Film Review: The Merchant of Venice

In this film review I am going to talk about the movie “The Merchant of Venice”. I’m going to give you a brief summary about it, then I will discuss about the relationship between Shylock and Antonio. After that I will try to answer the question, Are in today’s world problems between different Religions.

The movie is about a Christian asking for a loan to a Jew. This Christian, Antonio, had spat in the Jewish, Shylock, face at the beginning of the movie. Antonio had to ask for his help, because his friend Bassanio, wanted to get married to Portia and he needed financial backing. As they were good friends Antonio could not say no to Bassanio, but he did not have money to help him, so they had to ask for help. The Jew that could help them, because of the amount of money that they wanted, was Shylock, but once he knew that the money was for Antonio he said that in the case that they do not pay in the correct time, he wanted a piece of flesh from Antonio. He agreed because he trusted on Bassanio was going to be able to pay it before the deadline.

Meanwhile, at Portia’s house in Belmont, some Princes went to see if they could get married to her. They had to choose one chest out of three, if the one that they choose was Portia’s picture they could get married. None of them choose the correct chest. Then Bassanio arrived to Belmont to choose the correct chest and he was lucky, he did it.

Antonio had three months to pay the loan, and the three months passed. It came the day of the payment. As neither Antonio nor Bassasio had paid the loan, shylock asked for the piece of flesh from Antonio. He did this, because he wanted revenge for all the mistreats that he suffered only for being a Jewish person.

As we could see at the beginning of the movie the relationship between Antonio and Shylock was not good, they were rivals, because they had different beliefs, Shylock was a Jewish person and Antonio was a Christian. In those times Jewish people could not have properties so they had to work as usurers, so they were not treated too well by Christians.

Shylock hated Antonio, because Jewish people were mistreated a lot in those times, that is why he had hate in his heart and soul. Antonio was his revenge, was the first opportunity to hurt a Christian and he wanted to do either way.
In today’s world there are still problems between the different Religious that exist. For example, we have the conflict between Israel and Palestine. Palestinians believe that Israelis are oppressing them, so that is why they are in a “Holy War”. They say that this war is wanted by God, and leads to the ones who die in it to Salvation. Israel had built a wall to separate the two countries, in order to not have contact with Palestinians.

Another example that wee have in today’s world, is the conflict that exists between the West and Muslims. The west promotes human rights, which is the Human Dignity and it is what God wants for Human Race, but on the other hand, Muslims promote their Religion through violence. That is the main issue that they have today.

As a personal opinion, I really enjoy the movie because we could realize how Jewish people were treated in those times. We could see some problems that they used to have, not only in Venice, but in everywhere they were. Christian saw themselves as superiors, but doing this they were contradicting themselves, their beliefs and what Christianity beliefs in.

I also liked the setting and customs, because they were very appropriate to the period that the movie was settled.