MCI Academic Journal #16: The Dead

On several occasions during the course, I professed my love for the writings of James Joyce. I've read Ulysses three times, heck, I even named my first bearded dragon Ulysses. Of course I'd read The Dead before the course, and it is perhaps my favorite short story by Joyce. Oddly, though, I'd never seen the John Houston film adaptation, and my expectations for the film were nearly as low as the Ryan Reynolds crapfest Green Lantern I watched mere days before my arrival in Ireland.

In my eyes, that piece is simply unapproachable for cinema. It is slow, plodding, and just too complex to display on celluloid. Before watching the film in class, Dr. Chown presented an exercise where we were split into three groups. Dr. Chown and Dr. Rank acted as the studio, which would produce a version of the film, as described by the three groups. The first group's objective was to sell the story to the producers so that the film would be made, i.e. it's a great story, it's a great plot, it's romantic, blah, blah, blah. The second group determined what had to be in the movie for it to be true to Joyce's vision. The third group, which was Connor, Christina, and I, were left to say why the film would be a critical and commercial failure, but let's be honest, unless the studio's Miramax or Focus features, we're talking dollars and cents, not little golden statues. We were tasked to come up with five reasons for to justify why The Dead should not see the silver screen, and despite my love of the text, this assignment was remarkably easy.

Here are the five reasons our trio came up with:

1. It's Irish. It's Gosford Park without a murder. Who wants to see a bunch whiny brogue-talking alcoholics in period dress.
2. There's just not enough material for a feature length film. 40 odd pages and no explosions or dismemberments? No way.
3. Period piece. Unless you have a fantastic love story, heroic icon, or swashbuckling battle scenes, period pieces just don't work. You make this movie, congrats, you've just remade The Color Purple without Oprah.
4. Gabriel is a schmuck. The protagonist is weak, and has resolve and intestinal fortitude of a turnip. He's just an angst dude at a party, an emo rocker in period dress. Good luck on that getting the masses to flock to the theatre.
5. The Joyce fanboys will cry murder. You can't make this and please your core audience. They'll be worse than the comic book nerds.

That said, the 1987 movie was made by renowned filmmaker John Houston, starred a remarkably strong cast, including John's daughter Angelica, and was a minor critical success. Yet for me, the film was hollow, empty and unsatisfying. The scene where Gabriel and Gretta arrive at the party has an odd sexual tension as the young maid helps Gabriel out of his galoshes. He compliments her awkwardly and asks about the attention she receives from young men, eventually attempting to tip her in thanks for a job well done and as a Christmas bonus. In the movie, this sexual tension is wiped clean. While Houston's character has a bawdiness not shown but alluded to in the text, this scene is an excellent display of the differences in class betwixt Gabriel and his wife. This East/West paradigm is better explored in the text as well, for, according to Joyce, it is not just one of geographic location, but of class. Galwegians are raw and unrefined, which restricts them to a lower class of Irishman. And even as Gabriel calls attention to Lily's femininity and attractiveness (she is a lower class lass, after all), it is all for naught. He did the same thing with Gretta bringing the farm girl to the city, "rescuing" her from a rural life with a lack of true potential. Both acts were done with limited knowledge of life below his station.

The portrayal of Miss Ivors was most troubling. The personification of the East/West paradigm should have been a key moment in the film yet Maria McDermottroe's portrayal of Miss Ivors was far too cavalier and too aggressive. In the text, Miss Ivors is snide and provocative. Less jokey but more pointed. Specifically the exposition of the term "West Briton" was annoying, this coming from my status as a Joycean fanboy. I know what a West Briton is. All of the characters know what a West Briton is, and especially Miss Ivors and Gabriel are familiar with it. But somehow, the film needs to explain this derisive barb thrown Gabriel's way. The otherwise pronounced attention to detail failed in this regard. This harkens back to the early part of this blog where my study group detailed why The Dead is such a difficult film to make. Combine the derision of the Joyce enthusiasts with the slowed pace; the film spends much of the dinner scene focused not on the context of Celtic hospitality or stratification of the Irish class system, but on the protocol of the dinner itself. The result is a very unenjoyable film.

Donal McCann's Gabriel is neither angsty nor lusty, as the script text requires. While McCann manages to scowl and harumph his way through the script, his performance lacks the nuance of trepidation and melancholy of Gabriel's station. Without an inner monologue or a clearly reflexive performance, this Gabriel is underwhelming to say the least.

This encapsulates my feelings about The Dead in a nutshell, well, an underwhelming nutshell that is.