by MARK SLUTSKY

Oh, it's a bit of a tough one, this whole Merchant of Venice play. Of all Shakespeare's works, it's perhaps the least friendly for modern sensibilities, and the blame falls almost entirely on one character, the anti-Semitic caricature that is money-lender Shylock. These days, if you stage a performance of the play - or, in the case of director Michael Radford, commit it to screen - there's no way you can ignore it.

And Radford doesn't. The movie opens with a few edifying title cards informing us that Jews in otherwise-liberal-for-its-time 16th-century Venice were under a number of serious restrictions. Most importantly, they couldn't own land, making money-lending one of their only viable business options. Shylock, then, the usurer who lends Antonio 3,000 ducats and demands a pound of flesh on forfeiture of the debt, is thus as much a victim as he is a villain.

And what a Shylock we have here, in the form of Al Pacino, who is great, hunched and bitter and totally watchable. When we first see Antonio (Jeremy Irons), he's spitting on him at an anti-Jewish demonstration. Antonio later comes to Shylock for a loan, as his dear and penniless friend Bassanio (Joseph Fiennes, looking strangely like Jason Schwartzman in I Heart Huckabees) needs capital to woo the desirable Portia (Lynn Collins). Bassanio gets Portia's hand, but his ships are lost at sea, and Shylock demands his debt repaid.

This is where the movie - if not the play - gets a little weird. With a Shylock as understandable, if not sympathetic, as Pacino's, and knowing of the plight of 16th-century Venetian Jewry, there's no real joy in seeing him forced to convert (after the trial, where he's bested by Portia in man-drag) and lose his possessions, leaving our happy lovers to carry on with their lives… exactly who are we asked to sympathize with here, anyway? Hard to pin this on Radford, though, as these problems are inherent to any modern staging - and his is pretty beautiful. So let's just blame the writer.

The Merchant of Venice opens Friday, Jan. 21

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