| THE HISTORY OF THE PROJECT
As one of Shakespeare's most compelling plays, the complexity of THE MERCHANT OF VENICE has frequently produced reluctance on the part of many directors and producers to attempt to bring it to the screen. In fact veteran director Orson Welles had once attempted the project but was finally forced to abandon it as too challenging to transform onto film.
Producer Navidi comments: "I met Michael Radford in LA and I'd always wanted to work with him. I suggested THE MERCHANT OF VENICE to him. He said, 'well, that sounds interesting but I've never done Shakespeare.' I said, 'even better.'" Navidi broached the subject with producer Cary Brokaw with whom he was working on another film project. Brokaw had known Radford since the late '80s and had always been interested in working with him, so when Navidi mentioned him as a possible director Brokaw immediately embraced the idea. Michael Radford recalls the events. "Barry approached me at a dinner party and asked if I'd like to make THE MERCHANT OF VENICE and I said I'd never really thought about it. I hadn't directed Shakespeare on stage or a Shakespeare movie but I read the play, and said I'd be interested in doing it if we could get the right actor to play Shylock."
Radford, Brokaw and Navidi were of a single mind as to how to best approach the play. Their goal was to create a dynamic balance between the play's tragic and comedic elements while keeping the drama alive and accessible. Perhaps the most important decision in adapting THE MERCHANT OF VENICE was the question of who would play the legendary and complex role of Shylock. Brokaw suggested Al Pacino with whom he was working on ANGELS IN AMERICA and Radford and Navidi were again in full agreement. "Al and I had become very friendly while working on ANGELS together," explains Brokaw. "One day at lunch I brought up the idea of filming THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. Al said, 'that's really interesting, I just started to think I was finally old enough to play Shylock.' Like me, Al thought of Shylock as one of the greatest roles of all Shakespearean characters."
When Pacino expressed strong interest, Brokaw organized a dinner between him, Radford and Pacino in New York. "Al felt immediately comfortable with Mike and the exceptional first draft of the adaptation Mike had written," recalls Brokaw. Further to his meeting with Pacino, director Radford returned to the business of further refining the script. "I sat around wondering what on earth I could do because if someone asked you to write a script, you expect to be writing characters and dialogue but it's all already there, and it's all theatrical." It was on the advice of a close friend that Radford decamped London to the source of the play – the city of Venice. "I immediately started to get an understanding of how I was going to do this thing," he comments. "Because Venice basically has still remained a 16th century city."
Radford jokes how "he wrote the script with my collaborator William Shakespeare. He just contributed the dialogue, the plot, the story, and the characters and I did all the rest."
As the script took further shape under Radford's touch, producers Brokaw and Navidi enlisted the help of Peter James and James Simpson from Movision along with producers Spice Factory to pull together the remaining portion of the film's financing. Spice Factory producer Jason Piette explains what drew them to the project. "Shakespeare delivers something that is immediately intelligible and dramatic and there is no reason why that picture should not be as broadly popular as a more commercial film. And of course THE MERCHANT OF VENICE is a pitch in itself because it has not been made as a major movie before. It's a great adaptation of a great play."
Michael Cowan continues: "I remember first meeting Barry in London with Cary and then reading the script. I have to say that as a teenager I was not one of those 'I love Shakespeare' type of guys, but what attracted me to the script was that I thought the film had strong themes which are very much about today's society - jealousy, prejudice and empowerment of women. I thought there could be a crossover market if the film was cast right. I then met Michael Radford in Mezzo's on Wardour Street and after a long afternoon, I left thinking here is a guy that will deliver a great film as he's so passionate." CASTING The attachment of Pacino in the role of Shylock proved the production was already attracting the beginnings of the high profile cast necessary to elevate this project beyond the realms of yet another Shakespeare adaptation. However in order to create the caliber of film the producers were aiming for, they needed to ensure that the remainder of the cast would be equally as comfortable with the Shakespearean words as with their own individual characters throughout the complexity of this text.
Michael Radford comments on the process. "Casting has nothing to do with writing, it has to do with thinking broadly and then letting go of the ideal. You strive to find someone who fits your imagined ideal of the character and then you immediately forget about it, you must, because you now have in front of you a human being who cannot be fitted into a rigid straightjacket and this is a mistake I think a lot of directors make. If you adapt your character to your actor, you'll never be miscast."
In counter-balance to the energy of Shylock, Jeremy Irons was cast in the complex role of Antonio. "I think I would have been very upset if he'd said no because I think he was perfect," says Radford. "Jeremy is not only a great Shakespearean actor but he's a great movie actor. He's just wonderful and of course he approaches things in a much different way from Al. Al is very precise, comes to it in a very painful way, but Jeremy is pure technique."
Irons himself had no qualms about taking on the role. "I chose to do it because Mike and I had talked in the past about different things and it had never happened. I know Al, but I've never worked with him. I'm a great admirer of his and it's nice to have a chance to do Shakespeare on film. Shakespeare is the playwright with the most meat. He's an extraordinary writer of the human condition so it was an easy one to choose."
Alongside these two heavyweights of the acting profession, the production was left to fill the other critical roles in the script. Producer Barry Navidi recalls the experience. "Sharon Howard-Field did a wonderful job casting this movie. She had never had this long to cast a picture and she's an expert in casting these kind of movies as she was head of casting for the National Theatre for five years. She interviewed everyone, all the usual suspects out of the UK but Michael wasn't excited about some of the English actors here and so we looked into the US and she came up with Lynn Collins who blew everybody's mind."
In fact this relatively unknown American actress became something of a casting coup for the production. Michael Radford has nothing but praise for her performance. "I think Lynn Collins is just the best Shakespearean actress of her generation. She is just extraordinary. She came in for a small role and that's where casting was important, when you see somebody come in and you realize they have an immense ability." For Collins, who had started her acting career in the role of Ophelia, the chance to play one of Shakespeare's most interesting heroines alongside some of the industry's greatest talents, was nothing short of an honor.
In comparison with the challenge of casting Portia it was almost anti-climactic how easily the production cast the role of Bassanio. As producer Brokaw remembers, "Joe Fiennes was our first and only choice to play Bassanio from day one. From the first day of rehearsal he delivered all colors you ever wished the character could have."
FROM THE STAGE TO THE SCREEN
"THE MERCHANT OF VENICE is interesting because it is the most produced of Shakespeare's plays the world over, which I was really startled to learn. It's daunting and difficult because it combines such disparate elements," comments producer Cary Brokaw on his first impressions of trying to adapt this text. Yet still, despite being frequently produced theatrically this play has never been committed to the screen. This in itself already presented a challenge for writer/director Michael Radford.
Radford was looking to create a cinematic THE MERCHANT OF VENICE, and not merely put a theatrical production on film. Aware that the medium of cinema allows for closer focus on individuals where emotions can be played out in expressions and subtle gestures, rather than just words, Radford took that into consideration when he was adapting the text. "Cinema demands a certain speed," explains Radford. "You get there faster not because the words are not beautiful in the cinema but because you see so much closer what people are feeling. They don't have to explain it to you. I just tried really to set it in as real a context as I possibly could, to make everyone feel as real as possible."
He continues. "No one talks about the actual plays anymore. They talk about how it's been done this time so I thought it might be rather fun to make a film of the play like a real movie, that affects you so that it actually grips you viscerally, so you care about the characters and you care about their dilemmas and all of those human flaws and weaknesses."
In the spirit of revitalizing THE MERCHANT OF VENICE for today's cinema, Radford left himself open to cutting and changing sections of the original text to make it more accessible for the audience. Brokaw was impressed at the resulting adaptation. "He found just the right things to cut," he says. "It's very dense and in adapting the play, he preserved virtually all of the great speeches and the great moments but found a way to bring it to life so the characters are real and vibrant."
Producer Jason Piette elaborates. "If you acted it out on film from page 1 to the end, it would be over three hours long so the adaptation was already an interpretation just in terms of the approach it takes."
The cast themselves were extremely thankful for this extra preparation time as actor Al Pacino praises the director's decision to rehearse. "We found a way to rehearse because there's no way to even think about doing this kind of stuff without getting together and rehearsing with the group. We sort of committed to each other and we talked to each other and engaged in a way that turned us into a troupe. There's no other way to do is. You have to be a troupe and my hat's off to Michael Radford for letting it happen."
However despite the unexpected rehearsal time this very much remained a cinema production where all the cast remained conscious that though this was a stage play, nonetheless they were acting for the screen. Pacino found both advantages and disadvantages to playing this pivotal role straight onto film. "I'm happy I didn't do the stage version of Shylock before I did this film because I think it helped me not to get into certain habits that the stage automatically leads you to because you have to project in theatre and it's a different style because there is no close up."
He muses. "Though I wish I was in a situation where I'd played a lot more Shakespeare than I have, because it's good with Shakespeare to go through it once or twice and in a play, even if you've played a spear carrier, you were involved and engaged because you learn about a play when you do it, in a way that you can never learn by just reading it so the experience of going through it brings with it a lot of knowledge," he concludes. "So the Shylock I do is really a film performance, it's not a film Shylock but it's not the way, probably, I would do it on stage. It's just that with Shakespeare, there are times he gives you so much because he wrote for the theatre. I'm sure if he was alive today, and writing for films, a lot of these speeches would be different and they'd be cut down or sheared, turned into something else."
Joseph Fiennes says in agreement that "Michael's done a great adaptation and he's pared it right down. It's lean, it's fat free, it's to the point and it works beautifully with the camera. You can afford to cut a lot of those lines because that look can say so much between two people and you don't get that on stage."
As well as cutting sections from the play and replacing them with equally powerful visual images, Michael Radford also controversially added moments that he felt the play was lacking. Though he is quick to comment that did not include re-writing any of Shakespeare's actual dialogue. "I began to realize that Shakespeare tends to come into his plays in the middle of the action and he doesn't have any back story but it's related by the characters as they appear on the stage, and that's no good for a movie. So I decided to enter this one before the play started, without writing any Shakespeare lines. People say each other's names. That's not writing Shakespeare, that's just people saying each others names. I constructed – while not a whole prologue – an introduction to the movie, so you know exactly where you are, you know what the quarrels between people were and are, and you know the relationships between people. I think that was essential to the success or failure of this movie." Radford succeeded in his endeavor to establish the protagonists visually at the beginning of the play. "The first 20 pages of Michael's script are all visual, introducing every character in the play and basically setting the 'mise en scene' of the entire movie," says Barry Navidi.
"When he showed me the script and laid out the preambles to each scene, the moments of visuals that accompanied the verbal scenes and then the actual visuals within the verbal scenes, I thought there's a chance here that there'll be an understanding of Shylock in a way that you can't quite get on stage," concurs Al Pacino. THE LOOK AND FEEL The popularity of Shakespeare's texts have clearly led them to not only countless stage productions, but also to a variety of unique screen adaptations, all resulting in different reactions from the audience. There have been the more traditional Kenneth Branagh's HAMLET, to the updated WEST SIDE STORY version of "Romeo and Juliet," the modern Baz Luhrmann ROMEO AND JULIET and the teenage version of "The Taming of the Shrew" called 10 THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU. However, Radford and his production team knew how they wanted to present THE MERCHANT OF VENICE.
Producer Navidi explains that Michael Radford didn't want THE MERCHANT OF VENICE to be contemporary and in fact he finds those versions very uncomfortable. So he said we have to do it as 16th century Venice and the way we would blend in modern aspects, is by how they deliver the text and how we can introduce some of the production design and costume as far as bringing fusion into it."
Director Radford was very certain how he wanted his Venice to appear on the screen. "I tried to make it smelly and dirty. I don't like people appearing in neat, pristine costumes. People didn't wash a lot in those days and the place was smelly and dirty. I tried to make the weather count, I tried to make the fact people traveled by water all the time count." One of those most pivotal to bringing 16th century Venice to cinema reality was cinematographer Benoit Delhomme. Cary Brokaw describes the vision. "We talked about the look the movie needed to have and he absolutely delivered. It's incredibly real but it's also rich and painterly. There's tremendous depth and really interesting use of light in every frame. A significant portion of the film is shot hand held which gives the film a lively and immediate quality. Period films tend to be shot in a way that's studied and formal. Mike and Benoit decided that this film would be different."
Producer Jason Piette also lavishes praise on Delhomme's technique. "If you print straight off the film, you'd think this was actually a painting. It's so extraordinary as it's matching studio with real Venice but more than that, it's really creating a place that you can walk through and feel you are there," he continues. "There's a murky, foggy feeling for it, there are furtive, secretive desires going on in this place, and that's really the feeling of it, but it's also very rich and luscious. There's this golden look to the thing but it's within this somber, very serious world."
Actor Al Pacino was also awestruck by the cinematographer's work. "The thing I really admire about Benoit is that when you look at this picture, you're there in 1596. You wonder how this is happening but you're there. The way he's painted this picture, it draws us in. It's riveting."
"Benoit has created a very mysterious, dark atmosphere; kind of seedy, sexy Venice," notes Joseph Fiennes. "It's not bright and beautiful, it's dark, dank, and dirty. And, yes, it's sexy."
Standing alongside the masterful filmmaking in creating 16th century was the costume design by talented designer Sammy Sheldon who had previously worked on a variety of period productions including "Gladiator," "The Canterbury Tales" and "Plunkett and Macleane." In this case, Radford did not want a strict depiction of costume during the period but a rather more stylized overall look. "English costumes of this period were very big and decorated with triangular skirts but in Venice all through that century everything is much sexier and softer, really the proper kind of renaissance style," comments Sheldon. "One of the big motivations for it were paintings. Mike liked Sargeant paintings, the whole kind of feel, texture, the lighting in it. They were used as a color reference."
Sheldon describes the final look as it tied in with Radford's vision for the film. "I wanted it to be very organic, very comfortable. We tried to do it grungy as well, dirty realism. Stripping the period bare to the point where it becomes clothing." Realism is the key word to Radford's view of the film and this extended beyond the visual aspects to the characters themselves. In addition to stripping down the script to its bare essentials, Radford ensured that every line delivered by the cast was natural and real, conversation, not a Shakespearean oratory. "I don't like people declaiming," he says firmly. "The one word which was a no-no on this movie was Shakespearean. I said, 'I'd like you to deliver your lines as if it's natural speech.' I tried to make everybody feel as real as possible."
"It became real people talking and I think that's been surprising to all of us in this film, how easy it is to do that," claims actress Lynn Collins. "All of a sudden, it doesn't sound like you're speaking verse. That's been magical." Al Pacino speculates, "This picture is trying to do something that is quite ambitious in its own way. It's staying with the text, it's staying with the period, but at the same time it's employing a wonderful approach and a modern approach to the delivery of the language."
"I think the challenge is to make it clear, precise. The audience doesn't want to hear an actor sounding beautiful and Shakespearean," remarks Joseph Fiennes. "They want to understand the inner motives of the characters, their drives, their wants, their sort of, redemption. They're not looking for an actor who's sounding wonderfully beautiful with iambic pentameter. The discovery is bringing it back to 2004, making it relevant to an audience now, to an audience 10 years, 20 years down the line."
"It won't be milk-maidens and the colorful days of Good Queen Bess," jokes John Sessions. "There's some very bad Renaissance clichés you can fall into and I think Mike was very concerned to make it real. You've got to take the costume out of the costumes and the verse out of the verse, while understanding obviously what you're saying."
Altogether the Production team were creating a Venice that was real and alive and vibrant, more approachable and comprehensible to an audience in the 21st century whilst remaining true to the original spirit of Shakespeare's writing. "It's great that we're doing it in authentic period," observes actor Mackenzie Crook. "It's fantastic to be doing it in a way that Shakespeare presumably would have envisaged it. I think that Mike's making the film that Shakespeare would have made."
THEMES IN THE MERCHANT OF VENICE
"It's a love story, it's a romance; it has humor yet it's also this profound, tragic, intensely powerful story about discrimination and prejudice and revenge. Balancing these disparate tones is a challenge," reflects producer Cary Brokaw.
As with the majority of Shakespeare's plays, he takes a variety of themes and interweaves them together so the complexity of the writing is a challenge for any production to take up. Pacino himself was originally wary of one of the main issues frequently raised in connection with this play. "I always felt there was a sting in the play that was Anti-Semitism and I felt this is interpreted in our world today. I felt it was prevalent in this piece so I personally stayed about from it but at the same time, I still felt the play should be performed. Then, as I delved deeper into the play, I see its relation to our world today and at the center of it is this person who was persecuted and overreacts to the persecution which could happen to anyone."
"This is a play about Anti-Semitism," agrees Brokaw, "and about discrimination, and about prejudice, but it is not Anti-Semitic. Shylock is a very sympathetic character. We understand his pain, we understand the toll of discrimination he's faced throughout his life and we understand why he acts in a way that is perceived to be extremely vengeful."
For Michael Radford the contentiousness arose because Shakespeare made that distinction between the Christians and the Jews, but for him, the play is not about religious differences, it is about flawed human beings. Producer Jason Piette sees it very simply. "It's mainly a play which is more interested in the concept of forgiveness than it is whether or not Shylock is Jewish. We're in a society now that is rent and torn apart by racism so obviously that aspect of the play is going to come under a big magnifying glass, but to my mind that is not an issue. It's so clear that Shakespeare is writing about racism but he's not racist and the play is not racist. It's a true statement about culture at a particular time." Allan Corduner also saw those aspects in the play. "It's a play about intolerance, jealousy and people who go too far."
Actress Lynn Collins considers that the depth in Shakespeare's play could never solely be trivialized under the guise of racism. "What I want people to take away from this is it's about human forgiveness and how we rise above the norm for us, the prejudice and the differences. It's not Christian versus Jew, it's human and personal." Piette continues. "The message of the play is simply that forgiveness is absolutely key in the way that society works; in the interplay of individuals, in their love lives and in their daily lives. Without forgiveness, the society will become murderous."
And in fact that is the situation that occurs with Shylock, who, given the opportunity to forgive, to let go of the hatred, finds himself unable to show mercy and as such his hatred ends up poisoning him and taking away everything of value he had left in his life. But that extreme courtroom scene remains ambiguous as neither Christian nor Jewish society retains any victory from the events.
Shylock may have ostensibly lost his battle but for a man already so persecuted, how just was the punishment he received. "Shakespeare was a skeptic," expands actor John Sessions. "He was a man who constantly questioned all moral certainties and all moral commonplaces. He's the first to take a look at the supposed integrity of Christian morality and to see the cracks."
A further aspect of THE MERCHANT OF VENICE that Michael Radford wanted to draw out but not underline too harshly was the relationship between Bassanio and Antonio. "We talked a lot about the homo-erotic story between Antonio and Bassanio," explains Radford. "I don't know if they've ever had sex, but I do know that when Bassanio comes in and says I am going to get married, it's as though a knife has gone into Antonio's heart. It's as though all the joy has gone from his life." The ambiguity of Shakespeare's writing allowed the scene to be interpreted in almost any way as is evidenced by the debate that ranged in the cast.
"I don't think it's an undertone," reflects Fiennes. "I think it's very palpable and I also think sexuality in the Elizabethan era is very different from today. I think the film is, at its heart, a love story, but he never nails it into a homosexual love story or just a father/son story, it's what the audience wants to take out of it, where you feel you read between the lines. I think in our day and age we get so obsessed with sexuality."
"I think we're terribly two dimensional in our understanding of sexuality nowadays," agrees Jeremy Irons. "Male friendships in Elizabethan times were regarded as the highest form of friendship so there's this strange sort of paternal/filial relationship whereby an older man would befriend and maybe fall in love in a platonic way I believe, with a young man, lend him money if he needs it, support him and sort of dread the day when the young man falls in love and goes off and makes his own life. It's what parents do in a way with their sons."
Kris Marshall encompasses the complexities of the play. "It's quite a paradox, in a way. It's a tragedy, but it's a comedy. It's a love story and it's a story of hate. It pretty much covers the gamut of human emotions; envy, jealousy, trust, love, money, racism and beauty. It covers so many different things and weaves between them almost effortlessly. And Antonio, as the merchant of Venice is kind of the main theme that links these stories together. I guess he's the fulcrum of the piece."
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