Given how rarely he directs, and no matter if it got pummeled by critics at Venice last year, a new Julian Schnabel movie is always an interesting proposition. Schnabel’s made some incredible movies — just watch Basquiat or Before Night Falls or The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and tell me the man isn’t capable of throwing radar-annihilating heat — and he’s also (unintentionally) made one of the more memorable memes of the last ten years in a clip of Willem Dafoe from At Eternity’s Gate. Seriously, we could just stack the post with our favorites, but we’ll spare you the GIFs. His latest, In the Hand of Dante, sounds pretty goddamned bizarre, involving a parallel narrative about the author of the Divine Comedy as he writes his masterpiece, and a present-day author who winds up getting a copy of the original, hand-penned text in the present day at the behest of a mobster.
Both lead roles are, as alluded to in the title of this post, played by Oscar Isaac, but our dude Gerard Butler is in this, so you know we’ve gotta mention him as well. Netflix dropped a trailer for the project earlier on Thursday, and boy, this looks strange. And, you know, we’re kind of here for it.
Peep it:
Here’s a synopsis for In the Hand of Dante:
“Time and space collide in parallel lives spanning 700 years when author Nick Tosches (Oscar Isaac) is drawn into a violent quest to confirm the origins of a manuscript believed to be Dante’s ‘The Divine Comedy,’ written in the poet’s own hand.
After the sudden death of his daughter, Nick is summoned from self-imposed exile by a mafia don (John Malkovich) for his expertise on the Italian writer. With the help of an unpredictable assassin named Louie (Gerard Butler), the pair embark on a dark and murderous journey to steal and authenticate the priceless work. Moving between the 21st and 14th centuries, ‘In the Hand of Dante’ weaves together the lives of Nick and Dante in their obsessive search for love, beauty, and the divine.”
In the Hand of Dante hits select theaters on June 12 and will stream on Netflix on June 24.