Well, at least it’s pretty to look at.
Julian Schnabel’s pretentious new opus “In the Hand of Dante” stars Oscar Isaac as real-life journalist, novelist and poet Nick Tosches, who gets sucked into a criminal conspiracy to steal a manuscript of “The Divine Comedy,” allegedly written in Dante Alighieri’s own handwriting. In flashbacks, Isaac also plays Dante himself, who struggles to complete his epic trilogy while coming to terms with his exile, his spiritual failings and his loveless marriage. Lots of people get killed. Lots of navels also get gazed.
Tosches wrote the novel “In the Hand of Dante” himself, and Schnabel’s film treats that source material like brazen self-insert fan-fiction. To hear Schnabel tell it, Nick Tosches was a brilliant, bold, hunky iconoclast who stuck it to the man and slept with sexy ladies. He may also have been the living reincarnation of Dante himself, or maybe he just thought he was. Either way you could fill the whole screen with nothing more than this protagonist’s ego.
Schnabel’s films are usually full of visual splendor. “In the Hand of Dante” is no exception, although it’s the only one that offers little else. The director of such bewitching and beautiful dramas as “At Eternity’s Gate,” “Before Night Falls” and “Basquiat” is fascinated with the inner worlds of history’s greatest artists, and he translates that beauty to the screen with astounding visual clarity. “In the Hand of Dante” is another feast for the eyes, courtesy of cinematographer Roman Vasyanov (“Fury”), but in this film the artist’s inner world is his also outer world. The author’s subconscious is literal reality. That, or reality and fiction have hopelessly merged, depending on your interpretation.
Either way it’s presented with such bloviating seriousness that it can’t be taken seriously, on the surface or in its heart. The crime plot is so cheesy and pulpy it’s practically curdled, the historical plot might as well take place in a whole other universe. The spirituality might be profound if it wasn’t so self-aggrandizing, and the romance is unconvincing at best. We’re told that this love story is so powerful it transcends time and space. We’ll have to take Schnabel’s word on that, since it never reads on camera.
Which is not to say that “In the Hand of Dante” is without wit or humor. Gerard Butler plays a queer yet violently homophobic gangster named Louie, who accompanies Tosches on his journey and kills nearly everyone they meet. Louie may be evil incarnate but he approaches Tosches’ world like Han Solo approaches Luke Skywalker’s in “Star Wars,” with a welcome and refreshing lack of interest, making all the heavy-handed mythologizing easier for the audience to digest. But Louie is just a sidebar in Tosches’ journey, and once the film moves past him there’s nothing relatable about it. (Also let’s be honest, the fact that the mass murdering bigot is one of this movie’s most relatable characters isn’t a point in its favor.)
Isaac knows how to captivate, even when his material is obtuse, but this material is very, very obtuse, which makes his job visibly harder than usual. You’ll find John Malkovich working wonders as a corrupt art dealer who never leaves his desk, but that’s more of a plot point than a character. Martin Scorsese, one of the most Catholic filmmakers in history, cameos as Dante’s Jewish spiritual advisor who gives the author — and his Catholicism — his official seal of religious approval. I am not qualified to unpack all that baggage, but I know it’s piled high.
Then of course there’s Gal Gadot, whose mission to prove her charismatic turn in the first “Wonder Woman” was a fluke continues to be successful. She spends most of the film looking and sounding sleepy, which just makes us want to take a nap too. At least she doesn’t have a musical number this time.
“In the Hand of Dante” is an absurd film, maybe even intentionally absurdist, but the thick, soupy fog of self-importance obscures Schnabel’s vision. We’re watching a movie that dangles between solemn camp and artistic tragedy, and I’m not sure where Julian Schnabel wants it to fall, but either option would be unfortunate. The film may be unbridled, unfettered and bold, but sometimes those adjectives aren’t complimentary. You can boldly make the greatest movie of all time and you can boldly walk face-first into brick wall. At least Schnabel’s wall has pretty pictures on it.
