The Hollywood film 'Codex Dante' is being shown in Kazakh cinemas in a shortened version. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing Kursiv Media.
In cinemas not rich in new releases, 'Codex Dante' is playing — a star-studded adventure-crime drama about an original manuscript of the 'Divine Comedy.' The film was produced by Martin Scorsese, who also played a small role. The premiere took place at the Venice Film Festival in 2025, where the film was received rather coolly, criticized for its bloated runtime (though Kazakh viewers need not worry about this, as explained below) and pompous plot. The original novel on which 'Codex Dante' is based waited 25 years for its adaptation, and at one point Johnny Depp was attached to the project.
Writer Nick Tosches (Oscar Isaac), as if stepping out of a noir novel, gets involved in a criminal scheme organized by collector Joe Black (John Malkovich). Along with the dim-witted but colorful gangster Louis (Gerard Butler), he must steal the original manuscript of the 'Divine Comedy,' transport it from Italy to the US, prove its authenticity, and sell it for a fortune. On his way, he meets Juliet (Gal Gadot), with whom he falls in love. Parallel to the story of modern New York, which has just experienced the September 11, 2001 attacks, the drama of the great poet himself (again Isaac) in the 14th century writing his work unfolds.
At first glance, 'Codex Dante' might seem like a literary detective story or a conspiracy fantasy about the 'Divine Comedy' — not for nothing was the original title 'By the Hand of Dante' changed to 'Codex...', which echoes Dan Brown's 'The Da Vinci Code.' The book attracted Johnny Depp, who planned to play the lead role and called himself a fan of Tosches, but circumstances delayed production for years. Director Julian Schnabel, with whom Depp wanted to make the film, remained at the helm.
Schnabel, who started as a neo-expressionist artist, became famous for aesthetic film biographies, such as those about Jean-Michel Basquiat, Cuban poet Reinaldo Arenas, and Van Gogh. 'Codex Dante' is formally closer to art cinema. Schnabel uses a somewhat ornate cinematic language — scenes of the present are shot in black and white (hello, 'The Master and Margarita'!), while the colorful Florentine and Sicilian past is in the academic 4:3 format — testing the audience's endurance with a painful two-and-a-half-hour runtime.
In Kazakhstan (and also in Russia, from where the distribution copy apparently came), a modified version reached cinemas, shortened by nearly an hour and fully colorized. This is unlikely to be due to censorship restrictions; rather, it is a peculiar artistic and/or producer's decision. However, entire plot lines, mainly concerning Dante's life, have been cut, which significantly undermines the original concept of parallel storytelling. This can be verified by turning to Netflix, where the full version of 'Codex Dante' was previously released (or to pirate resources; interestingly, the full film unexpectedly appeared online even before the official premiere).
Perhaps the new edit was meant to partially fix the original's flaws — after the Venice Film Festival, critics complained about the excessive length. If so, it failed to save the film. The screen still shows a murky mess of chaotic, aimless events, where facts from Dante's life inexplicably coexist with a truly idiotic second-rate criminal plot that is about 30 years outdated.
'Codex Dante' looks like a bad parody of arthouse — a pretentious, pompous, deadly serious spectacle that unsuccessfully tries to mix high and low, ultimately falling into the deepest abyss. The film is as good as Gal Gadot's acting (here, like Isaac, she plays two roles — besides the writer's secretary Juliet, she plays Dante's wife Gemma), which has long become a byword. This tasteless farce, to which Martin Scorsese as producer (as well as rapper Drake and Russian director Alexei Uchitel, whose 'Matilda' sparked fierce controversy) somehow lent a hand, can safely be called one of the worst films of the year.
Was it worth piling up complex cultural references, reassembling the history of the 'Divine Comedy's' creation, and gathering major Hollywood actors, only to end up with a vulgar melodrama? This clumsy fan fiction lacks any sense of proportion, imagination, energy, or anything else — it is merely a hollow confusion, unable to compete even with Francis Ford Coppola's monstrously beautiful 'Megalopolis.' And one must sadly conclude that July is a very unfortunate time for great literary monuments — very soon we are expecting an adaptation of the ancient Greek 'Odyssey,' about which many questions have already accumulated.