After a convivial holiday dinner party, things begin to unravel when a husband and wife address some prickly issues concerning their marriage.
Ratings
Curator score: 7.1/10
IMDb: 7.2/10
Letterboxd: 3.74/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 94%
TMDB: 6.9/10
Director
John Huston
Production
Liffey Films, Vestron Pictures, Zenith Entertainment, Film4 Productions, Delta Film GmbH, Channel 4 Television
Cast
Anjelica Huston, Donal McCann, Dan O'Herlihy, Helena Carroll, Cathleen Delany, Ingrid Craigie, Donal Donnelly, Colm Meaney, Rachael Dowling, Marie Kean, Frank Patterson, Lyda Anderson, Kate O'Toole, Bairbre Dowling, Maria McDermottroe, Sean McClory, Brendan Dillon, Paul Grant, Dara Clarke, Redmond Gleeson
Curator Review
Verdict
A quiet, devastating chamber piece that turns a holiday dinner into a meditation on marriage, memory, and mortality. It’s especially rewarding if you like literary adaptations, restrained performances, and films that reveal their emotional force gradually.
Best for
Viewers who enjoy intimate literary adaptations
Fans of melancholy, reflective dramas
People who appreciate ensemble dinner-party scenes
Anyone drawn to films about marriage and self-reckoning
Viewers who like elegant, understated filmmaking
Skip if
You want a plot-heavy or fast-moving story
You prefer overt emotional catharsis over restraint
You dislike stage-like dialogue and literary pacing
You need strong external conflict or suspense
Overview
John Huston’s final film is a beautifully controlled act of farewell, both to a literary tradition and to a lifetime of filmmaking. What begins as a convivial holiday gathering slowly reveals itself as a study in social performance, regret, and the fragile distance between people who have spent years together yet still remain partly unknown to one another.
Worth noting
The film’s power comes from its patience. Huston lets conversation, gesture, and silence accumulate until the emotional pressure becomes almost unbearable. The result is not melodrama but something more piercing: a recognition that ordinary lives are full of private griefs, missed connections, and moments of grace that arrive too late to be fully possessed.
Bottom line
Anjelica Huston gives the film its beating heart, and the ensemble around her makes the dinner party feel lived-in rather than literary. The final movement is devastating without feeling manipulative, and the whole work carries the ache of memory—cold, humane, and deeply moving.
Top Letterboxd reviews
theriverjordan (4.5★) · 479 likes
After a generations-spanning career that was more full of whiskey, piss and vinegar than with honey, it would be to most anyone’s surprise that John Huston’s final film could be called… precious.
Most anyone… but likely not Huston’s daughter Angelica.
As her father spent his time directing “The Dead” in a wheelchair, connected to oxygen tubes and tanks - Anjelica quietly anchors the film with a performance of utmost emotional weight and delicacy. The exchange of artistic gifts seems to… more
Sally Jane Black · 428 likes
This is a warm film that captures a perfect moment of soul crushing insight in a man who is neither good nor bad, great nor small. He is an average soul with a tendency toward pretense and an awkward social gait. He tries, he means well, but he has trouble, it seems, connecting. In the end, he finds himself alone, despite the presence of his wife, and in that loneliness, he truly seems to see himself. A part of me… more This is a warm film that captures a perfect moment of soul crushing insight in a man who is neither good nor bad, great nor small. He is an average soul with a tendency toward pretense and an awkward social gait. He tries, he means well, but he has trouble, it seems, connecting. In the end, he finds himself alone, despite the presence of his wife, and in that loneliness, he truly seems to see himself. A part of me… more
Carlos Valladares · 257 likes
Was totally unprepared for the emotional cool-kick of John Huston's elegant, elegaic shot-prose. The Dead reduced me to tears. Silly tears. Tears of heartbreak, tears of loss. Whence this melancholy? Whence this misery? Whence this feeling of hopefulness?
Auteurists, try to wrap your head around this one: nearly all of the dialogue from the James Joyce story is left intact, and yet Huston (in his final film) makes this singularly his own, expanding upon and really breathing shivering ice into… more
Penny_S (5★) · 148 likes
It’s interesting the Letterboxed description calls this a tale of love. I’ve never thought about it that way before.
The film is Huston’s interpretation of the James Joyce story from The Dubliners, “The Dead”. It highlights the mundanity of life, where importance, enjoyment, or sadness all happen in response to situations as well as one’s own temperament. It’s about a group of people, going through the motions of living.
My favorite character is Aunt Kate. She’s a fabulous hostess, & I’d… more
Amy Hensarling (4★) · 112 likes
“How poor a part I’ve played in your life. It’s almost as though I’m not your husband, and we’ve never lived together as man and wife. What were you like, then? How long’d you locked away in your heart the image of your lover’s eyes when he told you that he did not wish to live? I’ve never felt that way myself towards any woman, but I know that such a feeling must be love.”
The more tender, tragic-romantic revelation on… more