The film version of Dante’s Inferno certainly did justice to the epic. Since Dante’s poem depicted the society of his Italy and showed real figures receiving punishment, it was only fitting that this film version appropriated modern figures and politicians from our more recent history to populate Hell with. Virgil’s explanations to Dante within the film support and drive Dante’s moral imperative of God’s perfect justice, and explains the nature of the sins and punishments that they come across.
Is this an epic film, like El Cid? I am not certain that this film’s being based upon an epic necessarily makes it an epic film in itself. For one thing, the length of the film is not epic in scope, at 88 minutes, it is much shorter than the epic film we watched in class, El Cid. In fact, certain parts of Hell felt rushed compared to the poem. The first six circles of Hell are zipped through within the first thirty minutes of the film, and than it spends nearly the entire rest of the film on the last three levels of Hell. I agree that this was necessary for the film’s length, however it is a stark difference to the Cantos within Dante’s poem which do not vary dramatically in length.
The animation was enjoyable. Choosing to film it using stick puppets lent an aesthetically absurdist quality, which is fitting given that the territory explored in the film is Hell. The decision to depict Dante’s character as a bit of a drunken loser worked well too. Since in the poem, Dante declares:
Halfway through the story of my life
I came to in a gloomy wood, because
I’d wandered off the path, away from the light. (Canto I.1-3).
The path is an allegory for the path to righteousness and God’s grace. “Away from the light” refers to God’s light, and Heaven. So though Dante does not specify how he veered from his path and sinned, the film certainly gives us one possibility.
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