Hats off to Lionsgate for releasing a DVD of John Huston’s last film, the little 1987 mini-classic “The Dead”, an Irish film originally distributed by Vetron, running all of 73 minutes. The first 45 minutes or so dramatize a Christmas dinner party in a “1900 House” in Dublin, supposedly in 1904, on a snowy early winter night. That part of the film plays like an episode of PBS’s “Masterpiece Theater”, with the little performances (a piano march, not identified, but I believe it is by John Field), then a “recitation” of a poem called “Broken Vows” (rather like “Transfigured Night”), and then a wonderful Christmas dinner, complete with flaming pudding, family style, in the days before high tech and media when people really appreciated social occasions. It’s relevant that the house belongs to two unmarried sisters, both musicians.
The film was adapted by screenwriter Tony Huston from the short story of the same name by James Joyce, from a collection called “The Dubliners”. Husband and wife guests Gabriel and Greta Conroy are played by Donal McCann and Anjelica Huston. The other guests leave, and the Conroys ride home in a coach, and face an issue vexing their marriage. Greta reveals an affection that she once had for a 17 year old boy who died, perhaps of consumption, but she feels because of her. Gabriel then soliloquizes that he is living in a state of shutdown; perhaps he is already dead (as if he had Cotard's Syndrome). During the dinner, there had been clues, such as the idea that theology was getting redesigned to “get us off the hook.”
English teachers will like this DVD and should show it in high school.
The story has gotten mentioned in connection with a couple of more recent films, which seem far afield in style from this one. For example, in 2007 the Yari Film Group distributed a film by Mark Fergus, “First Snow,” about a jute box salesman (Guy Pearce) who learns that his life will stop with the first autumn Rocky Mountain snow, and his experience suggests his life is already running out of him. Or try Goran Dukic’s “Wristcutters: A Love Story” (2007), from Halycon, in which a young man (Patrick Fugit) has apparently tried suicide upon losing a girl friend, and finds himself in a colorless purgatory where the laws of physics don’t quite work right.
(Related: on main blog, post n April 18, 2007).
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