“The Merchant of Venice” (film): It is certainly good, but it isn’t “Shakespeare”

Seeing the film with Al Pacino again made me aware - not for the first time but more than usual – how much the quality of my reading depends on its background or context, and especially on what I have been reading before. Even more so as the exact same thing has happened already with “Henry V” by Kenneth Branagh. When I saw the film a long, long time ago, in 1989 or 1990, I loved it and was thrilled. (I must have read the “histories” already but didn’t understand them. So, the film was a real eye-opener.) When a more grown-up version of me saw it again on DVD, approximately four years ago, I was much less enthusiastic. I remember thinking: That was it??? And when I had seen the recent productions by the Globe and the RSC, and “The Hollow Crown”, it became quite insignificant in comparison. “The Merchant of Venice” I believe I remember to have seen in the cinema as well, about 15 years later, apparently. And to have liked it a great deal, especially Al Pacino as Shylock. And I know that, as it happened with “Henry V”, the film shaped my conception of this text in a lasting fashion. I know NOW that it is because of the film that I have to remind myself that the play is called “The Merchant of Venice” and not “Shylock” – which wouldn’t have been a “politically correct” title AT THE TIME! And, as I wasn’t stupid then, just younger, and, obviously, what I want and get out of “Shakespeare” has changed, what I remember of these first “readings” tells me that the films are certainly not bad texts. Even though I cannot get out anything of them NOW, being an “advanced” reader of Shakespeare. In the case of “The Merchant of Venice” film I still grant that the acting is great, mostly even better than in the theatrical productions I have seen. (In this case, only the Globe’s version comes close.)

Consequently, there isn’t really anything left to discuss about the film, but it is the right place to discuss a few more general observations I have made comparing film and theatre productions of “Shakespeare”. (Dealing with a new play, I usually buy everything that might be interesting on DVD and, as it isn’t that long that the Globe and the RSC began to make DVDs, there are more TV or cinema than stage productions on offer.)

One of them is that cinema is a medium which uses texts mostly with the objective of MOVING and IMPRESSING, and, of course, ENTERTAINING the audience, whereas theatre still constitutes a forum for performing and encouraging some kind of OPEN DEBATE with a text. This observation is as commonplace as it is probably wrong if applied as a general rule. Not to be entertaining commonly constitutes a deadly sin for films AS WELL AS theatre – though not in Germany where the objective of entertaining is still looked upon with distrust! - but there are certainly productions, in both genres, that are not entertaining in the least but nonetheless can have a great impact on the audience. (To explain what I mean by “entertaining” I refer to musical theatre (or German/Austrian “operetta”, not opera!) as a reference, where the objective of pleasing the audience tops any other.) As examples for significant films that were not the least bit entertaining “High-rise” comes to mind, or “Knight of Cups”, or, my latest example which I covered in my blog: “Mother!” I sat in the cinema, not LIKING anything about it from beginning to end. Nonetheless, there certainly happened a lot with me when I saw THAT.

All these concepts are difficult and slippery, though. For example, different people are certainly entertained by different things. I am frequently entertained by great acting, and tend to get involved by appreciating and “following” what the actors are doing. But my diverse readings of “The Merchant of Venice” became an example for the experience I also had a few times already, though I always tend to deny it: Acting is certainly a constitutive part of a cinematic or theatrical text, and totally incompetent acting will certainly destroy or weaken it. (Though this practically never happens because incompetent actors don’t get into expensive productions that end up on DVD, there are far too many great actors about.) It IS important, but it is often not the most important “part” of such a text, not even on the stage. In this case, I finally selected the “worst” production from the point of view of acting - the one by the RSC - as my favourite because it was the one where the most relevant things happened to me when I saw it.

And, as to “moving”: Where I am concerned, theatre productions of the same play usually become more moving than film productions because they tend to be “truer” and more comprehensive about the human issues in question. And I tend to get moved deeper by UNDERSTANDING. My frequent example of “The Crucible” is in order here. I’d never deny having been moved by the film twenty years before I saw the production by the Old Vic. As I’d never deny how much I had been impressed and moved by “Henry V” with Kenneth Branagh. I like to remember it, though I am a little bit ashamed of it now. I am also more than a little bit ashamed about WHO I was when I saw the “Crucible” film these many years ago … And, though I was a “child” back then, I am somehow convinced that it wasn’t just me who “got it wrong”. It was the film that triggered what I thought I knew and what I felt anyway, whereas I loved the theatrical production for creating a text for “grown-ups” and setting ME right. And this has to do with the debate being taken more seriously on the stage, probably with a lot more freedom for the actors to try things and bring their own experience to it than on a film set.

So, there are probably two different kinds of being moved, at least for me, one of them more irrational, the other more rational, and the more rational one often applies to theatre whereas the irrational one often applies to films. (I am STILL moved by the few starved Englishmen slaughtering all these haughty French – though I know I shouldn’t be!) I realize that it is a difficult distinction, but I have found that, applied to “Shakespeare”, it frequently makes sense. Especially where “The Merchant of Venice” is concerned because “the vortex” only works properly and completely in this case when both “poles” of the debate are equally strong and perfectly – and “cunningly” - set up.

The most amazing discovery, though, when I saw the film, is something else. It is that I believe to have discovered the reason why film productions of Shakespeare plays always appear so much “weaker” than theatre productions. Of course, as it had been with “Henry V” and “The Merchant of Venice”: If they have been the only experience you have had, it’s the same as weak coffee. I drank weak coffee with relish for years until I discovered espresso, but from this moment I couldn’t taste weak coffee anymore. I speculated about this phenomenon for some time, especially about the “Hollow Crown”, and it always amounted to the same thing: QUANTITY. There is just so little of the text left in films that the result has to be weaker. I certainly wasn’t wrong about this, but it is not the EXACT reason. It is certainly possible to leave out really big parts of the text in theatre productions without “weakening” the play. Quite often this even makes it stronger, highlighting certain parts, when “we”- as an audience of the television and smartphone age with a very much reduced attention span – wouldn’t be able to process so much text anyway. I am not sure why, but, this time, I somehow came to ask the right question: What EXACTLY cannot be left out if we want it still to be “Shakespeare”?

What I wrote earlier about the stage being an ideal place for debate AS WELL AS entertainment might suggest another reason entirely. People have always loved debate and contention, and have liked to follow it – a need which today is mainly covered by talk shows and social media. Nonetheless, it might be one of the reasons why there is still a GENUINE need for theatre, and “Shakespeare” in particular. So, one might infer from that that it CANNOT really be “Shakespeare” if it doesn’t occur on a stage where, unlike in a cinema, we are prepared for debate. I think this actually has something to do with the issue, though, like quantity, only indirectly. Of course this is nothing more than my personal opinion because I have gathered no proof for it as yet, but I am convinced that “Shakespeare” might “happen” on the screen as well as on the stage. I am convinced that my idea of the “Hollow Crown” as a series – with, basically, the complete Shakespeare text – would have worked great. And I am convinced as well that Shakespeare, if he lived today, would probably be working for the BBC or Netflix, writing great series like “House of Cards” (- which is the most “Shakespearean” I saw produced in the 21^st century anyway, more Shakespearean even than a lot of what is done with Shakespeare’s plays on the stage.)

Seeing the “Merchant of Venice” film, I discovered the only defining feature of “Shakespeare” I could lay a finger on so far – writing this blog now for several years! – because it was so blatantly MISSING. The feature without which it might be beautiful, and it might even be exactly the same story – stories being about the only part of “Shakespeare” that the author DIDN’T invent himself! – but it is NOT SHAKESPEARE. As usual with these discoveries, I wonder why I didn’t make it earlier. Thinking back to the time when I rediscovered “Shakespeare” and began to ask myself why it had this impact on me, two concepts came to mind: STRUCTURE and BEAUTY. I think I kind of discarded them, finding that they are not the most important, but they are, though only in the sense that oxygen and water are the most important there is because, without them, there would be NO LIFE. I think I will come to what I have so far identified as the most important feature of “Shakespeare”, but without structure and beauty there would BE no “Shakespeare”. More exactly: Shakespeare being the genius he obviously was is due to the fact that he really knew what he was doing. As a rule, he always “knew” why he put these words and these sentences exactly in the way he put them. And it means that reading Shakespeare means LEARNING to read Shakespeare – adapt to his world by adapting to his way of putting things. In the beginning, most of the time, it wasn’t immediately evident, and then the sentences can get difficult and clumsy. That is probably why the sonnets were such a great crash-program for learning HOW to read Shakespeare. In this case, it is impossible to read over anything. You have to understand and accept why each verse was put exactly the way it is. And I am convinced that this rule applies, with a grain of salt, to everything Shakespeare has written. Sometimes it takes me a long time to understand, and sometimes I still don’t, but most of this might be because I am not patient or capable enough.

(That some - or a lot? - of what is published under his name was probably not written by Shakespeare himself, or that other people are able to partake in this “world” and produce something genuinely “Shakespearean” doesn’t contradict my argument. ESPECIALLY when somebody knows what he is doing he applies rules – which he himself has made up by finding out what works. And ESPECIALLY if they are working like a charm, as in “Shakespeare”, they can easily be followed and emulated by others. Genius probably has very little to do with somebody being this special person, but with their superior ability to invent things, and tools, and rules that work better than the ones that are already there.)

So, basically, you can leave out whole scenes, put them into different order, even assign parts of the text to other characters without upsetting anything. Taking a stand by highlighting parts can be a good thing, or even necessary, as long as the basic structure of the argument is not broken. It often makes it more “Shakespeare” to put it into a different context because the audience doesn’t take it for granted and their eyes are opened for what “Shakespeare” REALLY is about. (Often this is essential to “unlock” a play for me, as it was with what Simon Russell Beale did in “The Tempest”.) But here is what you CANNOT do – IF you want it still to be “Shakespeare”: YOU DON’T CUT INTO VERSES. YOU DON’T ISOLATE SENTENCES from their context. You don’t interfere with the basic logic and “natural” order of an argument, a thought and so on. I think that cutting into verses and mercilessly ripping sentences out of context was what I found so irritating about the “Macbeth” film with Michael Fassbender. So much so that, at first, I wasn’t able to appreciate the acting. There are few things I watched so often because I thought that I MUST have been wrong. In the end I came round and accepted that they knew what they were doing, creating a text which was beautiful in its own right but WASN’T MEANT to tell us anything about “Shakespeare”. Scraps of “Shakespeare” aren’t “Shakespeare” because the basic “Shakespeare” is the STRUCTURE that holds the thoughts, and feelings, and opinions, AND THE CHARACTERS together.

This might be the reason for something else I observed and speculated about but couldn’t “nail” so far. Maybe there will be a bit more about the issue later when I come to the two recent theatre productions. With more than a grain a salt, in this case, because I still have no clue about acting and never will, but I observe that playing Shakespeare can be so difficult that even otherwise great actors in “high-ranking” productions sometimes don’t appear to “get a foot in”. For others it appears to come naturally, and they thrive, just by being put in contact with “Shakespeare”. I realize that I really have to hold back examples at this point – I’ll just hint at my current favourite member of the RSC, Brian Protheroe, who “did it again”, and, playing Aragon (!!!) for about five minutes, made (almost) every other actor in this production look so much worse than they already did. I suppose it has something to do with what I have observed. Maybe the really difficult thing, as to acting, and what can “free” you and help you so much on the other hand, is that you just have to TRUST “Shakespeare”. It sounds easy but must be really difficult because trust IS difficult, especially for intelligent people, and, as an actor, you have to trust “Shakespeare” WITH WHAT YOU HAVE. TECHNICALLY find a way HOW to trust. When you have figured this out it might suddenly become so much easier.

For me, this discovery became especially interesting in the light of how I rediscovered Shakespeare – and which was what led to this blog because I think I discovered BEAUTY as a means of REDUCING CONTINGENCY. That is, I felt unsafe because I had changed my life completely – for the better - but now it suddenly DEPENDED on the continuation of that change. I think that “Shakespeare” was reassuring – in an area where I needed confirmation. It is also interesting as to WHAT brought me back to “Shakespeare”. It was Richard Armitage who frequently referred to Shakespeare when he was talking about playing Thorin Oakenshield in “The Hobbit”. I implicitly understood what he meant already, I think, since “The Lord of the Rings” where I had been worried about what they would do with “the kings”. Talking about trust …! I never trusted Peter Jackson until the third “Hobbit” film – and partially had good reasons for it, but not where the actors are concerned. Of course he did the right thing and employed two great “Shakespeare actors” – Bernard Hill and John Noble – and everything was fine. Nothing, neither in the “Lord of the Rings” nor “The Hobbit”, could turn out completely wrong because they made the right decisions in advance and employed the right kind of actors. With few exceptions, for the key characters they casted actors who would know how to trust “Shakespeare”. I refer to Richard Armitage because he actually TOLD the tale, but I am sure this applies equally to Ian McKellen, Martin Freeman, or Cate Blanchett. In the case of Richard Armitage I suppose he was actually looking for HELP because, unlike most of the other characters, the “input” on his character was more vague than it should be - by a long way! - for a central character. There was just too little DETAIL for him to use in the books. He was in a fix about where to “find” Thorin and was looking especially into “Shakespeare”, for example at Macbeth for what happens with Thorin, or Henry V for the quality of a leader in battle, or Lear for the voice. This must mean that, in these cases, contingency is reduced to a degree that you don’t have to figure out what to do to get there, but you kind of KNOW.

And something like this is what I did, following Richard Armitage following Shakespeare. I don’t think I really KNEW why I called my blog “Reading Shakespeare” back then, but I certainly do now. “The Merchant of Venice” is just ANOTHER stunning example of how much further I got trusting “Shakespeare”.