Фильм «В руке Данте» с Оскаром Айзаком и Галь Гадот стал провальным блокбастером

Have you seen “In the Hand of Dante”? If you have, you know the Netflix movie has a stellar cast: Oscar Isaac, Gal Gadot, Gerard Butler, John Malkovich, Jason Momoa, Al Pacino, and let’s not forget Martin Scorsese, sporting the world’s biggest, snowiest beard. If you haven’t seen it, well, join the club. “Viewership” and “fiasco” rarely appear in the same sentence. Julian Schnabel’s adaptation of a 2002 novel by Nick Tosches (1949-2019) is a reminder that very talented people are as capable of making a mess as the rest of us, only theirs tend to be a lot more expensive. The closing credits list no fewer than 38 executive producers, and if ever there was a reminder that too many cooks can spoil the broth . . . . “In the Hand of Dante” concerns a writer named Nick Tosches (well, whaddya know) who comes into possession of the original manuscript of Dante Alighieri’s epic poem, “The Divine Comedy.” This is presumably worth more money than the national debt of Italy, so some mob guys get very interested — they’re the best thing in the movie — and, well, stuff happens. Lots of stuff. The story shifts back and forth between New York and Italy at the turn of this century and 14th-century Italy. Dual-century roles are played by Gadot, Butler, and Isaac, who plays Tosches and Dante. Somewhere Tosches, if not Dante, is smirking. I knew Nick a little. With all due respect to Isaac, no one played the part of Nick Tosches as well as Nick did. Isaac, who’s far better looking, does wear his hair slicked back, as Nick did. That’s a nice touch. An opening credit describes the author as “a literary iconoclast whose voice captured the dark poetry of the contemporary world.” That’s a bit lush, but not inaccurate. The author of five novels, Nick’s probably best known for “Hellfire,” his 1982 biography of Jerry Lee Lewis, and, published a decade later, the truly one of a kind “Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams.” Ostensibly a biography of Dean Martin — Jerry Lee, Dean, Dante: Nick was nothing if not eclectic — it’s a meditation on the simultaneous wonder and nullity that is modern popular culture. There’s no other book quite like it, which is probably a good thing. Early on in the movie, a buddy tells the Tosches character, “You’re still looking sharp after all these years.” Sharpness came naturally to Nick. The one time I met him he was wearing a dove-gray suit and a Homburg. Have you ever met anyone wearing a Homburg? I hadn’t. This was at Da Silvano, the legendary restaurant in the West Village. What made it legendary were all the celebrities who hung out there. Nick may have lacked their name value, but the owner treated him as if he were royalty. Like a Mafia don, he naturally inspired deference. Nick viewed this world with a certain, let us say, skepticism. When “Dino” came out The New York Times interviewed him. “Life is a racket,” Nick said. “Writing is a racket. Sincerity is a racket. Everything’s a racket.” In 2006, the London newspaper The Observer named “Hellfire” the greatest music book of all time. An interviewer suggested that the book had left Jerry Lee “facing the abyss.” “It’s the way we all live,” Nick shrugged. “Shallow life, shallow ditch. Big life, big abyss.” Dante would have understood. He might even have smirked. Mark Feeney can be reached at [email protected].