On the set of Before Night Falls 15 years ago, Johnny Depp had Julian Schnabel read a book entitled "In the Hand of Dante" by Nick Tosches: an "impossible" text. Nine years ago, Schnabel produced a screenplay which Tosches loved, and Oscar Isaac stepped into Depp’s place. The resulting film, In the Hand of Dante, has now premiered at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival.
"An impossible dream. I didn’t know how it would be possible to make, but I’m thrilled. Julian is a visionary artist," said Isaac, the star of In the Hand of Dante, at the presentation in Venice. The actor plays parallel characters living 700 years apart: the writer Nick Tosches and Dante himself.
The film, In the Hand of Dante, sees a mafia boss recruit New York writer Nick Tosches, following the sudden death of his daughter, to steal a copy of the Divine Comedy handwritten by Dante Alighieri. Nick embarks on a dark, bloody journey with an unpredictable assassin named Louie. In confirmation of the manuscript's authenticity, the story begins to shift between the 21st and 14 th centuries, intertwining the lives of Nick and Dante in their obsessive search for love, beauty, and the divine.
"We moved so quickly between incredible locations, traveling between Italy and New York," Isaac says. "I always had Tosches' novel, Schnabel's screenplay, three different versions of the Divine Comedy in English and one in Italian with me, and every evening, depending on the next day's scenes, I would rehearse with one of these texts."
The film is a tragicomedy; "like life itself," says Schnabel, "funny, tragic, and almost crazy." In the Hand of Dante is not a thesis on the Divine Comedy, because, says the director, "there is no past and no future, but only an eternal present in art" and therefore, "if only the present exists eternally, then all of time flows simultaneously, and there's no reason why a boy from a gangster family can't be the reincarnation of Dante Alighieri."
"Nick is Dante, he's been given the opportunity to correct the mistakes he made 700 years ago. In the struggle for perfection in art, our lives may be far from perfect, may even be plagued by failure, but anything that exists outside the work of art does not exist. The goal is to become poetry. Dante and Nick succeed" he concludes.
Alongside Oscar Isaac, the film stars Gal Gadot, as both Nick's modern-day lover Juliet, and Gemma Donati, Dante's wife. The cast also includes: Gerard Butler, John Malkovich, Martin Scorsese, Al Pacino, Jason Momoa, and Sabrina Impacciatore, Franco Nero, Paolo Bonacelli, Lorenzo Zurzolo, Claudio and Guido Caprino.
Much of the filming for In the Hand of Dante took place in the Veneto Region, in Venice, Verona and Padua. Locations in Venice included: Biblioteca Marciana, the island and Forte di Sant'Andrea, the Gritti Hotel, Palazzo Rocca Contarini Corfù; in Verona; the State Archives, the Torre Del Museo di Castelvecchio; and in Padua, the CNR (National Research Council). Other locations included Palermo - ??the historic centre, the harbour, and Partanna; while the medieval sets were created in Tarquinia, Bracciano, and Viterbo (San Pellegrino).
Martin Scorsese notes that In the Hand of Dante transports the viewer to a hypnotic world of dreamscapes of ethereal beauty. It is "an extraordinary film, which takes its place in the exceptional oeuvre of a great artist. As a director, Julian has expertly woven a complex plot, elevating it with his extraordinary poetry and vision. The film is uncompromisingly daring, experimental in its very nature, and pushes the viewer beyond traditional boundaries with an innovative visual narrative style and bold tonal palette."
The film is a US/Italian production from: Infinitum Nihil, MeMo Films, Twin Productions, Dreamcrew, Mad Gene Media, Screen 1 Entertainment, Screen Capital International, Tribune Pictures.