A film by Julian Schnabel
With: Oscar Isaac, Gal Gadot, Gerard Butler, John Malkovich, Louis Cancelmi, Sabrina Impacciatore, Franco Nero, Benjamin Clémentine, Paolo Bonacelli, Martin Scorsese
A handwritten manuscript of Dante Alighieri’s poem “The Divine Comedy” makes its way from a priest to a mob boss in New York City, where it is taken by author Nick Tosches after he’s asked to verify its authenticity.
Our rate: –
Julian Schnabel draws loosely on Dante’s story to draw us into a bland gangster tale that aims to be caustic or scathing but ends up flat and even vulgar. In this introduction, Schnabel pretentiously imagines himself to be one of the Coen brothers, or even Tarantino, reproducing deliberately hollow dialogue deeply rooted in a sordid everyday life, in contrast to the violent behavior of the protagonists, who are as dumb as a box of rocks. All of this, which is very silly, keeps us waiting for what we hope is Schnabel’s real subject: the historical aspect surrounding the character of Dante. But here too, out of excessive pretension, Schnabel sets up a device that borders on the ridiculous, where the historical narrative is entrusted to the same actors we saw in the first part. The desired effect? Probably comedy. The result? An impression of utter nonsense, a levity that is completely out of place with what one might expect from a subject as ambitious as telling the story of Dante. Isaac drowns in it, and his whining does not save the film any more than Martin Scorsese does as an old, bearded scholar who professes nonsensical dialogues. It seems that Schnabel sincerely believes that this back-and-forth between the present in black and white and the past in color is artistic inspiration… We are far from it, and as the light fades, consternation gradually gives way to a deep boredom from which we cannot escape.
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