Os Vivos e os Mortos

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.

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.

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.

An exquisite film. They just don't make them like this any more! We eavesdrop on an upper middle class family in Dublin in the early part of the 20th century. They are hosting an after Christmas dinner for their friends and relatives. Their table talk is just idle chatter but it is so well written that one is engrossed. Away from the dinner table some fine piano playing helps to create an intimate atmosphere as if one were there as one of the guests. Perhaps a bit too perfect for an amateur player, the odd mistake here and there would have added to the magic of this film. No real story but real entertainment and an object lesson for up and coming film makers.

This is a wonderful evocation of a previous age. True, it is slow moving but that is definitely part of its charm. Stately and elegant - a fitting tribute to an iconic director! Not many films can boast such a unique form. Top marks to the director for having the bravery to create such a work of art that may have seemed commercially non-viable. I doubt very much a piece like this would be given the green light in today's action-driven, dumbed-down movie environment. Does a good job of adapting the James story and also brings a little something extra to it as well as all truly good art should - it is not enough merely to emulate. Wonderful film and not to be missed!