Julian Schnabel is selective about what he directs — and he’s never been one to play by the rules.
“I like to break things, I guess, and I like to put them back together,” the Oscar-nominated filmmaker said during a post-screening Q&A moderated by Gold Derby at the Sarasota Film Festival, where he was also honored with the Achievement in Directing award.
His latest project, In the Hand of Dante, closed the festival with a sprawling, time-spanning adaptation of Nick Tosches’ novel. The film, which had its world premiere in Venice and was recently acquired by Netflix, features a stacked ensemble including Oscar Isaac, Gerard Butler, John Malkovich, Al Pacino, Martin Scorsese, Louis Cancelmi, Gal Gadot, Sabrina Impacciatore, and Jason Momoa. Speaking after the screening, Schnabel reflected on the film’s years-long development, his unconventional approach to casting, and his steadfast belief that art should provoke rather than explain.
The project dates back decades, when Johnny Depp first brought the material to him. “I made Before Night Falls in 1999 — and after I made that, Johnny Depp gave me some books,” Schnabel explained. “He said, ‘Why don’t we make a movie out of one of these books?’ … This one seemed like an impossible thing to make a movie of — so that’s the one I chose.”
Depp was originally set to star but ultimately stepped away for personal reasons. “Johnny said, ‘I’m not going to do it,’” Schnabel recalled. “Then Oscar called me up and said, ‘I’m your man.’”
A story across centuries
In the Hand of Dante unfolds across two intertwined timelines — 14th century Italy, where Dante Alighieri searches for the inspiration to complete The Divine Comedy, and the present day, where writer Nick Tosches is pulled into a violent criminal underworld after being asked to authenticate a manuscript believed to be written in Dante’s own hand.
Schnabel doesn’t frame those timelines as past and present so much as something happening at once. “There is no past and there is no future. There’s only the eternal present,” he said. “This is it — we’re here together right now.” He describes that idea as a kind of simultaneity — a collapse of time where Dante and Tosches aren’t parallels so much as reflections of the same artistic impulse.
Casting against type
Schnabel approached casting without preconceptions, relying instead on instinct. That instinct led him to Gerard Butler, who undergoes a striking transformation as Louie, a volatile mob figure far removed from the heroic roles he’s often known for, and also appears as Pope Bonifacio VIII in the film’s 14th century timeline.
“He’s always cast as some kind of underdog hero,” Schnabel said. “Have you ever seen him with a blonde wig and a bra on?”
Schnabel applied that same instinct across the ensemble, including Gal Gadot, whom he cast after a single FaceTime call — without having seen Wonder Woman. “I didn’t have a preconception,” he said. “I just spoke to her … and I thought, she can do this.”
Directing Pacino and Scorsese
Schnabel had known Al Pacino for more than 30 years before finally directing him here as “Uncle Carmine” — and didn’t exactly ease him into it. During the shoot, he wanted Pacino in Bermuda shorts in the biting cold. “He said, ‘I’m going to get pneumonia,’” Schnabel recalled. “I said, ‘I promise I’ll take care of you.’” In the end, they moved the scene inside, but the moment stuck. “Someone told me, ‘That felt more real than The Godfather,’” he added. “Nick Tosches wrote this stuff, I just had an intuition about it. It’s about trusting your intuition.”
Schnabel also cast Martin Scorsese in the role of “Isaiah,” a character who challenges Dante directly and delivers one of the film’s central ideas about art and expression. Rather than treating Scorsese as a visiting legend, Schnabel approached him the same way he does all of his actors. “They’ve got something inside them — and I see something in them, and I know they can do it,” he said.
Violence, art, and leaving the audience to decide
Violence plays a central role in the film, particularly in the modern storyline, which Schnabel frames as a kind of purgatory. “We’re talking about the Inferno, and we’re talking about paradise … heaven and hell and purgatory,” he said. That idea carries into the film’s visual language, where the contemporary world is rendered in stark black and white. “The 21st century is in black and white, and it is in purgatory,” Schnabel said. “We’re living in it.”
At the same time, Schnabel embraces the unexpected reactions the film can provoke. “It’s great when people laugh because obviously it’s very, very serious, but at the same time, it’s a tragic comedy,” he said.
Schnabel isn’t interested in offering easy answers. “When you’re making art, you’re posing a question,” he said. “It’s not that you’re just giving somebody an answer.” He put it more bluntly: “I don’t want to chew people’s food for them.” He pointed to a line in the film — “the best editors conspire with the artist” — as a reflection of how he sees collaboration. “To conspire means to breathe together,” he said.
Even after years of work, Schnabel doesn’t see the film as something fixed. “I always say the last time you see a painting is the first time you see it,” he said. “I have a different experience every time I see it.”
That openness is central to how he approaches his work — and how he expects audiences to engage with it. “It might be divisive,” Schnabel added. “There might be people that don’t follow it or don’t get it. There are other people that enjoy the mystery of that.”
For Schnabel, that uncertainty isn’t something to avoid — it’s the point. “My job is not to please people,” he said. “I’m using myself as a guinea pig. That’s how I work.”
