The Dead

The elegiac final story from James Joyce’s Dubliners provided the perfect swan song for director John Huston. The Academy Award–nominated screenplay was penned by Huston’s son Tony, and his daughter Anjelica stars as the wistful Gretta Conroy. At an annual Epiphany celebration, on a snowy Dublin evening, conversation—punctuated by dancing, dining, and entertainments—brings to light the shared and divergent relationships, politics, faith, histories, and futures of the multigenerational guests. At the center of the action, but at an emotional remove, Gabriel Conroy reflects on time, mortality, and his inability to connect with his people, his country, and his wife.