CLASSIC LIT MEETS NYC CRIME

CLASSIC LITERATURE MEETS CONTEMPORARY CRIME DRAMA

by PETER THOMAS BUSCH

Oscar Isaac bridges the centuries and the landscapes by playing one biopic character in black and white and anther biopic character in color.

The story of Dante and the Divine Comedy, In The Hand of Dante (2026), is given a popular cultural twist as part of a fictionalized biopic fantasy.

Director Julian Schnabel uses the origins of the epic poem as a narrative device for a mob film with a storyline that links New York City back to Florence, Italy.

The premise is that a Vatican priest discovers Dante’s original manuscript in a vault and then begins to use mafia connections to sell the manuscript to a private collector. A comedic element is layered into the story, since the original manuscript was not previously known to exist and a lot of the action involves speculation and authenticating the epic poem.

Isaac plays the novelist who wrote the fictional story, who also wrote himself into the narrative as the main protagonist, Nick Tosches. The New York City don, Joe Black, played by John Malkovich, hires Tosches to identify the manuscript, prior to the don agreeing to fence the priceless epic poem for the Vatican priest.

This main black and white narrative runs in parallel to a second narrative, filmed in color, depicting Dante Alighieri summoning up the courage to finish the poem in Florence, after six years of writing.

For example, in one scene, Isaac plays Dante receiving the rare paper the poem becomes written upon, at a time when paper is as rare as gold, and in other scenes portraying Dante receiving a bit of direction from a mentor on what to write next.

Gal Gadot plays the love interest in each epoch – as a kind of testament to the lasting glory of pure, unconditional love.

The narrative becomes more about Tosches and his girlfriend trying to fence the manuscript, while Isaac gets further into the Dante character.

The don wants to cover up the discovery, as the plot is pieced together, to make fencing the priceless masterpiece a bit easier. So, Louie gets hired. Gerard Butler plays the homicidal sociopath, Louie, tasked with killing anyone that can make the connection to the eventual sale of the manuscript.

Louie has a particular street language of violence that draws in the camera early on. Butler adds a certain tone to the film that continues to influence scenes even when the character is not present.

The black and white film, and the talk amongst the criminal underworld, add the rest of the atmosphere as the narrative splits in time and between locations. Florence of the 1300s is not without difficulties, either.

Al Pacino and Martin Scorsese have small parts in the film. Scorsese appears as Dante’s mentor Isaiah, who counsels Dante for the finishing touches to the poem. Pacino plays the uncle to the young Tosches, in the opening scenes, when the director uses a young corpse as a literary device to foreshadow the storyline.

Schnabel puts on film the tall tale created by Tosches about the epic poem, while Dante’s humanity and the heavens above get thrown into the script. Dante’s words frame many scenes while also providing explanation to the obvious intentions of the various characters.

The film can, on occasion, momentarily slow down to a grind, with the absence of a score in the background, and the obvious silence around the charcaters creating tensions with the dialogue pulling everyone in.

But soon enough a new scene sequence moves the story along again.

More than a few scenes go by before everyone can get used to the choppy storyline created by the recurring intersection of different narratives in different times and different places.

Overall, the film takes several interesting twists and turns, and gradually pulls the audience into the story with the juxtaposition of classic literature and the contemporary art market of private collectors.

This fictional story is a bit of a stretch as a biopic, but everything fiction and real in the film comes from the mind of the real life protagonist.

In the Hand of Dante is streaming on Netflix.