argene

almost all of Jessica's (Shylock's daughter) lines erased from the movie!! keeping her lines would have filled out the movie better. For an hour and thirty minutes she's mute. You can tell the love story between Portia/Bassiano and Nerissa/Gratiano were played up at the expense of Jessica and Lorenzo. It just pissed me off. In every scene that Jessica has with Portia, Portia runs off and hides without saying anything, or Portia ignores her completley (when others are in the room as well), when Portia talked to her she just stood there dumb. As a result, Jessica had no interaction with any of the characters in the movie that she had in the play. They could've have kept 1) Jessica's debate about Jewishness, conversion, and possible effects on ethnicity with one of the anti-semitic stewards, or 2) Her dialogue with her husband, Lorenzo, which was in the last act.

Al Pacino was better conveying his emotions in someplaces and dialogue in others. Some of the dialogue though, reminded me of William Hurt in the village. That man took 5 minutes to say a single line! The best part (acting-wise) was when Shylock has been forced to convert to Christianity by the Duke of Venice. Afterward, he's just standing outside his synagogue, stripped of both clothing and his religion, as the members/rabbi shut the doors against him. The movie did a good job of relating the effects and methods of anti-semetism in Venice/Italy, and makes it hard for anyone to classify Shylock as a sterotypical, money-grubbing Jew. Even when he's lamenting over the elopment of Jessica and Lorenzo, and most of his money he seems more disturbed that she's gone, and he doesn't know where she is.