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 the first two parts of this essay here.
IT IS A credit to Joyce and to Huston that their creations should offer something more than a sensory escape from woe. I say this because, as I read them, both story and film call out the very futility of seeking such an escape. We see this in Gabriel, who in his devotion to the aesthetic life has become so ignorant of the inner life of his own wife. He who adores the enigmatic vision of the woman on the staircase fails to appreciate her great sadness, guilt and longing. This is a shock and embarrassment to Gabriel and yet an occasion for self-reflection. When he says that it is ‘better to pass boldly into that other world in the full glory of some passion than fade and wither dismally with age’, he is not so much lamenting the merciless ravages of time but confessing a life empty of meaning. To this point in his life, he seems to be saying, he has never given himself up to a power greater than himself. This is a painful discovery for him to make and yet equally an opportunity for redemption. In this, Joyce’s short story, and even more so Huston’s film, carries with it a subtle but predominating element of hope.
One could be forgiven for interpreting the film as the expression of some Epicurean resignation to death. If in the end we all become ‘shades’, why not lose ourselves in the moment, as the imprudent Michael Furey did in his courting of Gretta? What matters the long life deprived of him? At the very least, we will spare ourselves the inconveniences of growing old. Consider the absurd spectacle of Aunt Julia singing Arrayed for the Bridal. Surely, Gabriel had her in mind when he spoke of withering ‘dismally with age’.
Yet Huston’s film – and Joyce’s story – calls into question this attitude. The song that triggers Gretta’s trance on the staircase, The Lass of Aughrim, recounts the tragic conclusion to a youthful love affair. In this plaintive song, a young mother with babe in arms pleads with its father to let her in from the rain. The man, now Lord Gregory, cruelly denies the woman he once seduced on a hillside. ‘If you be the Lass of Aughrim / as I’m taking you mean to be / tell me the first token / that passed between you and me.’ The song is achingly lovely, but it hardly celebrates the wisdom of heedlessly submitting to one’s passions.
Still another moment in the film calls further into question the Epicurean temptation. Interestingly, this scene does not appear in Joyce’s story but is an invention of the director and his screenwriter. One of the guests at the dinner, a Mr Grace, recites an anonymous Irish poem, Broken Vows, to both the delight and perplexity of the party. Like The Lass of Aughrim, it tells of the unhappy end to a love affair. ‘You promised me something impossible,’ laments a broken-hearted lover to her beloved, ‘That you would give me gloves of the skin of a fish / that you would give me shoes of the skin of a bird / and a suit of the dearest silk in Ireland.’ As Mr Grace recites the overripe verse, Huston’s camera pans across the faces of the audience, including the wide-eyed Aunt Julia, the puzzled Freddy Malins, and the several young women listening in rapt attention. The poem concludes ominously, ‘You have taken the East from me / You have taken the West from me . . . and my fear is great / you have taken God from me.’
While the young ladies of the party are delighted by the poem – ‘Imagine being in love like that,’ sighs one – the rest of the group are clearly unsettled. Even Mr Grace appears to be embarrassed, offering that it is a translation from the Irish by Lady Gregory. Several guests comment on the poem’s beauty, with Bartell d’Arcy even suggesting it would make a good song. While their praise is surely sincere, they skirt the heart of the matter. The poem, like The Lass of Aughrim, carries the scent of death about it. Fittingly it is Gabriel who rescues the situation by leading the room in a polite round of applause.
Later, at dinner, the subject of faith is rekindled. Mrs Malins mentions that her son is going to the Cistercian abbey of Mount Melleray for retreat. The other guests are intrigued, especially Mr Browne who finds it ridiculous that the monks should charge their guests no money or sleep in coffins. Freddy haltingly explains that they are doing penance for the sinners of the outside world. Mr Browne scoffs that agnostics, atheists, heathens, and even Protestants like him should receive ‘free insurance’, all the while forgoing the comfort of a spring bed. In a stern and authoritative tone, Mrs Malins puts the discussion to rest. ‘It is to remind them of their last end,’ says the old woman before taking a bite of her pudding.
This moment passes quickly, both for the guests at the table and the viewers of the film. Soon enough Gabriel is giving his toast, celebrating the hostesses’ generous hospitality and warning those present not to lose themselves in gloomy remembrance of the past. ‘Our work is among the living,’ he says, as if responding to Mrs Malins’ defence of the monks of Mount Melleray. As I noted above, his sermon is a bit unconvincing. It is not that he is saying something untrue. Certainly, we ought to care very much for those living to whom we owe our ‘strenuous endeavours’. Nevertheless, we ought to do so in light of our ‘last end’. Only then can we truly serve ‘our living duties and living affections’.
Why should this be? If we take our ‘last end’ to mean simply the last breath we take, it would not. Perhaps this is how Gabriel takes it, and he would not be wrong to draw this conclusion. That fact that our lives and all our projects therein shall one day come to an end is no reason not to work hard on our projects now, especially those that contain duties to others. Nevertheless, this is not what Mrs Malins means by our ‘last end’. Surely she is using the term as the monks of Mount Melleray would have used it. The last end, or ultimus finis in Latin, is the ultimate purpose for which we do everything in life. For the monks of Mount Melleray, this end is God, who is no more present at the end of our life than he is in the midst of it. The only difference is that at the end of our life, we have to answer to Him. This the monks believe but Gabriel likes not to think about, at least not until the very end of the movie.
As Gabriel stands at the hotel window, reflecting on his wife’s confession and the events of the party, his mind turns to the snow falling outside. ‘Yes, the newspapers are right. Snow is general all over Ireland.’ This is a strange but pregnant remark. It is almost as if Gabriel is rising above, at least tentatively, his solipsistic life of aesthetic pleasure. The very snow that falls so beautifully outside his warm hotel room he knows is falling around all of Ireland, ‘softly upon the Bog of Allen, and farther westward, softly falling into the dark, mutinous Shannon waves’. No less is it falling on the ‘lonely churchyard where Michael Furey lies buried’. And finally, it is falling faintly through the universe, ‘like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead’.
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Joyce’s concluding line to his story is ambiguous, and Huston preserves that ambiguity in his film. In what way is the last end ‘descending’ as the snow falls lightly on the earth? Does Joyce mean a going away or fading into oblivion? If so, is he expressing, as did Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, the death of God? Given the sombre tone in which Gabriel speaks these lines, it might appear so. Although the Morkans’ party occurs on the Feast of the Epiphany, one would hardly know it. Only a perfunctory grace is said at the beginning of supper and any time religion is mentioned, some guest will respond with scepticism or bemused toleration. When Aunt Julia sings Arrayed for the Bridal, Huston’s camera passes over what would appear to be the twee furnishings of her bedroom. Along with old family photographs are a dolls’ house, a child’s needlepoint, porcelain angels and a rosary. Belief in the last end seems to be a thing of the past.
Or do the author and filmmaker mean something else by this line? I think they do, or at least something more. It is undeniable that Joyce is representing a world in which faith has receded dramatically. Yet I am not so sure that either he or the director is representing this as a natural fact that we must accept and stoically contend with as perhaps Nietzsche intended. For so much in the story, and Huston’s cinematic adaptation, suggests that this is a choice that we make with real consequences. We see this especially in the way that Huston contrasts the characters. Consider the difference between the religious sceptic Mr Browne and the pious but wayward Freddy. The former arrives sober, natty, and urbane. He leaves drunk, dishevelled, and irritable. The latter arrives drunk and fearful of his domineering mother. He leaves cheerful, obedient, even conspicuously generous to Browne, who treated him so unkindly during the dinner.
Or consider the difference between Gabriel and his Aunt Julia, whom he almost regards as already dead. Gabriel, and admittedly we the viewers, may judge her absurd singing bel canto. But is he any less absurd in his condescension to Freddy or his attitude towards his wife? Aunt Julia’s voice may be out of tune and her choice of song fits poorly an aged spinster, but she sings with a self-assurance and grace that brings real pleasure to her audience. When the sincere Freddy and the rather cloying Browne overpraise her singing, she is clearly embarrassed by their approval, claiming that her voice was ‘not bad’ thirty years ago. Aunt Julia, who has to be coaxed into singing, performs not for her own self-image but the joy of her audience. One wonders if the same could be said for Gabriel.
Last of all, consider the contrast between Gabriel and Gretta. When Gretta tells her husband the story of Michael Furey, Gabriel reacts with unconcealed jealously. The fact that Michael died many years ago does not lessen this feeling. In Gabriel’s mind, Gretta’s anguish means she cares less about him than he thought, a fact she kept secret from him for many years. But could it not also be the case that she feels true sorrow for the death of a boy who had his whole life ahead of him, even while sincerely loving her husband?
In his short story, Joyce writes of the ‘generous tears’ that well in Gabriel’s eyes as he reflects at the window on Michael’s reckless courting of Gretta, and Gretta’s motherly compassion for Michael. In the film we see no tears, but Gabriel is clearly struck by the beauty of these selfless acts of love, even if he knows not how to do it himself. The snow falling before him, as he peers through the lace curtains, has the effect of tears. With Huston’s wintry montage of Ireland, at once dark and beautiful, one may think of another way of interpreting the ‘last end descending’. Descent need not mean a going away. It can also mean a coming down to us, a movement from Heaven to Earth. Is it not possible that Gabriel is thinking about a God that enters into our world, not once at the end of times but always and everywhere, whenever someone is animated by a desire to give himself freely for another? ‘Drop down dew from Heaven,’ wrote the prophet Isaiah, ‘and may the clouds rain down the Just One.’ While Gabriel may never have experienced such self-sacrifice himself, is it not likely that he admires it and yearns for it?
Who knows the motivations of Joyce in his writing this short story or Huston in his making the film? ‘Man is not competent to judge of interior movements, that are hidden, but only of exterior acts which appear.’ Such Aquinas wrote in the context of our following the natural and human law. But it applies no less to the artist in his act of creation. It is tempting to speculate on Huston’s intentions as he worked on this film in the last year of his life. To what extent was his own mind turned to his ‘last end’? It is better to leave this question be, not just because it is a distraction from our own spiritual predicament. It is also a sign of respect to the director, who worked so hard to produce a work for our enjoyment. Our job is but to judge it. And to that question, I will say it is just as beautiful as the short story on which it is based. But may I be forgiven for adding a little philosophical commentary: where there is beauty, there is order, and where there is order, Mind. This is no less true for a work of a masterful poet or a film director than it is for snow falling from the heavens. As the Psalmist wrote, ‘He gives snow like wool; he scatters the hoarfrost like ashes. / He casts forth his ice like morsels; who can stand before his cold?’
THE END
