In the Hand of Dante is director and co-writer Julian Schnabel’s film adaptation of the Nick Tosches novel; I haven’t read the book, but it’s likely one of those impossible-to-make-into-a-movie novels – and it’s got to be better than this film.
The movie braids together two parallel stories – one that begins in 21st century New York and the other set in early 14th century Italy. The modern story is in back-and-white; the period story is in color.
The modern story follows the arc of a heist film. Oscar Isaac plays a fictionalized Nick Tosches, a contemporary writer who is enthralled with the work and life of the pre-Rennaisance Florentine poet Dante Alighieri. The movie Tosches knows that an original manuscript written by Dante himself would be invaluable on the antiquities market and thinks he knows where a previously unknown specimen exists. A criminal kingpin (John Malkovich), with his vile enforcer (Gerard Butler) and weaselly sidekick (Louis Cancelmi), bankrolls two heists – one to steal the Dante original and a second to swipe contemporaneous works that can be used to authenticate the Dante work.
The period piece takes us to the early 1300s and the life of Dante himself (also played by Oscar Isaac). Butler and Cancelmi also play medieval figures. Gal Gadot plays Dante’s wife – not his idealized muse – in the period piece and Tosches’ fantasy love in the modern story. Most of the Dante story centers around the politics of Florence and the papacy, with a bizarre piece with Martin Scorsese, under a massive tangle of white long hair and beard, as a sage who guides Dante’s thinking.
The heist story is procedural and features the off couple pairing of the intellectual Tosches and the sadistic philistine hitman (Butler). This is the most accessible thread of the film, and there’s really nothing exceptional about it except for the profound indecency of the hitman. The modern story tries to mirror the themes of artistic freedom and obsessive love of the Dante story, and even throws in 9/11. On the whole, everything except the heist story is impenetrable.
None of this is the fault of the cast, which is uniformly good – except for the artificial-seeming chemistry between Isaac and Gadot. It’s always great to see Louis Cancelmi, and Duke Nicholson is exceptional as the hitman’s first terrorized and degraded victim. Besides Scorsese, Al Pacino, Jason Momoa and the iconic Franco Nero show up in cameos.
Julian Schnabel is one of the great contemporary painters, and branched into filmmaking with the arthouse hit Basquiat in 1994. This is only Schnabel’s sixth narrative feature in thirty-two years, including the wonderful The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Schnabel is a gifted artist in every medium, but In the Hand of Dante is a rare misfire.
At the outset, there’s a scene involving the boy Tosches being guided past a traumatic experience by his uncle Carmine, played by Al Pacino – and Pacino is magnificent. It’s by far the best-acted and most compelling scene in In The Hand of Dante. Unfortunately, another two hours and twenty minutes follow.
In the Hand of Dante is streaming on Netflix.