Things We Lost in the Fire Review
by Jonathan Moya (jjmoya1955 AT yahoo DOT com)October 28th, 2007
Things We Lost in the Fire (2007)
A Movie Review by Jonathan Moya
Rating: B or 3 out of 5
The Review:
With over one-half million people being evacuated from the wildfires blazing across Southern California this week, Things We Lost in the Fire has the year's most unfortunate film title. Susanne Bier's previous film was the academy award nominated best foreign language film from last year, After the Wedding-which like Fire dealt with themes of reconciliation and grief. Fire could easily be "After the Funeral", since it involves the early death of a beloved character.
Brian Burke a Seattle real estate developer, a father of two, and life long best friend with a lawyer turned junkie is shot and killed breaking up a domestic argument in the parking lot of the neighborhood store.
Brian is played by David Duchovny in his most ingratiating everyman mode. He is Hank Moody- the divorced novelist with writer's block that Duchovny plays in Showtime's Californication- stripped of the hedonism, the drugs, the sex, and the acerbic intelligence. Brian is a saint with a smile and a little charm. In the less than twenty minutes of film time Duchovny shares with his screen wife Audrey and best friend Jerry, played by Halle Berry and Benicio Del Toro, he manages to generate almost no chemistry. His role could easily have been limited to photos on the wall and thirty sentences of mourning exposition.
Halle Berry is left to bear the representation of Brian's conscious- and it is not an easy fit. Audrey is an introvert with a jealous, artistic, perfectionist's streak and an undying devotion to her two children, Harper and Dory (Alexis Lewellyn and Micah Berry- no relation). She worries when Brian goes to see Jerry at whatever dive hotel he inhabits that week. She hates the time the relationship takes away from her and the family. At the last minute she sends someone to invite and take Jerry to the funeral because it is what Brian would have wanted.
Berry's performance is full of the stops, starts and revisions of a woman trying on a new skin, of trying to accept the good the dead have left behind. The slough of anger, jealousy and rage is yielding the fight to the patient benevolence and gentle understanding that were the hallmarks of Brian's life. Berry's struggle is an echo of the battle of every woman who has ever mourned and moved on.
Jerry is a heroin junkie whose only reason to quit is Brian's faith in him.
"I hated you for so many years and now it seems so silly, Audrey tells him at the wake reception, secretly resenting the irony that Brian was the first to pass on. "Why wasn't it you, Jerry?" she cries softly to him later.
Yet, Jerry has an easy rapport with Harper and Micah. And he is seriously trying to overcome his habit cold turkey and with the help of a Narcotic Anonymous group. He isn't an evil person, just lost. He doesn't steal to get drugs.
Audrey tired of the loneliness and emptiness allows him to stay in the garage in exchange for his finishing its conversion into an extra bedroom.
Their relationship, with the exception of one awkward emotional moment, is chaste and platonic. Jerry just has a little of Brian's soul.
Audrey's jealousy erupts when Jerry inadvertently usurps Audrey's role with the kids. When Dory is reported missing from school one day, Jerry knows that she could be found at the local revival theater watching an old black and white classic. It was a father-daughter activity that Brian devoted a little hooky time to. When Jerry gets Harper to swim underwater, a goal that both Brian and Audrey have failed at, Audrey strikes out with a vindictive "those should have been my moments, not yours."
Benicio Del Toro plays Jerry's drug addled stupors as if he were Ferdinand the Bull happily smelling flowers under a cork tree. But that is his only whiff of over indulgence. The rest is a commanding portrayal of a man facing fears, self contempt and the ache of the soul to tentatively, and hopefully, totally reconnect with the community of the world.
Susanne Bier in her first American feature retains the elements of her dogme style (the handheld shots, reliance on natural light, the stripped down music score provided by her imported colleague Johan Soderqvist) that union Hollywood can comfortably accept. Except for a little too much attention to eyes in close-up, her style is generally affecting. It averts typical romantic expectation and strives to find the quiet emotional reality of everything. She manages to keep the mawkish and overarch moments few and far between.
Her damage souls know where they walk in the world-- and though grateful to each other for the start-- they know they can get to the end alone.
Even though the fire is just a metaphor, Things We Lost in the Fire gets a very real B.
The Credits:
Directed by Susanne Bier; written by Allan Loeb; director of photography, Tom Stern; edited by Pernille Bech Christensen and Bruce Cannon; music themes by Gustavo Santaolalla, score by Johan Soderqvist; production designer, Richard Sherman; produced by Sam Mendes and Sam Mercer; released by Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks Pictures. Running time: 112 minutes.
WITH: Halle Berry (Audrey Burke), Benicio Del Toro (Jerry Sunborne), David Duchovny (Brian Burke), Alison Lohman (Kelly), Omar Benson Miller (Neal), John Carroll Lynch (Howard Glassman), Alexis Llewellyn (Harper) and Micah Berry (Dory).
"Things We Lost in the Fire" is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It has sexual situations, drug taking and strong language.
Copyright 2007 by Jonathan Moya.
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