Media Analysis - Merchant of Venice

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Media Analysis

‘Merchant of Venice’

The film ‘Merchant of Venice’ directed by Michael Radford is a modern remake of William Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice. Radford has also directed films such as the ‘Postman” and ‘Another Time, Another Place’ both which are classified as Drama’s for their genres. This film was released in 2004 and stars Oscar winners – Al Pacino and Jeremy Irons and Bafta Nominee Joseph Fiennes.

This has been done very accurately and there have been bold choices made in choosing the cast such as Al Pacino playing the leading character Shylock and Jeremy Irons playing Antonio. As in the original novel there is a strong anti-Semitism theme, portrayed by the cruelty of the Venetian Christians towards the Jewish people. Other themes are love friendship and corruption. In Shakespeare’s period this would have been considered a comedy due to the mockery of their Jewish counterparts, but now in a society which generally doesn’t tolerate such racial hatred, we sympathise in the end with Shylock who has been treated harshly.

The first ten minutes of the film are probably the most poignant, and the use of imagery, text and camera angles has clearly had much consideration. These first scenes challenge the viewer to form their own opinions and questions on the characters, and the final outcome.

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At the very start of the first scene there is the year of the event to immediately provoke the reader subliminally imagining this period (1596) and also reiterates that the film is set in Venice with the white text across the screen. We can also see this film was clearly produced in Venice due to the gondolas on the flooded city of Venice. Further more text appears on screen, setting the scene in more detail. The prologue is in white on a black background. This is quite apparent; as the white is a stark contrast with the black which I ...

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The analysis in this piece is satisfactory and there is an understanding of plot and character demonstrated. The explanations are too brief though and ideas need to be developed and considered in terms of directorial choices. 4 Stars