The Dead Reviews

If there’s any writer that practically defines the term “near impossible to film” it would be James Joyce. His works are densely layered cerebral works, and “The Dead” taken from his short story collection Dubliners is just two scenes. But John Huston always had a way with difficult writers, and here, in his last film, managed to find a way into Joyce’s prose and emerge with an elegiac portrait of two people who have spent years together without really knowing each other.

The Dead was a labor of love for Huston, and a family affair, with his son Tony writing the script and daughter Anjelica being one of the few famous faces in the ensemble. And Huston’s passion for the material is palpable onscreen. The smart choices he makes in editing allows for us to be visually clued in to the various resentments and allegiances involved in this family as they gather together for a holiday party. Through subtle cues and shifts in his camera’s placement we are slowly being built up to the great reveal, the outpouring of emotion that has been withheld until this point.

The film is quiet and intimate, and I was drawn in as each relative and friend is introduced and examined for their faults. An alcoholic trying to keep it together and not embarrass his mother in front of the family is a particular highlight, as is an elderly aunt who used to be a singer and is now only equipped with a tremulous and weak voice. The Dead circles around these various characters until it eventually closes in on Gabriel (Donal McGann) and Gretta (Anjelica Huston), and we learn that the preceding hour as only been a prologue to Gretta’s long-held secret.

McGann is wonderful as Gabriel, beginning the story as a generic upper-middle-class man and eventually peeling back the layer to reveal the true person at the core. The film’s slip from observation into Gabriel’s mind at the very end is a daring leap, but Huston’s direction has led us there so passively that we didn’t even notice it. And McGann deserves equal credit for making it work, as his impassioned reading of Joyce’s prose brings the story to its close, and he emerges as a man who has learned that he has never truly known his wife, but is besieged by grace in this moment.

Anjelica Huston is easily one of my favorite working actresses, I watched the entirety of the incredibly flawed-but-bonkers Smash just because she was in it. To watch her in The Dead is to be reminded of how wonderful a character actress she is, and how there was a time when she was the most daring American actress. Prizzi’s Honor, The Grifters, Enemies; A Love Story, The Witches, and her work here demonstrate that in a five-year span of time she was unafraid to show her darker impulses or play characters that didn’t demand to be loved. And The Dead taps into these assets, as her character emerges onto the screen as the image of a strong, proud wife and slowly breaks apart until she shares the story of the dead boy who stole her heart when they were both teenagers. It’s hard to believe she went from such a sustained portrait of quiet sorrow to just a few years later vamping it up as a deliciously droll and sexy Morticia Addams, but that's just how tremendous her range is.

The Dead taps into one knowing of their own mortality, and it is the defining moment of the film. And there’s something sad yet joyful about knowing Huston loving crafted this last film during his waning days. He was bound to a wheelchair and an oxygen mask, yet he crafted something of sublime poetry and tender beauty, a film that works as a great companion piece to its source material. Huston’s magnificent career is filled with gems, and this last film is one of them. He seemed to exemplify this quote from Joyce: “Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age.” With The Dead this is exactly what he accomplished.