Kent’s Recommended Watch:
Michael Radford:
The Merchant of Venice
Saw The Merchant of Venice today, which I reviewed below. Al Pacino should have got some kind of nomination for it, even though Jamie Foxx is gonna win the Best Actor Oscar.
Afterwards I went browsing at a thrift store… It’s always frustrating to buy clothes there, which is why I seldom bother. I don’t want to look like someone who’s still trapped in the ’80s… or ’70s… or even ’60s… Most guys never throw out their clothes until they’ve got holes in them, and you don’t give holey clothes to thrift stores. So most of the men’s clothing there are the result of (a) the wife who’s had enough and decided to donate all the 20-year-old clothes on his behalf, or (b) the heirs who just buried the guy and don’t see the point in keeping his clothes. The men’s selection is therefore horrible.
So why do I bother? Because I don’t want to look like another yutz who shops at the Gap; and because I’m cheap. Honestly, I don’t want to pay $40 for a shirt and $50 for slacks when I can get the same thing elsewhere for $30 less per item. Why do you think I buy most of my stuff through Amazon and eBay? (Heck, I’d buy groceries through them if I wasn’t worried about the stuff being tainted or way past the expiration date.)
But back to shopping for men’s clothes: In general, men’s clothing stores have a pretty awful selection. All the same clothes, in different sizes and colors; if you want variety, you have to go to different stores, where you’ll often find the same stuff with a different label on it. I suspect it’s all made by the same Indonesian sweatshop; you may have noticed how prices went up after the tsunami hit. But as a result, your average American male dresses a lot like every other American male… heck, like just about every male on the planet. I watch the world news; in just about every country, men wear suits, polos or T-shirts and slacks or jeans, or the occasional native costume that’s getting harder and harder to spot.
There are two ways one can create a production of William Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice. The first one is to do it the way Shakespeare intended: as a hilarious little play in which the money-grubbing heretic gets outfoxed by the Christians and his soul is eventually saved by forcing him to convert. Sure, it’s racist, but back then, everyone was.
Or you can do it the way this production does it: where it’s no longer a comedy, but a tragedy in which you see Shylock (played by Al Pacino) get crapped on so much that finally he can’t take it any more and wants revenge for the years of abuse that hypocritical Christians have poured on him and his family. Ultimately it doesn’t end well for him; he loses his daughter, his family, his livelihood, his community… You don’t like any of the "heroes" for what they did, and you empathize with Shylock for all the misery he and his people go through. It’s no longer the "comedy" that Shakespeare intended. But antisemitism isn’t funny.
A warning to the squeamish: there are a lot of topless prostitutes in this movie. That’s because at that point in history, Venice was full of them, and they were required to be topless so they could prove they weren’t men in drag. (Some things never change.)