The Dead

Rating

Director

John Huston

Screenplay

Tony Huston (Short Story: James Joyce)

Length

1h 23m

Starring

Anjelica Huston, Dan O’Herlihy, Colm Meaney, Ingrid Craigie, Donal McCann, Sean McClory, Marie Kean, Donal Donnelly

MPAA Rating

PG

Review

Confined to a wheelchair and fading in glory, legendary actor-director John Huston finishes out his career on a high note in his meditative chamber piece, The Dead.

The film centers itself around the annual Little Christmas party of sisters Kate & Julia Morkan (Helena Carroll & Cathleen Delany). Called that in Ireland, the holiday is more broadly known as Epiphany, a traditional feast day celebrated in Western Christianity. Held in the midst of winter, the event celebrates the visitation of the Magi to Jesus Christ in his manger bed according that religion’s mythology. Winter, also being symbolic of the end of life, makes a fascination setting for Huston’s final film. In it, a number of characters meet and sup accompanied by companionable conversation and myriad bits of warm entertainment.

Angelica Huston, John’s daughter, is the central focus of the film alongside Donald McCann as her character Gretta’s husband Gabriel, Kate’s favorite nephew. While the film largely follows the flow of this party, it’s what isn’t said that ultimately forms the crux of the film’s plot. Huston is trying to convince her husband that they should take a summer trip while he’s doing his perceived duty of looking after the party’s guests.

After making his mark on the film noir and western genres, Huston’s career settled into a largely forgettable series of pictures with a few bright spots along the way. The Dead was not his first collaboration with his insanely talented family, but it’s among his better efforts pulling solid work from Angelica and realizing son Tony’s marvelous adaptation of the James Joyce short story of the same name.

In spite of Huston’s initial service to action and tension-related genres, The Dead is far from nerve-wracking or action-heavy. It’s a simple story about a slice of life in an Irish community. The undercurrent of the film is the death of a young boy who lived with Huston and her grandmother who used to sing “The Lass of Aughrim,” a tune held in reserve until the film’s final act. Gretta feels it’s her fault that the young man died at the age of seventeen. It’s in that moment that the film’s contemplative nature comes forth as Gabriel wonders whether it would be better to die young than to fade away into old age, much like Huston himself who outlived a number of his contemporaries by the time of his passing a month before the film premiered at the Venice Film Festival.

The Dead is not the kind of film people rush out to see. It’s a slow, methodical film that highlights Huston’s skills as a filmmaker while feeling as intimate and uncomplicated as any film he’d ever made. This is a movie for Huston completionists and those enamored with cinema as an art form.

Review Written

June 8, 2022