Slavish to source material except for all of the ways in shouldn't be, Julian Schnabel's adaptation of In the Hand of Dante plods along with varied success. Sure, it's beautifully photographed and remains more or less faithful to the sprawling, cynical psuedo-biography of Dante Alighieri by Nick Tosches, but at nearly 3 hours of screen time, it's hard to ignore just how pretentious and silly it all is.
One can guess that half of the cast was doing a favor to the memory of the great Nick Tosches. The other half are hamming it up in a broad mob movie with a scholarly bent. Like the book, the story flitters back and forth between the life of Dante and the crime caper fantasy of an ill-fated author named Nick Tosches who gets roped into helping the mob authenticate pages from Dante's original Divine Comedy manuscript. The book is simultaneously heady and absurd, paralleling the corruption of modern capitalism and the rotting Vatican that Dante famously lampooned. And maybe there's a way to film that with more comedy, more color, and a jauntier script. But Schnabel seems insistent on letting us know that he "got" the book, all the while skimping on the significant details that made both of the book's opposing narratives so compelling. Too much is wasted here establishing the clichés of the gangster dramedy, too little on the ironies and coincidences of Tosches' connection to Dante, so that when the story shifts back and forth between eras, we never gain much appreciation for what's at stake.
It's important to note, too, that film's cast is a massive distraction. Oscar Isaac's strange Dante accent comes and goes. Clunky character work from Gerard Butler, Jason Momoa, and Gal Godot looks especially inept next to seasoned pros like John Malkovich. Most notable is Martin Scorsese's subtle work as a banished cardinal and Dante's confidant. Marty and Malkovich are the highlights of a very long film absorbing very little screentime. It reminds the audience that so much of the narrative could be condensed, that so little fat was left on the cutting room floor. We're never sure exactly why we get long, weepy romance scenes other than they are supposed to close circles the script doesn't really seem to care about.
There's a bravery and bravado in making a faithful adaptation of such a bizarre, fun, complicated book, but everything that's garish here is also, paradoxically, very flat. There isn't a lot of life infused in any if this, regardless of it's brain. And really, do mob movies need a brain? And would anyone watch a Dante biopic? My guess is that no one will watch this, either, nor recommend it if they've managed to stay awake til the soppy, eye-rolling ending.
