It shall go hard...

[erastes]

Because my mate tharain is playing Antonio in the Merchant of Venice this week, i rented the Irons/Fiennes/Pacino version.

Thoughts!

* Don't miss it. It's unutterably slashy. Antonio is very obviously from their first brief scene together, madly in love with Bassiano.
* The "choose a box scenes" reminded me delightfully of "Deal or No Deal"  "I'm ready for the question, Portia" - or even further back "Double your Money" with Hughie Green. God I'm Old.
* Bassiano deserves the death of a 1000 cuts. Nasty venal using little TWINK who makes a fool of a doting older man - and (imho) courts Portia without truly loving her any more than the other suitors did - just to regain the dilapidation of his estates.
* With that said - Fiennes plays it dead right.  When Portia says how much she loves him, he looks decidedly uncomfortable.
* The whole box thing seems really silly actually, as all it would take would be for a failed gold and a failed silver suitor to tell the story abroad and the next man would be lucky. Which might explain why Bassiano was lucky, of course.  I don't believe any of his twaddle. *hate hate hate*
* A VERY rude joke about inseminating that I'd never noticed before.  I love Shakespeare because good actors can make it so understandable.

Comments

[cleo]

My first graduate level paper was on the homoerotic subtext of the play as portrayed by that film and the Trevor Nunn production. Good times.

Irons just does such a good job, as does Fiennes with it all.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

It just shows the difference. I went to an all-girls grammar school and it was ALL about Portia - there was not a WHISPER of anything else!

I'm very grateful to tharain to have opened up the play to me because I had no idea.

[cleo]

Lol. I went to a women's college, but I had a very liberal Shakespeare teacher. She totally opened my eyes.