Dante, Tosches and the Mafia: Julian Schnabel Brings his Abyssal Work to Venice
It may be presented out of Competition, but Julian Schnabel’s new film had already made headlines before its screening in the Sala Grande. “In the Hand of Dante” premiered at the Lido with a burden: the presence of Gal Gadot and Gerard Butler, targeted by the Venice4Palestine group, which had called for their exclusion due to alleged pro-Israeli stances. Schnabel, long accustomed to navigating between art and cinema, addressed the issue firmly at the press conference: “There’s no reason why artists should be boycotted. I chose these actors for their artistic talent, and we should talk more about that than these other matters.”
Based on the posthumous work of “accursed” writer Nick Tosches, “In the Hand of Dante” intertwines multiple lives and obsessions. A double-layered narrative stretching from the 14th century to the 21st: on one side Dante Alighieri, intent on writing the Commedia; on the other, Nick himself, dragged into a violent intrigue to authenticate a manuscript said to be in the poet’s own hand. In between: mobsters, unlikely hitmen, grief, and a journey that looks more like a descent into hell than a philological investigation.
On the red carpet, alongside the filmmaker, accompanied by Louise Kugelberg, appeared a magnetic Oscar Isaac, followed by Jason Momoa in total pink. Then came Louis Cancelmi, Vito Schnabel, British singer-songwriter and poet Benjamin Clementine, Duke Nicholson, Francesco Melzi d’Eril, Emanuela Fanelli, Olmo Schnabel, and Franco Nero. Notably absent, but evoked as guardian spirits, were the three titans Al Pacino, John Malkovich, and Martin Scorsese.
Schnabel, already honoured with the Cartier – Glory to the Filmmaker Award, here seems to chase his own world-work: a film that doesn’t just narrate Dante or Tosches, but mirrors them against each other, in a play of doubles that becomes a quest for the absolute. Love, beauty, the divine: big words, but in the darkness of the theatre, they carry their full weight.
Text: Germano D’Acquisto
Photos: Ludovica Arcero
