It was a bit surprising when Julian Schnabel, who became famous for art made of broken dishes, turned into a filmmaker whose works have such a strong, conventional narrative pull. But after films such as The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and most recently the lovely biographical take on Van Gogh, At Eternity’s Gate, it’s less surprising that his ambitious, captivating and sometimes misfiring extravaganza In the Hand of Dante works much better in the straightforward parts set in the 21st century than in the raggedy, philosophical sections set in the 14th century.

The two parallel stories, both driven by Dante’s Divine Comedy, weave in and out through the film, with the 21st century in black and white and the 14th in color. It is also a film of dual roles, often with actors as characters in both centuries, echoing each other and possibly playing the earlier characters’ reincarnations. It’s such a big, bold swing that Schnabel was able to enlist a cast of major names, and it’s based on such a wild idea it’s a wonder he got to make it at all.

In the Hand of Dante

The Bottom Line

A crazy ride that doesn’t quite get there.

Venue: Venice Film Festival (Out of Competition)
Cast: Oscar Isaac, Jason Momoa, Gerard Butler, Martin Scorsese, Al Pacino, Gal Gadot, John Malkovich, Sabrina Impacciatore, Louis Cancelmi, Franco Nero, Benjamin Clementine
Writers: Julian Schnabel, Louise Kugelberg
Director: Julian Schnabel
2 hours 31 minutes

The film, including its plot and dual structure, is based on the late Nick Tosches’ indulgent 2002 novel, full of mini-essays about writing and about life or death. Schnabel actually tones down the excesses. Oscar Isaac is dynamic as the central character, Nick, a writer in New York in 2001. He is not exactly a thug but he is thug-adjacent. An actual criminal, his friend Lefty (Louis Cancelmi), recruits him when a crime boss (John Malkovich, calm and sinister) has learned that an invaluable hand-written manuscript of The Divine Comedy exists and plans to steal it. Nick, so deeply immersed in Dante’s work that he says “I know this poem so well I feel like I wrote it myself” (in the reincarnation scheme, maybe he did), is just the guy to help authenticate it. Schnabel gives the 2001 sections a suitable grimy look, with black and white that is not rich but more washed-out gray, and every scene is gracefully composed.   

The heist plot doesn’t kick in immediately. There are scenes that reveal more about Nick, who pontificates to Lefty about how he hates for his books to be edited. Vacationing in Bora Bora, he injures his knee badly on a rock. We learn that his grown daughter was murdered, information that comes and goes in a single scene, with choral music playing over shots of a body bag. Isaac’s charismatic presence holds the tentacles of Nick’s story together.

Gerard Butler plays a paid assassin, Louie, who in a particularly brutal episode walks into a bar, tosses homophobic slurs at the bartender and pulls a gun on him. Butler is convincingly tough but the scene goes on far too long. It is there mostly to let us know that Louie is a miserable excuse for a human, and also why he is hired to steal the manuscript.

Al Pacino has only one scene, but it is among the film’s sharpest and best. In a flashback, little Nick confesses to his uncle that he has just murdered another boy. Pacino is understated (yes, Pacino) as the uncle who gives him some life lessons about the neighborhood and gently steers him away from confessing his sin to a priest.    

The theft takes Louie and Nick to Palermo, where Franco Nero appears briefly as the Mafia don who owns the manuscript. As Nick goes back to New York and then to Verona and Paris, his life in danger, that story is streamlined enough to play like a high-end Dan Brown Vatican thriller.

But interspersed with all that is the 14th-century story of Dante (also Oscar Isaac) and his winding path toward writing his masterpiece. Those sections are visually stunning and otherwise a mess. In bold color, Dante, in a flowing robe and carrying a heavy leather-bound book, climbs up a rock from the sea, a mirror-like image of a climb we have seen Nick make in black and white. He marries a woman he doesn’t love, Gemma, played by Gal Gadot, who also plays Giulietta, the woman Nick does love. The scenery and costumes are sumptuous, but the script is another thing.

As Dante struggles with his poem, he is sent to a wise man who can guide him, a rabbinical figure called Isaiah (not his real name, we’re told). Martin Scorsese plays Isaiah with a long white wig beard that unfortunately but undeniably call to mind Gandalf. Rumpelstiltskin might also come to mind — not the tone Schnabel was likely going for. Isaiah delivers a cryptic monologue about spirituality and 14th century politics. “The Arab is the new Jew,” he says (a line directly from Tosches’ book, which leaps out as more volatile today).

Even if you give Schnabel the benefit of the doubt — Butler also has a conspicuously fake beard in his double role as the Pope — and assume there is an intentional theatricality here, the 14th-century sections attempt to be artistic and profound but sound like hot air.

The film is not pretentious about its literary allusions though. Lines from The Divine Comedy land lightly, spoken by Dante or as Nick reads the manuscript, and if they don’t register as Dante it doesn’t matter. And the story keeps moving, as Dante is exiled from Florence. But while Isaac seems to be trying to make him sincere and questioning, the character is inert. We just don’t care, and it’s a saving feature of the film that the historical sections take up far less screen time than the contemporary scenes.

Toward the end, Jason Momoa turns up in the 21st century as the new mob boss, a slick figure in a white suit, determined to get the manuscript back. His presence leads to torture, gunfire and an ending that veers into the surreal. Nick and Giulietta meet a pianist who lives in a grand villa and is called Mephistopheles, played by Benjamin Clementine, who also composed the elegant score. It’s a risky turn that this time actually works.

But even when it goes off the rails, In the Hand of Dante is never dull.  And there is always something glorious to look at. An overhead shot of Nick floating in the black-and-white sea is an eloquent image that resonates with his increasingly broken life. A film this wackadoo-ambitious that almost works is a kind of miracle in itself.