Dante's Inferno

"When I had journeyed half of our life's way, I found myself in a shadowed forest, for I had lost the path...." So begins the opening volume of Dante's classic 14th-century epic poem The Divine Comedy, and readers new to the allusion-thick work filled with political and religious polemic (as well as, let us admit, poetic brilliance and piercing insight into the human condition) are liable to feel a little lost themselves in this visually hyperkinetic adaptation of the first eight cantos of the Inferno from director Peter Greenaway (The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover) and artist Tom Phillips. The problem, seen before in Prospero's Books, Greenaway's gloss on Shakespeare's The Tempest, is simply this: pairing rich, dense text with equally complex imagery virtually assures that viewers will come away with--at best--snippets of meaning. In Dante's Inferno, Bob Peck (as Dante) and Sir John Gielgud (as Virgil, his guide through the first part of Hell) are occasionally seen speaking their parts directly into the camera, but rarely does Greenaway allow such a visually calm moment into the jazzed-up proceedings. A multitude of naked minions in the first five circles of Hell are seen whirling through the air, wrestling in the mud and slime, and throughout howling their torturous screams of misery as Dante looks on, questioning either Virgil or individual sinners directly. The names from Greek, Roman, and contemporary 13th and 14th-century Italian church and state figures fly fast and furious, and Greenaway attempts to footnote these onscreen with small inset talking-head scholars whipping out quick blurbs of explication while forms, colors, and layers of sound cartwheel around them. At its best, then, Dante's Inferno truly does give viewers a palpable vision of the poet's concept of Hell; at it's worst, the film indulges in cinematic excesses worthy of a position in Dante's third circle (the gluttons). Larger humanities collections will want to consider: the sheer number and variety of naked bodies filling up the screen is sure to hold student attention alone; but for most others this is a strictly optional purchase and not in the class of Greenaway's best work, such as A Zed and Two Noughts and The Cook..... An optional purchase. Aud: C, P. (R. Pitman)