In the Hand of Dante      Director: Julian SchnabelCert: NoneGenre: DramaStarring: Oscar Isaac, Gal Gadot, Gerard Butler, John Malkovich, Louis Cancelmi, Sabrina Impacciatore, Benjamin Clementine, Martin Scorsese, Al Pacino, Jason MomoaRunning Time: 2 hrs 33 minsSince the late Nick Tosches published his sensationally received novel In the Hand of Dante, in 2002, film-makers and actors, including Johnny Depp, have circled the project with great enthusiasm. But the author’s playful textual games have so far proved more thrilling to read than to dramatise. Julian Schnabel’s In the Hand of Dante arrives with all the ingredients of a grand literary epic: a lost manuscript, a medieval masterpiece, a tortured artist, organised crime and a cast full of A-list faces. Yet the film struggles to turn these many, many elements into anything coherent. What instead emerges is an overextended, pompous drama that confuses scope for depth.In common with the novel, the film follows a version of Tosches, played by Oscar Isaac, after he is drawn into a plot involving an alleged original copy of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy. Isaac also portrays Dante in a parallel historical storyline that depicts the poet’s struggles with exile, faith and creation.The two narratives aim to blur the boundaries between biography, fiction and mythology, but the results are frustratingly wobbly.Isaac gives the material commitment, but even his considerable presence cannot rescue a script weighed down by abstraction and unclear motivations. Schnabel repeatedly tells us that its central themes of romance and spirituality are profound – but this is the show-me medium.Exhibit A: the film considers the sadness around the historical unknowability of Gemma Donati, the wife and mother of Dante’s four children, about whom he never wrote a word. (He met his lifelong muse, Beatrice, only twice in his life, once when he was nine.) Gal Gadot, like Isaac, is double-jobbing across centuries, but she fails to convey any of Gemma’s tragedy.Visually, Schnabel remains a formidable stylist. The painterly compositions of his cinematographer, Roman Vasyanov, make an impression even when the director’s characteristic fascination with artistic worlds feels woolly.The transitions between the historical sections and the contemporary crime narrative, replete with John Malkovich’s compelling crime boss and Gerard Butler’s charismatic, soulful thug, are jolting despite the cast’s best efforts. Ironically, the film is too concerned with the abstract business of genius to give enough space to the gifted folks on screen. On Netflix from Wednesday, June 24th