“In the Hand of Dante” might revolve around the poet Dante Alighieri’s masterwork, “The Divine Comedy,” but there’s precious little to laugh at in Julian Schnabel’s confounding movie — unless, that is, you count the giggle-inducing appearance of Martin Scorsese as Dante’s mentor, Isaiah. Scorsese’s hilarious line readings, emerging from the snowy depths of a gigantic beard-and-wig ensemble, inadvertently supply at least a smidgen of the fun that this ambitious cinematic folly otherwise lacks.
Soaked in symbolism and muddying metaphor, this bizarre adaptation of a 2002 novel by Nick Tosches, in which a fictionalized version of the author is hired by gangsters to authenticate a stolen manuscript of “The Divine Comedy,” never finds its groove. Unfolding in two timelines, in monochrome and color, and with cast members in dual roles, the plot introduces young Nick in 1969 confessing to his seemingly wiseguy uncle (Al Pacino) that he has just killed a would-be assailant. Later, the adult Nick (Oscar Isaac), now an arrogant writer in New York, encounters a cross-dressing, sociopathic assassin (Gerard Butler) and his creepy boss (John Malkovich). Intellectually seduced by the possibility of an original Dante manuscript, Nick agrees to help them.
An awkward marriage of literary theft and philosophical musings, urban violence and artistic obsession, “In the Hand of Dante” relegates most of its spiritual pondering to 14th-century Florentine flashbacks in which Isaac is now Dante and Butler is the Pope. (When it comes to evil, the film suggests, there’s not much difference between organized crime and the Roman Catholic Church.) Both actors dial it up to 11, and the movie’s black-and-white sections look gorgeous, but nothing can stop this overlong and disastrously ill-judged project from flying off the rails. I was out the second I saw an ungloved Nick sifting through priceless Italian historical documents. The librarian watching him should have been fired.
In the Hand of Dante Rated R for many, many murders and a touch of torture. Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes. Watch on Netflix.
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