In the Hand of Dante (now on Netflix) is, in the parlance of the times, a “big swing.” So big, it’s either going to be a grand slam or an epic whiff, depending on your tolerance for indulgence, pretentiousness, and well-THAT’S-certainly-a-choice moments. Even basic description threatens to veer out of control. Director Julian Schnabel (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Basquiat) adapts Nick Tosches’ 2002 novel In the Hand of Dante by casting Oscar Isaac to play Tosches in the early 2000s AND Dante Alighieri, famed writer of The Divine Comedy, in the 14th century. Gal Gadot, Gerard Butler, and Louis Cancelmi also play characters in both time periods, and further support comes from John Malkovich, Al Pacino, Jason Momoa, and Martin Scorsese. The result is so sprawlingly mad, you can’t help but sort of admire the audacity it required to make the film, even as it bores and confuses the dickens out of us.
The Gist: Just in the first 15 minutes or so, In the Hand of Dante jumps from 1302 Florence to 1998 Newark to 1969 Newark to 2001 Bora Bora to 2001 New York City. I remember this because I took notes. I felt like I had to. The deep past is shot in full color with a tight CRTV-size 1.33:1 aspect ratio; more recent settings fill your wide screen with grungy black-and-white. Our primary focus is a fictionalized version of real-life writer Nick Tosches (Isaac), who knows Dante’s Divine Comedy so well, “I feel like I wrote it myself.” The movie suggests that, well, maybe he did write it, since Isaac also plays Dante, who perhaps has been reincarnated as Nick, a gangster-adjacent blowhard academic recruited for an opportunity that’ll allow everyone to draw parallels and explore ironies between the two men who might be the same man, depending on your propensity for woo-woo.
We spend considerably more time in 2001 than any other era, because that’s when the heaviest drama plays out. We meet a nasty, nasty, homophobic sociopath of a hitman named Louie (Butler) as he executes one of his marks in the cruelest, nastiest manner imaginable. Delightful human being, this guy. He plops down next to Nick in the office of Joe Black (Malkovich), a mobbed-up art dealer who wants these two to schlep to Italy and fetch a recently discovered original manuscript of The Divine Comedy, which previously was believed to no longer exist. Nick’s the subject matter expert and Louie’s the muscle, and the former is kinda almost content to watch the latter slaughter any and all innocent witnesses to their high-end thievery. This Louie is terrifying, a real piece a’ woik who shrugs off piddling stuff like murder but draws the line at women who carry little bags full of their dog’s droppings. “I’d never hold hands with a dogshit broad,” is his sage life philosophy.
Meanwhile, in the 1300s, Dante apparently has writer’s block. He’s exiled from Florence and unhappily married to his second choice, Gemma (Gadot); his first choice died young and he still obsesses over her. He consults with a wise old man, Isaiah, played by Scorsese with a beard that would inspire the envy of 1,000 Santas Claus. What conclusions they come to during endless long stultifying conversations, I’ll lead you to suss out. Then there’s another moment where Dante meets Pope Boniface VIII, who’s played by Gerard Butler. Please laugh? Yes. Please laugh.
Back to the 21st century: Nick explains to his lesser-intellectual gangster pals that the Dante manuscript needs to be verified by experts before Joe sells it for a zillion bucks, a tricky maneuver since they’re dealing with 700-year-old priceless one-of-a-kind stolen property. One of the experts he consults with is Giulietta, also Gadot, and they fall in love instantly, inspiring a later hallucination in which Dante/Nick sees Gal Gadot standing in a seashell with her bits covered by hair, like Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus. Meanwhile, another gangster, Rosario (Momoa), wants the manuscript. If you’re expecting me to reveal how all this stuff comes together coherently, well, I’m not gonna do it. Possibly because all this stuff never comes together coherently.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? I dunno. It’s pretty singularly nuts. Closest I can come: In the Hand of Dante is The Da Vinci Code gone utterly berserk.
Performance Worth Watching: The standout here is Butler, who manages to be highly entertaining by hitting the sweet spot between being chilling and grimly hilarious.
Sex And Skin: A little brief nudity, nothing more.
Our Take: Tempus fugit, Latin for “time flies,” is a repeated thematic reference in In the Hand of Dante, a wild irony considering how slowly the movie’s two-and-a-half hours snailcrawls by. The phrase ties in with the film’s beyond-kooky reincarnation story, which reaches a pinnacle when Gadot stiffly reads the line, “I was a widow for 700 years, until I met you again!” If you can roll with that, and the Pope turning around to reveal Butler’s wide-eyed doughy face, Scorsese as a quasi-Gandalf, sudden jumps back in time to watch Dante navelgaze or strangle a rabid rat, etc., more power to you. It’s a big ask and Schnabel asks without apology, which I admire in concept, in adherence to his lunatic vision, but less so in execution, which leaves one stupified on a level comparable to grandiose supersized misfires like Megalopolis.
I will say Dante looks extraordinary, thanks to cinematographer Roman Vasyanov, who captures agonies and ecstasies in two eras with vivid textures and a potent sense of dramatic scale. And Isaac is as committed to these roles as any in his impressive filmography, underwritten and emotionally opaque as these versions of Nick and Dante may be under Schnabel’s direction. My well of compliments and faint praise quickly runs dry after that, however, as the film tests our patience with a confused array of nutty casting choices, sudden and shocking violence, mystifying plot labyrinths, restless time-hopping, and impenetrable characters reciting impenetrable dialogue through a variety of bizarre accents.
The 2001-set gritty gangster noir gets considerably more dramatic traction than the overwhelming tedium of Dante’s 14th-century travails; they get about a two-thirds to one-third runtime ratio, respectively. Subplots are picked up and discarded like a child searching for the best skipping stones on a beach. Butler’s amusing bravado is counterbalanced by Gadot’s toneless, expressionless line readings. The ice-cold romance-over-the-centuries between Giulietta and Nick never even bothers to persuade us of its passion or relevance. Character motivation is lost in the shuffle of all the everything that Schnabel aimed to accomplish — whatever that could’ve been. Interpretation eludes me. Your guess is as good as mine.
Our Call: There’s not enough tempus in the day to let it fugit on by watching this ill-defined slog. SKIP IT.
John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog hugged him once.