Flash back to Godfather II.
The eyes. When poor Kay tells Michael she's aborted his son. The roiling rage in the monster's darting eyes as her betrayal registers, jaw muscles hardening, face scarily still, twisted into a frightening portal to hell—before he erupts in violence.
It's an unmatched Al Pacino moment, exploiting acting chops he'd rely on less in passing years: the careful coiling of passion preceding the explosive discharge of fury, a subtle physicality informing a larger emotion.
And not a hoo-ah! in sight.
But much of what he accomplishes in The Merchant of Venice comes damn close, closer than Pacino has come in decades, to such electric artistry, after his treks through dreck like The Recruit (though there have been sporadic gems, like his bleary, compromised cop in Insomnia).
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Thy Blockbuster shelves ain't hurtin' for Bard action: everything from splashy musicals (Kiss Me, Kate, based on Taming of the Shrew), to Brando's "friends, Romans, countrymen" spiel in Julius Caesar, to every other film Kenneth Branagh's ever made, to the gold standard, Laurence Olivier's Hamlet. Herewith, even more Bard:
The Passionate One confounded detractors who thought Mad Max couldn't summon the nuance to humanize the tortured Dane. But Gibson nicely evoked Hamlet's desperation in a layered performance that satisfied surprised critics.
Baz Luhrmann drops Shakespeare into a pit of urban grit. A curious crossbreed, with appealing Leo and Claire bopping around a contemporary setting, warring gang members subbing for family rivalry, but Shakespearean dialogue intact. Bold. Bizarre. Chaotic. And so strange you can't look away.
Not a Bard translation, but a Tom Stoppard-penned charmer about the creation of Romeo and Juliet, spurred by a fictional event. A gender-bender romcom with a delightful Paltrow, and Fiennes as young Will, freshening up the Bard's musty image.
Othello, refitted for a teen cast and set in a modern high school, and it succeeds on the backs of Phifer, Stiles and Josh Hartnett in the roles of, respectively, a black star athlete, his popular white girlfriend and treacherous best friend. The themes of love, revenge and jealousy survive the adaptation beautifully in a "teen" movie with no pie-humping sequences ... at least none that Shakespeare wrote.
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Merchant, paired with his riveting Roy Cohn in HBO's Angels in America, marks a return to glory for one of America's most treasured, but dangerously caricatured actors.
You know: The Screamer.
It's as if the lessons and wisdom of the intervening years have embedded themselves behind Pacino's eyes as he reconnects with the complex crosscurrents of Frank Serpico and Michael Corleone, re-emerging with renewed depth.
Pacino's not only the key marquee name, but the best damn reason to see the first English-language Merchant made for the big screen since the silent era, largely owing to its alleged anti-Semitism. As Shylock, the Jewish moneylender, Pacino reanimates the most vexing Shakespearean character and play for a PC-laced, racial/ethnic-sensitive culture.
As a training aid for school/workplace tolerance classes, it's an easy pass, no matter how well-scrubbed of its poison in the human heart.
But Pacino's portrayal is near miraculous, his Shylock as spiritually battered as he is villainously cruel, the former providing context for the latter. This, of course, is the departure gate for The Great Debate.
The playwright's intent-—whether the Bard was a virulent anti-Semite whose vengeful Shylock is his uncomplicated condemnation of Jews, or an astute chronicler of humanity (as much of his work suggests), using the abuse heaped on Shylock to illustrate the barbarous response bigotry can exact—remains an intellectual wrestling match between Shakespearean scholars and contemporary critics. (And one too boisterous to referee in this space. But it's a question ripe for debate after every screening of this film.)
What's clear is that director Michael Radford's film, billing itself as William Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice ... isn't quite that. Much of the viciously offensive anti-Semitism has been axed, with a prologue establishing sympathy for the treatment of Jews in 16th-century Venice, constructing a more Jewish-friendly framework. (If you want to experience Merchant as written in the original venom, read the play.)
In full rabbinical beard, keeping himself physically small with a stoop-shouldered shuffle, Pacino's Shylock speaks in a weary rasp suffused with the sadness of being reviled, denounced and spat upon, literally, by Christians when Jews venture outside their ghetto.
Having hiked up our sympathies for Shylock, and dialed down our loathing of the Christians by slashing much anti-Semitic cant, Radford then follows the core of the famous text: Shylock loans financially troubled merchant Antonio (Jeremy Irons) 3,000 ducats to finance his friend Bassanio's (Joseph Fiennes) romance of the fair Portia (Lynn Collins).
Seething from his malicious mistreatment, however, Shylock attaches the infamous "pound of flesh" bond if Antonio defaults. And when Antonio goes into debt and Shylock's daughter runs off with a Christian, the enraged moneylender relentlessly demands payment in full.
"You call me dog ... Since I am a dog, beware my fangs!" Shylock rails. In Pacino's hands, it's both an expression of inhumanity and a cry of anguish toward the inhumanity shown him; bracketed by his searing pain in the "If you prick us do we not bleed" speech, and tense confrontation with the Venetian court.
Radford nicely balances Shakespeare's odd blend of drama and comedy. Though Irons is a bland Antonio, Fiennes does justice to the breezy Bassanio. And Collins is an eye-catching Portia, pulsing with a strong, smart sexuality.
But this is Al Pacino's show. An American master is back.
You doubt it? Look in his eyes.