The Dead

I'm sure everyone has a favorite movie.
Mine is The Dead which was John Huston's last film.
It is just a lovely, beautiful movie based on James Joyce's novella of the same name.
I read Dubliners years ago and The Dead has always stayed with me.
Joyce is normally hard to read, but that collection is very accessible and well, here, just read this lovely last paragraph:

"A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead."

How can you not fall in love with that?

So we went to see the movie when it came out and I try to catch it whenever on TV.
Last night I downloaded it from Amazon and I am so happy I did.
Just as lovely as I remember.





As a bonus here is Ewen McGregor (no Frank Patterson, God rest his soul, but still lovely) and Susan Lynch singing The Lass of Aughrim over the closing credits of Nora...another movie I quite like.