The Dead 4K 1987 Ultra HD 2160p

Story Movie

The film calmly and unhurriedly describes a quarrel between the Conroy family's husband and wife that took place on Christmas Eve. As usual, the Conroy family celebrated Christmas with two elderly musician sisters and their niece in godforsaken Ireland, surrounded by family and friends. Throughout the film, the authors try to show and explain the difference between life and existence.

Review 4K Movie

John Huston's departure from both life and cinema, which was, in fact, his whole life, turned out to be so sad and melancholic. This is a film adaptation of James Joyce's novella, imbued with Irish national color, or more precisely, with the colorlessness of spiritual heights, their impersonality, and the hypocrisy hidden in the tonnage of backroom conversations.

The characters gathered for the holiday are fake and literally act out their existence in front of the audience. In fact, like most film adaptations of descriptive and conversational prose, The Dead is mostly a theatrical production filmed on camera, where the characters' dialogues carry more weight than the faces that utter them. Unlike many films, they not only show a cross-section of society at that time, but also demonstrate its internal definitions, managing to touch on issues of public importance such as the meaning of life.

Outwardly intimate and monotonous, the production (which cannot be called a full-fledged film) looks like a pleasant accompaniment to the image of a literary circle. Although it is rather stingy with its emotions and completely impartial to the concept of drama, it is quite easy to watch, even if it takes more than half of the film to get into it. The characters try to joke, try to bring life to the evening that is coming to an end with music, try to argue with each other, but they still seem emotionally dead. Everything is aging, the era they are accustomed to is passing, they themselves begin to regret their past, they understand that the days gone by will never be replaced by the future, that someday their lives will become a broken thread, no longer belonging to a knitted product.

The final scene of the film expresses all the sadness of this situation and is the director's last words. It is difficult to contain one's emotions while watching it, as it is filmed using the only possible artistic method - with the soul. Having put his whole self into the creation of his last canvas, John Huston could leave peacefully - he left a timid, touching message not only about himself, but about everyone: both the living and the dead.