Servilely tethered to the source material—except where it shouldn't be—Julian Schnabel’s adaptation of *In the Hand of Dante* yields uneven results. While it boasts beautiful cinematography and remains more or less faithful to Nick Tosches’s sprawling, cynical pseudo-biography of Dante Alighieri, the film’s nearly three-hour runtime makes it hard to overlook its pretentiousness and absurdity.
One assumes half the cast participated in the project as a tribute to the late, great Nick Tosches. The other half, however, overacts in what plays like a conventional mob movie with intellectual pretensions. Like the book, the story toggles between Dante’s life and the criminal fantasy of an ill-fated writer—named Nick Tosches—who gets entangled in a Mafia plot to authenticate pages from the original *Divine Comedy* manuscript.
Director: Julian Schnabel
Writers: Louise Kugelberg, Julian Schnabel, Nick Tosches
Stars: Ibrahim Elouahabi, Gavin Weingarten, Al Pacino
The literary work is simultaneously profound and absurd, drawing parallels between the corruption of modern capitalism and the Vatican decadence Dante famously satirized. Perhaps it could have been filmed with more humor, color, and a breezier script. Yet Schnabel seems intent on proving he has "understood" the book, all while skimping on the meaningful details that made the work's dual narratives so fascinating. Too much time is spent establishing gangster-dramedy clichés and too little on the ironies and coincidences linking Tosches to Dante; consequently, when the story jumps between eras, we never truly grasp what is at stake.
The two narrative strands of *In the Hand of Dante* maintain a dialogue with one another. That is, at least, the premise of the adaptation—directed and co-written by Julian Schnabel—of Nick Tosches’s fantastic novel, in which the life of Dante Alighieri intertwines with that of a fictionalized version of the book’s author (one hopes it is fictionalized, given the character's behavior) to examine... well, something or other.
A character (played by Martin Scorsese, incidentally) in the scenes set in the 14th century articulates what is perhaps the most precise definition of the story's overall purpose. He is a theologian—whom Dante (played by Oscar Isaac) consults for religious guidance while attempting to write *The Divine Comedy*—who at one point remarks that commerce is becoming a "false god" of this modern world, where even the Pope treats the writer like a mere tenant whom the papal landlord might evict on a whim.
As presented in the screenplay by Schnabel and Louise Kugelberg, the dialogue in these period scenes is delivered almost in verse—albeit lacking the rhyme and meter typical of poetry—and with an affectation evoking a somewhat archaic form of English; consequently, it is sometimes difficult to discern what we are meant to glean from such statements, if anything at all. It is perhaps telling that Schnabel (or whoever made the decision) deemed that all the dialogue in the period scenes would benefit from subtitles, even though barely a couple of words or phrases are spoken in Italian. This may be a unique instance where the stylistic idiosyncrasy of the language is perceived as a significant enough obstacle to hinder comprehension for the general audience.
However, the real problem may lie in the fact that both storylines feel distinctly hollow—though equally so. It is true that Dante and other characters—including the philosopher, Pope Boniface VIII (Gerard Butler), and another contemporary poet named Guido Novello da Polenta (Louis Cancelmi)—speak at length about writing, religion, and the new order of things in their modern world; however, it seems an overstatement to claim that any of these pronouncements or discussions sheds light on anything significant in its own right.
In fact, the main element that makes those period scenes in Schnabel’s film interesting is the cast. It is not just a matter of Isaac playing Dante, Butler the Pope, Cancelmi the other writer, and Gal Gadot playing Gemma, the protagonist poet’s wife. There is also the fact that, in the scenes set around the year 2001, Isaac plays Nick; Butler plays Louie, a Mafia hitman; Cancelmi plays a henchman who connects the author with the organization’s boss; and Gadot plays the cousin of Nick’s editor’s assistant—a woman with whom the author seems to fall in love the moment he lays eyes on her. Such connections undoubtedly hint at the bold ambition of Tosches’s novel and can be entertaining in their own right—particularly the way Nick ends up becoming indistinguishable from Dante, or the comparison drawn between a corrupt pope and a Mafia hitman.
By the early 21st century, Nick has become a self-proclaimed Dante expert, leading this small-time mobster to arrange a meeting between the author and mafia boss Joe Black (John Malkovich). He has heard that an original manuscript of *The Divine Comedy* has been discovered in a forgotten room at the Vatican; after telling the boss that such a rare object would be worth more money than most people could imagine, the author and Louie head to Italy. Nick has no idea of the senseless deaths this will trigger.
In any case, what was once an artistic endeavor—born of great patience, reflection, and suffering, and filmed in vivid color by cinematographer Roman Vasyanov—has centuries later become an item for auction houses (presented in black and white). It is a simple premise for a story that, for the most part, ends up focusing on just how over-the-top and convoluted the plot of the modern-day storyline becomes.
Nick—who introduces himself by recounting how he killed someone as a child—becomes an unflappable accomplice to multiple murders, kills again himself, and possibly embodies one half of a love story that transcends death and time. The situation is so outlandish that it could have been framed as a comedy. However, *In the Hand of Dante* becomes increasingly absurd and less convincing as it unfolds.
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