For me, there has always been something elusive about James Joyce’s “The Dead.” I remember the first time I read it nearly thirty years ago. I had heard from many sources that it was the greatest short story in the English language. And what with its title being The Dead I expected something grimly dramatic. Instead, I found myself at a seemingly mundane dinner party with friends and relatives gathering for food, music, and small talk that I wasn’t really following. What did this have to do with the dead? What was I supposed to be noticing?

Then I reached the end and felt completely changed, but I couldn’t say why. Even after many rereadings, I am unsure why it has such consistent and still surprising power. I actually think that is part of the power of the story. It remains, to me, unresolved, and my own uncertainty feels essential.

Joyce’s story was adapted into a film in 1987, directed by John Huston, written by his son Tony Huston, and starring his daughter Anjelica Huston. This week The Criterion Collection has released a lovely home video edition of this gorgeous adaptation. The film is reserved, attentive, and, for me, just as powerful as the story itself.

The plot is simple, which is part of what threw me for a loop years ago. It’s Dublin, January 5, 1904, the night of epiphany, and Gabriel Conroy and his wife Gretta attend an annual dinner hosted by Gabriel’s elderly aunts in Dublin. The film begins as folks are arriving, snow gently falling, the aunts anxiously watching from the top of the stairway.

Helena Carroll and Cathleen Delany as Aunt Kate and Aunt Julia Morkan

The evening unfolds through conversation, music, dinner, speeches, and familiar rituals. While there are minor tensions, nothing extraordinary happens. And yet there is a lot going on under the surface. Here is this annual gathering, with a room chuck full for the festivities.

Meanwhile, Huston, at times, allows the camera to move away from the people who are present, exploring, say, an empty stairway in shadow that leads up to empty rooms with photographs on the walls.

It’s really lovely to slip away from the bustle and steal a glance at people who, at one time in the past, were also present. It almost feels like the party guests, lively and enjoying the moment, already belong to the past even as we watch them. I say it’s lovely, but it’s also haunting. Perhaps this is a lovely kind of haunting.

When the party guests are all leaving, we get a famous moment from the story, and it’s done with more emphasis and with a lot of power in the film. Gabriel looks up the staircase to find Gretta, who is just starting to descend when she hears Bartell D’Arcy (played by Frank Patterson, “Ireland’s Golden Tenor) singing a striking rendition of “The Lass of Aughrim” to another guest. Gretta stops, completely suspended. Gabriel is struck (by what?) watching Gretta:

Anjelica Huston as Gretta Conroy

Donal McCann as Gabriel Conroy

Somehow the film brings about that haunting sensation as we become aware of the proximity and distance between past and present and inner and outer lives. For Gabriel is pretty sure that he understands what Gretta is thinking in that moment. Of course he’s the Joyce character about to have his own epiphany: the inner lives of others, even those we feel so close to, remain fundamentally inaccessible.

This all is even more remarkable to me since I spent last year reading Proust. There is something about that realization, particularly when combined with the way the past can arrive unbidden, triggered by a song that haunts a snowfall.

Like Joyce’s story, this adaptation of The Dead remains elusive to me because I feel like I know it so well, so how can it surprise me still? But each time I return to it, I feel it fresh again. I guess that’s not quite right: I feel it even more strongly.

The Criterion Collection Edition:

This was famously John Huston’s final film. He died after filming had finished but a few months before the film was released. A couple of the supplements engage — directly or indirectly — that awareness.

The longest supplement is the behind-the-scenes documentary, John Huston and the Dubliners (1987), by Lilyan Sievernich. This runs for about an hour and we get a lot of shots of Huston not only directing the film but also talking about it, often with his oxygen tank hooked up, a reminder of his physical fragility during production.

Naturally the final question asked is what Huston has to say about making the film at this time of his life, which he correctly interpreted as “this close to my death.” He didn’t think it made a difference. I think he’s wrong. Even if one doesn’t know the circumstances of its making, The Dead carries something different, something ineffable, that seems inseparable from the fact that it was made in the shadow of an ending. The documentary is well worth watching for this alone.

An additional, if unexpected, reason it’s worth watching is that it really resonates another supplement, a 13-minute audio excerpt of Anjelica Huston’s 2014 memoir Watch Me. She speaks candidly about her discomfort with the documentary crew filming the production because it affected her acting. She is also upset by the idea that they were there to document her father making what they clearly felt was his final film. Her reflections on working with her father and brother while watching John Huston approach his own end add a deeply personal and moving dimension to the release.

The third supplement is a lovely interview with author Colum McCann, who starts by saying that “The Dead” is the greatest short story in the English language. I loved listening to McCann talk about the power of the story and how beautifully the film captures, as he puts it, the literature of the story. Nicely put.

The release also comes with a booklet containing an excellent essay by one of my favorite film writers, Michael Koresky, as well as a 1987 piece by Tony Huston reflecting on making of the film.

Even though it’s only the middle of January, I can see this being one of my favorite releases of the year.