The Dead

The entire movie, an artful adaptation of one of Joyce's "Dubliners" stories, takes place on the night of January 6 (Epiphany), 1906. Most of the film takes place at an annual party given by three spinsters (two sisters and their niece), where a group of upper-class Dubliners gather for an evening of music, recitations and dinner. While there is very little plot per se, the interaction and conversation among the group reveals much about Dublin in the early 20th century when the stirrings for independence were just beginning. The cast, all talented Irish stage actors with the exception of Anjelica Huston, are universally wonderful, and one actually feels he is a guest at the gathering himself. The poignant final scene, between Ms. Huston and the amazing Donal McCann, reveals much about the marriage of the characters. There is poignancy mixed with humor and insight, and for those who like quiet, thoughtful movies, "The Dead" is highly recommended. My wife is from Dublin, we make a ritual of watching this wonderful movie every January 6th. After many viewings it never fails to move me, and each time I glean something that I've missed before.

This is truly a remarkable movie. "The Dead" shows us a turn-of-the-century Irish dinner party attended by a host of lost souls. It is a snapshot of people who either loved and lost, or never got to love at all. Everyone here longs for love -- not just ordinary fondness, but a condition where one almost sees God in the other person. (Those who have not experienced this will deem it maudlin.) For example, in the story, Anjelica Huston's character refers to one "Michael Fury" whose love for her had burned so intensely that he allowed himself to freeze to death in a river because he could not be hers. Such actions strike the idle passerby as pathetic (savage Americans would label Michael Fury a "loser"). But years later, when this kind of passion is deemed the only thing that matters, people privately develop a more respectful take on such things.

At dinner, tenor Frank Patterson sings for the guests, his lovely voice stealing through the walls like the scent of a garden into a tomb. Beauty like this makes us want to find someone, open our jugular vein, and urgently bleed into them. We feel that somewhere burns an unseen, silent, and impossibly distant Light. If only we could share that Light with someone, or at least share a quest for it. But how? Alas, we can only stand at the bedroom window alone, watching the snowfall like Anjelica Huston's husband (Donal McCann) does at the movie's end. Many characters in the movie spend their whole lives at that bedroom window. Others are like Michael Fury, dying in a freezing river as he stares at the house where his Beloved conducts her affairs, unresponsive to him. At one point, after a guest recites a moving poem, one of the female guests laments, "Imagine being loved like that." She means a devotion so intense as to rearrange our psyches. But her chance for love is gone, crushed beneath layers of dashed hopes now piled high like the snows of Ireland in the movie. No rose sprouts in these drifts; only long-buried yearnings that waft like a vapor around headstones.

This movie hints at secrets that are akin to something one experiences as a child who, lying awake and alone one night, spies a star outside the window and for an instant glimpses the Unspeakable. The child makes no mention of this to anyone - who would understand? ("That's nice, dear.") But the longing to share that glimpse with someone, or to share someone else's glimpse, burns until death. At the end of "The Dead," Anjelica Huston's husband realizes that he has shared no such glimpse with his wife, no such love. His wife has sobbed herself to sleep on the bed and remains silent as he looks out the bedroom window in the wee hours. Great stories have great dialogue, but the greatest have characters whose silence points to the realm of boundless could-be's. We hear the husband's lamenting thoughts as exterior night scenes melt into one another. Fields, starlit graveyards, wizened trees -- all hushed as "snow is gently falling all over Ireland, and falling gently."

No routine tale of collision between desire and proscription this; no melodramatic costume-struggle between attraction and social propriety. "The Dead" speaks to each person's Star of Bethlehem, glimpsed once and then repressed until something like this dinner party shakes it loose. On the morrow the guests will tell themselves that they simply had too much wine at the party, and will thereby seal Heaven into their mental cellar once more. Their pain will continue as always.

Sensitive and understated, I give this one top marks across the board. Bravo to John Huston. A fitting last effort by a great director.

Released posthumously, THE DEAD bookends John Huston's illustrious career spanning 46 years, which is kick-started with a bang by THE MALTESE FALCON (1941). Adapted to the screen from James Royce's source story from his shorts collection DUBLINERS by John's son Tony, and stars his daughter Anjelica, plus a succinct length of merely 83 minutes and the fact that its story is mostly confined in a single location, THE DEAD is a small-scale labour of love of Huston (and his family too), an octogenarian ruminates about his fulfilled life and ponders what is inevitably waiting for him. But, don't be misled by its title, the film doesn't dwells on that morbid subject, instead, its life-force engendered from the lively festivity of a January dinner in Dublin 1904.

University professor Gabriel Conroy (McCann) and his wife Gretta (Houston) are invited to attend the annual dance and dinner to celebrate the Feast of the Epiphany, hosted by the former's aunties, the Morkan sisters, Kate (Carroll) and her elder sibling Julia (Delany), as well as their niece Mary Jane (Craigie). Other guests are also presented, among which there is Mr. Grace (McClory, the Irish old stager in his final silver screen presence), a character doesn't exist in Royce's original text, entertains audience with his sublime recitation of a Middle Irish poem YOUNG DONAL, " ..You have taken the east from me; you have taken the west from me; you have taken what is before me and what is behind me; you have taken the moon, you have taken the sun from me; and my fear is great that you have taken God from me.", it is a magic moment where the sheer power of words embraces its deserved cinematic glory.

Another highlights include Freddy Malins (Donnelly, an unforeseen usurper in my BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR list), a middle-aged bachelor, a raging alcoholic, Gabriel's childhood friend, noticeably under the influence, his soused conduct sterlingly breathes an air of discomfiture and drollness on top of the cordiality presented by the rest of the ensemble; whereas his mother Ms. Malins (Kean), a helicopter parent who perhaps isn't even aware of what damage she has done, and risibly puzzles why her son keeps being such a disappointment and laughing stock.

Irish hospitality, as Gabriel addresses in his heart-felt tribute speech to the three hostesses, whom he praises as "three Graces", is the glue brings everybody altogether, regardless of their tastes in music, political stances or even religious persuasions. Cathleen Delany as Aunt Julia, upstages the rest of the Irish ensemble with her grand reaction shots and bolstered by her rendition of an Irish folk song, purely because it is too rare a case that the script would give sizable screen time to a senior lady singing in her weather-beaten timbre (apart from Ms. Florence Foster Jenkins for obvious reason).

Anjelica Houston, shares her last journey of movie-making with her esteemed father, takes a back seat in the dinner party with her composed demeanor, until Gretta's concealed memory is unexpectedly prompted by THE LASS OF AUGHRIM sung by the tenor Bartell D'Arcy (Patterson), when the party is winding down. In her quietly poignant confession of a deceased young man who she fell in love with, the film reaches its well-earned catharsis through Donal McCann's reflective voice-over about certain existential epiphany, enhanced by the picturesque montage from DP Fred Murphy and Alex North's conspicuously pensive accompanying score.

John Houston takes his exit with an elegiac meditation in honoring his forefathers and passing on his wisdom to his devout audience, it is brimming with loftiness, sincerity and an utterly captivating sensibility, and we wish the party would never be over, because goodbye is the hardest word to say to a beloved master.

In this adaptation of a story from Joyce's "Dublines," family and friends gather for a feast in Dublin in 1904. The plot is very thin. The focus is on the characters and their social interactions. The characters are so interesting and their conversations are so stimulating that one feels enriched having spent some time in their company. The acting is uniformly excellent by the entire cast. The sets and costumes beautifully evoke a bygone era, tinged with a sense of nostalgia and melancholy. The cinematography is exquisite. This is a fitting farewell for John Huston, working here with daughter Anjelica and son Tony, who wrote the screenplay.

So many literary adaptations are disappointments. There are many reasons for that, but usually it is the need to cut down a complex novel to the size of a screenplay. The Dead is unusual - it had to be 'padded', as the short story itself is a tiny, relatively short gem. It may in fact be the finest short story in the English language. In beautifully spare language it tells of the realization of Gabriel Conroy that his life, and the lives of so many around him are controlled by memories of the dead. Even his own wife of many years loved a man now dead more than him.

To bring such a short story to the cinema was always going to be tricky. John Huston did a magnificent job. He never gave in to temptation to play it up or use fancy technique to expand on the story. It is simple and true, with outstanding acting. The only slight miss-step is the use of music to accompany the devastating final soliloquy.

Its rare indeed for a movie version of a literary masterpiece to be itself a masterpiece, but I think its fair to use this term for this movie. Its not a bravura piece of film making, but it is simple and pure - I always think of Ozu's movies when i think of The Dead, its at that level of purity and simplicity and deep wisdom.