What Redeems Us?

In Dante's Inferno, events like the confrontation with Cerberus and the passage into Dis  are handled completely differently than they are in the original work.  In the poem, Virgil feeds Cerberus dirt, while in the film he simply shoots the beast in the head (VI, 25-28).  At Dis, while Virgil had to wait for "Heaven's messenger," the only price he needed to pay in the movie was money (IX, 85).  The two examples show how different the themes of the works are: the poem The Inferno suggests the grace of God is the only path to redemption, whereas the film Dante's Inferno makes the commentary that through power or money, one can achieve all they actually need.

Because the two societies are completely different, the difference in characters between the versions is acceptable.  The film, rather than making a satire of the poem, satires contemporary American society and values using the same construct as Dante did--that is, the experience of a man's travels into Hell to determine what damns a person, and to potentially avoid doing the same things.  Dante, while going on the travels in both versions, seems more naive and less interested in learning his lesson in the film, suggesting its use as satire on another level.  The film, already satirizing the abuses of power and money in America, calls out any person who sees the film and chooses not to do anything as yet another Dante, knowing what needs to be done to create change, and still not actually caring enough to do it.  In that light, the film takes the experience of The Inferno and makes Dante a character readers can identify with, instead of being distant in the poem as the "sixth among such intellects" as Ovid, Homer, and Lucan (IV 102).  The poem analyzes the society and criticizes it, but the film takes it a step further and pushes burden of action onto the viewer.

Also of note are the parallels between the versions in suggesting that the path to corruption is close to the path to redemption.  In the poem, in some of the deeper circles of Hell are people who stole from the Church, using their power to obtain that which was not rightly theirs.  However, to become redeemed, one must have followed Jesus, for that is how Dante continued to push deeper into Hell.  By the same token, money is the currency in the film's Hell, yet abuse of money or power led to a similar fate as in the poem.  Therefore, the poem and the film have much in common, but the key differences lie in who takes responsibility for the problems in society.