One work, however, stands out as conspicuously absent: "The Merchant of Venice." The reason that the play, considered one of Shakespeare's greatest works, has been largely ignored, while lesser plays have flourished, is one: Shylock. The moneylender has been at the crux of countless debates: did the Bard create him with an anti-Semitic streak, or was Shylock, as many contemporary experts claim, Shakespeare's sensitive retort to Christopher Marlowe's blatantly hateful play "The Jew of Malta"?
Michael Radford, who directed the first complete film adaptation of the play since 1922, which opened nationwide earlier this month, supports the latter theory. "I don't think the story is anti-Semitic," he told The Jewish Week. "It's about the suffering of a racial minority. It's about humanity, in all its cruelty, vulnerability, strength and weakness."
The key to understanding Shylock, he says, is his famous speech, in which he asks, "Hath not a Jew eyes?" Expounding on the period's politics, Radford suggests that Shakespeare intended the play as a direct response to Elizabethan anti-Semitism, especially Marlowe's play and the arrest of a prominent Jewish physician called Roderigo Lopez.
"The latest theory is that Shakespeare wrote that speech after attending Lopez's trial," Radford said. "He transformed Shylock from the grotesque comical figure he was originally intended to be into his first great tragic hero."
A few moments of silent pondering later, Radford added in his soft British accent, "Anyone who could write that speech could not have possibly been an anti-Semite."
It was thus Radford's task as a filmmaker to convince the audience of his beliefs. The 58-year-old director, who was nominated for an Academy Award for his touching 1994 film "Il Postino," knew that the first step toward an effective film is a convincing Shylock. In his mind, he added, there was only one suitable candidate.
"Al Pacino was born to play this part," he said. "It's a very difficult role to play, because Shylock is both sympathetic and wrong. You understand his reasons, but he goes too far. Al was perfect for the role."
Pacino, alas, was unmoved, at least at first. "I had no desire to do 'The Merchant of Venice,'" he told The Jewish Week. "I couldn't see the character. Then, I read the script, and understood somehow where Shylock was coming from. I saw the human element. I started to see his motivation, started to see him more as a character sinned against than sinning."
That, Radford said, is the ultimate compliment anyone could have paid his script. To adapt Shylock in a way that contemporary audiences find compelling, he traveled to Venice, met with rabbis, attended services, and studied history. He wanted, he said, to capture the complexity of the character, the anger of a man who is treated as scum by the society in which he lives, the sorrow of a father whose daughter, Jessica, deserts him to marry a non-Jewish man.
"I tried to make the film so that the audience's sympathies go with Shylock," Radford said. "I wanted him to be seen as one man on a mission to right the wrongs committed against the Jewish race."
To achieve this goal, Radford added a few touches to Shakespeare's play, such as beginning the movie with captions explaining the persecution against Jews in 16th century Venice, displayed with a burning Talmud in the background. He also added a scene in which Jeremy Irons, playing Antonio, spits on Shylock as he passes him in the street; this, Radford said, helps explain Shylock's rage, as the audience witnesses a concrete and powerful example of persecution against him by the very man whose flesh he is about to demand.
The film's major dynamo, however, is undoubtedly Pacino; his Shylock is fabulously complex, evoking ire, pity and sadness, often all in the same sentence.
Radford also explored some of his own complexitites while making the film.
"I haven't been brought up in any kind of religious way," said Radford, who was born in India to an Austrian ĒmigrĒ mother and a father who was a British army officer. It was not until he was 18, however, ready to leave England, where his family lived, for America, that his mother told him of her family's history: they were prominent Austrian Jews, and escaped Hitler in 1939, moving to India, which, Radford said with a smile, was the "least likely place one would meet a Nazi." And so, Radford discovered he was half-Jewish, a fact he largely neglected until he found himself drawn to "The Merchant of Venice."
The result of Radford's soul searching is evident on the screen. The movie is strikingly beautiful and surprisingly subtle, paying meticulous attention to detail in both frame and script. The visualization of the Jewish ghetto, with its locked gates, its squalor, and its sense of community, is stunning, and the scene in which Pacino's Shylock prays in shul is a rare cinematic depiction of a spiritual moment, which provides insight into the heart of the otherwise surly moneylender.
The movie, both Radford and Pacino hope, will carry across a message of tolerance in a troubled time of growing hatred and xenophobia. In that respect, they both agree, the film is meticulously timed: the rising anti-Semitism in Europe and around the world, as well as the bile against Muslims in the wake of the events of Sept. 11, 2001, both make the timeless tale very timely.
"If this film was done five years ago," Pacino said, "it wouldn't have the same resonance."
Radford agreed. "What pleased me most," he said, "is that, in a preview of the film in London, a man came up to me. He told me he was a Muslim, and he totally identified with Shylock."
It is precisely such sentiments, Radford added, he hoped moviegoers will adopt.
"We live in a world in which races and cultures are at each other's throats, not understanding each other. The play, centuries old, can help us understand each other better."
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