John Huston’s The Dead (1987) is one of his most beautiful and haunting films. Based on the 1914 James Joyce short story of the same name, it was made in the last year of Huston’s rich life. You can read Part 1 of this essay here.
ACCORDING to John Huston, The Dead is a film ‘about a man being revealed to himself, what we think we are and what we really are. This self-discovery is a soul-shaking experience.’
What is this discovery? On the surface it is the simple fact that Gabriel does not hold the prime place in his wife’s heart. The fact that her thoughts and affections go to a dead man does not make this any easier for him. Perhaps Gabriel thinks that his wife settled for him only because her true love had died. That Michael died in the bloom of youth preserves in her mind an image unaffected by the inevitable realities and disappointments of ageing. Gabriel, with all the imperfections of middle age, has to contend with an idealised vision of youth: the delicate, passionate artist, so needful of motherly care.
Yet clearly Gabriel’s discovery is about much more than his wife’s distance. We can see this from the monologue that concludes the film and tracks closely the ending to Joyce’s story. Gabriel’s thoughts turn from events of the evening – his wife’s indifference to him in the cab ride, the wine and dancing at the party, his ‘foolish speech’ at dinner – to a much weightier matter: the prospect of death itself. He recalls the haggard look of Aunt Julia singing the Bellini aria, Arrayed for the Bridal. ‘Soon she’ll be a shade too,’ he says, ‘with the shade of Patrick Morkan in his house.’ Gabriel imagines himself sitting at the bed of his dead aunt, offering ‘lame and useless’ words of consolation to her sister. As he looks out at the falling snow, Gabriel reflects that one day all – including himself – will join them.
Is Gabriel’s monologue a cry of despair? Does life leave him nothing to hope for but the gradual descent into oblivion? On the surface, it might appear so. ‘Better to pass boldly into that other world in the full glory of some passion than fade and wither dismally with age.’ So speaks a man with seemingly nothing to look forward to but meaningless decay. Does he mean it? It is hard to tell. While Gabriel may propose a philosophy of immersing himself fully in the present, his mind cannot help but return to events of the past. He meditates on the love shown by Michael Furey to Gretta, regretting that he has never known anything like it. ‘How long you locked away in your heart the image of your lover’s eyes when he told you he did not wish to live. I have never felt that way myself to any woman but I know that such a feeling must be love.’ One wonders whether Gabriel is not lamenting something more than the meaningless passage of time.
So what is the great self-discovery that Gabriel is making? It is my contention that he is beginning to apprehend the vanity of his desires and the self-centred nature of his love. Throughout the evening, Gabriel has attended carefully to the propriety and appearance of everything. He is the one who keeps Freddy from making a scene. He is the one who consecrates the meal with a toast. He is the one who bristles at being called a West Briton with the implication that he prefers the sophisticated trends of England and the Continent to the simple blessings of his own Irish culture. Undeniably, Gabriel has a gift for judging what sounds and looks good, a skill useful in facilitating a party or writing literary reviews in the newspaper. Yet such a skill does not entail an appreciation for the worth of things. To him his wife appears a mere painting, a beautiful enigma he wants more to control than to understand. No wonder he is blindsided by her heartache.
When Gabriel hears the story of Michael Furey’s love for the young Gretta, he is chastened by the thought that he has never loved in that way. Is he right to admire the love of Michael? One can hardly tell the young boy’s motivations in going out in the rain on a cold winter’s day. It may have been virtuous or it may not: the brave defiance of harsh nature for a worthy object of his desire or the reckless abandonment of reason for a temporary obsession. For Gabriel, it does not matter. Michael’s was an act of self-sacrifice, which Gabriel claims never to have made in his life for any woman. But has he ever felt that way towards anything? Has he ever been willing to give up his life for a cause outside of himself? His morose ruminations on death’s inevitability suggests that perhaps he never has.
The story of Michael Furey serves as a memento mori to Gabriel, calling to his mind the impermanence of all worldly things. The story has a similar effect on the viewer. And yet while to Gabriel it is a cause of sadness, to the viewer it brings a strange pleasure. Why is that? Is it simply the beautiful presentation of the scene by Huston? The poetry of Joyce’s text is matched by Huston’s masterful direction: the lone oboe playing softly The Lass of Aughrim, the lovely photography of the Irish countryside, and the strong but delicate tone of Donal McCann’s voice. This is not the first time the prospect of death has been evoked so sweetly. ‘Ah, Postumus! they fleet away, / Our years, nor piety one hour / Can win from wrinkles and decay, / And Death’s indomitable power,’ wrote Horace in his ode.
The scene is certainly beautiful but what makes it so? What causes the soul to be lifted up as it is by the fitting arrangement of all these sensible elements? Is it the fact that death itself – a cause of fear to all of us – has been transformed by the poet into something pleasant? Is our delight that of an audience captivated by an illusionist? No doubt Huston and Joyce have concentrated our attention upon Gabriel and his musings, diverting our mind from our own cares and woes. The idea that we should grow haggard like Aunt Julia or become forgotten like the great tenor, Parkinson, may fill us with dread. Is it the genius of Joyce and Huston that their beautiful portrayal of death should distract us from death itself?
To be continued
