In the hand of dante movie review

Let's start with the positive: At this year's Venice Film Festival, no film with a dazzling line -up could come up with “in the Hand of Dante”. In the most recent film by Julian Schnabel (“Butterfly and diving bell”) Oscar Isaac (“Star Wars”), Gerard Butler (“300”), John Malkovich (“In the Line of Fire”), Jason Momoa (“Aquaman”), Gal Gadot (“Wonder Woman”), directorial legend (“Taxi Driver”)) Oscar winner Al Pacino (“The Fragrance of Women”), original “Django” Franco Nero and the British Chamber-Pop musician Benjamin Clementine. The address book by Schnabel, who started his career as a neo-expressionist painter, before he also went under the filmmakers with the artist biopic “Basquiat” in 1996, is well filled and contains quite unexpected names …

… and also the cinematic result, we remain positive, is still insufficiently described with “surprisingly”. Schnabel deals with nothing less than Dantes Divine Comedy, a monumental, at most with Homers “Odyssey” or Virgil's “Aeneis” work that is comparable, which is considered the cornerstone of the Italian literary language and at the same time designs a central picture of the Middle Ages. Nevertheless, the director, who recently occupied Willem Dafoe as Vincent van Gogh and thus gave him his third Oscar nomination, leaves the safe path of the reputable. The bad news: there is almost nothing fun.

Structurally, “in the Hand of Dante” is quite ambitious, it includes at least two films: in the black and white New York of the year 2001-shortly before the devastating terrorist attack on the World Trade Center-the plot follows the writer Nick Tosches (Oscar Isaac), who is commissioned by Mafia together with the contract killer Louie (Gerard Butler) To obtain and check manuscript, which is supposed to be the original handwriting of the divine comedy.

When the signs condense that he is really holding Dantes's original manuscript in his hands – a document of invaluable ideal, historical and financial value – Nick takes the work on himself and steps, followed by the henchmen of the underworld boss Joe Black (John Malkovich), fleeing to Sicily, where he had from his beloved Gadot) finds.

No second “megalopolis”

At the same time, Schnabel tells Schnabel-now in color and instead of in the closer 4: 3 pages-from poet Dante Alighieri (also Isaac) himself, who wrestles in the 14th century with a creative crisis and leads briefing with his mentor Isaiah (Martin Scorsese). Gal Gadot also plays here in a second role as a Dante's wife Gemma Donati – and Butler, after all, this is a good joke, plays Pope Bonifatius, Dante's opponent, who will be politically threatened and ultimately will be responsible for his exile from Florence. Both levels – cinematic presence and the Middle Ages – are in turn interrupted by all kinds of flashbacks, excursions and side strands.

You must have seen “in the hand of Dante” to believe him – that's why he is already compared with Francis Ford Coppolas commercially (and for many also artistically) failed passion project “Megalopolis”. But there are worlds between the two films. Coppola was visibly driven by a vision, an idea, something from belief in something, as erratic as the result may have failed (in the eyes of the author of these lines this is a quality in this case). “In the Hand of Dante”, on the other hand, looks like an attempt to deliberately one Film maudit To create, that is, a “cursed film” that is ripped off when it appears, but later rediscovered by Cinephilen as misunderstood. Only time can show whether it will happen …

Pseudo-tannino meets historyainment

… Until then, you have to assume that Schnabel has put on exactly this history of reception. He is simply to be established as an artist-and as a filmmaker too much in the so-called quality arthouse-to make a film out of the blue out of the blue that moves to inadequate ability on the border. Why else should he have decided to put on the cinematic contemporary level as the most infantile variant, which was believed to be an infantile variant-with a bleached, optically not quite accidentally not accidentally deceased by Michael Madsen (“Reservoir Dogs”) reminiscent of killers, who without batting a massacre in a library, even shooting the dog, even shooting the dog And then lectured over feces?

And why else should he finally overlide this monstrosity that really got stuck in every respect-at the latest when Jason Momoa appears as a tortured mafia-handlanger at the latest-otherwise parallelized with a mixture of literary proseminar and pale historainment? Neither of these two films that screwed the beak less than they have to see them uniformly, you would actually like to see, especially not rolled up for a longer -person 160 minutes. On the seat behind me, a man fell asleep after two minutes and threw through the entire film. Even if this text would not have arisen: I would have liked to exchanged with it.

Conclusion: Julian Schnabel linked to “In The Hand of Dante” didactic-sacral history cinema and wannabe-tarrantino-and proves that it does not necessarily have to be a quality not to be able to classify what you have actually seen after the end of the film.

We saw “In The Hand of Dante” at the Venice Film Festival 2025, where he celebrated its world premiere out of competition.