THE DEAD (1987)

Country: U.K. / U.S.A.

Genre(s): Drama

Director: John Huston

Cast: Donal McCann / Anjelica Huston / Helena Carroll

Plot

An Irish couple attends a family Christmas party, full of conversations about politics, music, and religion.  What should be a joyous occasion unexpectedly puts the couple in a somber, melancholy mood, the reasons for which are only understood at the evening’s close.

What I Liked

Although I’m an English major, I somehow got through college without reading very much James Joyce, to my detriment.  Even still, I learned enough about him and his writings to know that transferring his works to motion pictures would be a difficult task.  His style and plots rarely adhere to convention, making the translation to the more immediate medium of movies a challenge.  Though I’ve never read “The Dead,” the final part of Joyce’s “Dubliners” collection, I do feel that director John Huston did a marvelous job of transferring literature to film without sacrificing the subtle beauty that made the literature great.

That impression is obviously not based on familiarity with the source material, but rather from the fascinating and haunting nature of the film, regardless of the story’s origin.  I reiterate the word haunting, as that is precisely the underlying theme of much of what goes on in “The Dead.”  While not overtly concerned with the departed (at least not until its final scene), the story and characters are all concerned with the lost; lost youth, lost experiences, lost opportunities, and, yes, lost people.  The dinner conversation centers on memories, death, and tradition, never straying far from an underlying current of mourning.

An excellent cast flawlessly captures how their very disparate characters are affected by the evening.  Some sodden themselves with drink, others use polite smiles to hide their pangs of nostalgia, some are overcome with bitterness, while still others lose themselves in daydreams of the past.  There may be little-to-no on screen action, but there is a clearly discernible plot played out on the faces and in the words of the characters.

What I Didn’t Like

The story’s lack of adherence to conventional movie-making plot structure and devices will make this a dismal or off-putting experience for some.  It certainly lacks for both the action and the candid melodrama I am used to in the movies.  Nevertheless, I found myself enthralled by the exquisite emotional undercurrent of the film.

Most Memorable Scene

As though the dinner were a polite séance, the dead finally dig their way to the surface in the film’s final scene, where Mrs. Conroy (played with mesmerizing restraint by Anjelica Huston) confesses to her husband (a masterful Donal McCann) of a death for which she has long felt responsible.  After his wife collapses in grief, Mr. Conroy’s thoughts drift toward a nearby window and the snow falling throughout Ireland.  He ponders his marriage, love, and death in a soliloquy (done in voice-over) taken almost word-for-word from Joyce’s own text.  It easily ranks among some of the best dialogue I’ve been privileged to hear, accompanied by visuals of the hauntingly (again that word) beautiful Irish countryside.  The film’s closing words, musing on death’s hold over the living, is rendered all the more poignant when one realizes this was the very last film made by director John Huston, whose health was rapidly fading during filming.

My Rating: 4.5 out of 5