D’Dead…

“Sublime” and “astonishing” are just some of the superlatives that have been used by critics to describe The Dead. An adaptation of the last story from James Joyce’s Dubliners directed in 1987 by John Huston, it is a film that has often been labelled “a masterpiece”.

All this week The Lighthouse Cinema in Smithfield are screening The Dead. Having heard so much about it over the years without having seen it and with some time to kill yesterday afternoon I thought I’d head along to see what the fuss was all about.

Anjelica Huston & Donal McCann reflect in The Dead

The setting for The Dead is an annual New Years Eve party taking place in a grand house in 1904 Dublin. There is much drinking, dancing, carousing, gossiping, and goose carving. Eventually Gretta Conroy, after hearing an old and sad ballad sung by one of the guests, confesses to her husband Gabriel of a long ago love affair she still remembers. It is this recounting of a tragic teen love which brings Gabriel to an epiphany and these very revelations cause him to question matters of life and death… and move him to lament the lack of such passion in his own life.

The Dead feels quite theatrical as opposed to cinematic. The all-Irish cast and careful period detail should lend the piece richness and gravity but instead it all feels slightly inorganic, almost two dimensional. Huston precisely duplicated onscreen both the simple two-part structure of Joyce’s story and much of its dialogue but what works on stage or in literature doesn’t always work on screen. This age old issue surfaces here as some of the narrative falls slightly flat. Plot developments are slight and the two acts aren’t as cohesive as they should be.

It feels as if all concerned (i.e., writer, director and cast) were overly reverential and faithful to Joyce’s source material, which is, perhaps, to the detriment of the movie itself. Maybe it needed to be a screen adaptation as opposed to what is a direct re-presentation of Joyce’s short story?

That said Anjelica Huston has real presence as Gretta Conroy, and Donal McCann, playing her husband Gabriel, is admirable as the troubled, searching “West Briton”. But it all feels a mite forced. It always feels like James Joyce is talking through his pen rather than actors in character and that never really works for me. It becomes impossible to seperate the narrative from the originator and that, for me at least, is problematic.

The melancholic memories evoked by Gretta concerning her first, long-lost love when she was a girl in rural Galway are dramatic and touching. There is much reminiscence throughout but aside from that there is not much real drama at play. A snobbish party unfolds, people eat, drink and dance then go home.

Some of the delivery from the gossiping ladies is slightly off but that said most of the supporting cast, including Colm Meaney and the excellent and very likeable Donal Donnelly, are generally fine.

John Huston directed this, his very last film, 43 years after his debut The Maltese Falcon, from a wheelchair and with the aid of oxygen tanks. Shot almost entirely, and somewhat surprisingly, in a Californian warehouse it was clearly a labour of love. But I wonder is it as good a piece of cinema as it could have been? For me, no.

Yes, The Dead is a seminal piece of Irish film, with some fine Irish actors on display. And it is certainly worth seeing for the heavyweight talent at work and to see turn of the century Dublin presented on the big screen. But is it a masterpiece, sublime and astonishing? For my money, I’m afraid not.