Dante's Inferno

Dante's Inferno is moved here into contemporary America. The poet and his guide Virgil pass through an underworld running from used car lots and gated communities to strip malls and the Capitol. The people filling the circles of hell are familiar too: politicians, presidents, popes and a great many self-assured sinners. Sean Meredith shot the film with paper puppets on a theatre stage. Nearly five hundred puppets drawn by Sandow Birk and more than forty sets were used; everything is moved by hand and no trick tries to hide it. Dermot Mulroney voices Dante and James Cromwell voices Virgil. Free of the weight of the classical text, it is an openly political and mocking adaptation.