‘In the Hand of Dante’ Review: Julian Schnabel’s Less Than Divine Comedy of Errors Belongs in the 9th Circle of Hell [D+] Venice

The opening music for Julian Schnabel’s In the Hand of Dante, an audacious but ruinously messy epic which takes place across seven centuries and has Popes play gangsters (or the other way round), sounds a lot like the traditional Christmas carol “O Come All Ye Faithful.” That much works: you’ll have to be a committed believer to stay on this film’s wavelength, and even more envangelised to enjoy it. 

Schnabel, a celebrated artist turned filmmaker whose most recent film At Eternity’s Gate starred Willem Dafoe as a Brooklyn-inflected Vincent Van Gogh, returns to the tortured creator not quite of his own time – and who is perhaps out of it, too. In The Hand of Dante takes that literally, adapting the late New York writer Nick Tosches’ time-bending novel about the (invented) finding of Dante’s handwritten manuscripts. Oscar Isaac plays Dante in colourful, early-14th century Florence and Tosches in the grayscale grit of post-9/11 New York City. Tosches says he knows Dante’s Divine Comedy so well it’s as if he wrote it himself. Get it?

Like Tosches’ book, In the Hand of Dante follows two stories: the plot to authenticate and sell the manuscripts, and Dante’s own love story. The novel has lots of the author’s own, Bourdain-style hot takes about post-9/11 America, the state of capitalism, publishing, and what all that tells us about our decaying ability to appreciate the timeless. Some of that features in Schnabel’s film, but not very well. The world-weariness that explains Tosches’ views isn’t really explained to us, he just seems like a grump. And more often than not, his views are obnoxious and only half-thought-through. At one point he says in voiceover: “Boom. Boom. Boom. That’s the sound of the evil monotheism that has caused all the wars in our world.” It’s not clear how seriously we’re supposed to take Tosches’ loose-change takes, but they’re tedious to hear and tediously presented.

Tosches also tells us he’s been reading Dante for so long he’s starting to notice what’s wrong with it. It takes less long to spot the flaws in Schnabel’s film. A cast of A-listers that could rival the Avengers are given strange, underdeveloped roles and some corkers of dialogue. Gal Gadot is Tosches’ assistant Giulietta and Dante’s wife Gemma Donati, underexplored love interests in both eras, while Gerard Butler is a trigger-happy gangster in the modern narrative and Pope Bonifacio in the older. Jason Momoa plays a Sicilian gangster with his own plans for the manuscript, setting up a bizarre final-act caper that falls completely flat. Momoa’s Italian is so bad that the audience of critics in Venice laughed and clapped him ironically after most of his lines. When Tosches must leave Gadot suddenly, he tells her “You’ve been a widow since the moment you fell in love with me.” That triggered a hysterical reply from the audience that I haven’t ever heard at Venice, and another wave of walkouts.

There’s more. John Malkovich and spaghetti western legend Franco Nero play gangsters on the fringes working to make the scheme happen. And Al Pacino is an uncle of Tosches’ in one memorable flashback that goes some way to explain his cynicism and guilt. The one innocent party in all this is Martin Scorsese, who executive-produced and plays Isaiah, a reclusive Jewish writer who mentors Dante. It’s his job to try and bring together all the things In the Hand of Dante is trying to say, and he makes an admirable effort. But it’s simply too big an undertaking. Scorsese’s climactic monologue becomes a mess of big words and lofty ideas that only makes proceedings more puzzling. Momoa and Gadot are actors whose skills have in the past been questioned – here you can see why – but the real disappointment is Oscar Isaac, who we know is capable of so much better. It’s admirable for leading men to take complex roles in adventurous movies with talented directors. That deserves credit. The output less so.

In Jay Kelly, one character seeks to explain the charm of Italy: it’s like nowhere else because there is still “permission to be human,” they say. If you accept that thesis, Dante is partly an explanation. His country’s Shakespeare, Dante helped form the modern Italian language. His bitter view of the passage of time – merely a distraction and a human construct – sought to remind us to think less about the ticking clock and more about how to tune it out. In the Hand of Dante is an attempt to apply this principle to a world that’s noisier and more chaotic than ever. But Schnabel and his cast just can’t communicate its profundity. Take Dante’s advice and put your time to better use.

Grade: D+

This review is from the 2025 Venice Film Festival where In the Hand of Dante had its world premiere. There is no U.S. distribution at this time.

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Adam Solomons

Adam Solomons is a critic and journalist who combines his love of cinema with an insatiable hunger for news and politics. Day-to-day he’s a producer at Times Radio, with The Times of London. Adam is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic with bylines at Sight & Sound, Indiewire, and more. His favorite movie is still Toy Story 2.

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