| Overall Grade: |
B |
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| Story: |
B |
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| Acting: |
B+ |
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| Direction: |
B- |
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| Visuals: |
B |
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One Thing Is Lost, Another Is Gained
by Eric (movies profile)
Mar 29, 2008
5
of
5 people found this review helpful
It is said that when a good man dies, that his song will resonate to all who loved him. That certainly is the case from Steven, who died trying to keep a man from killing his wife, only to killed along with the wife in a murder/suicide. And what stems from that is the focus of Things We Lost In The Fire, the first American film from Swedish filmmaker Suzanne Bier (After The Wedding, Brothers).
Steven (David Duchovony) leaves behind a wife, Audrey (Halle Berry) and two kids. She is a hysterical mess with little to do than to go over the good times she had with her husband and try raising two children on her own. Just before the funeral, she realizes that one person doesn’t know about Steven’s death, his childhood friend Jerry (Benicio Del Toro). Audrey doesn’t like Jerry too much, even with Steven was alive. A former lawyer in another life, Jerry is now a heroin junkie living for the day. When everybody turned their back on him, Steven didn’t. Audrey feels that the wrong man has died. Jerry feels the same way.
After the funeral, Audrey goes through a suspended stage of mourning, snapping at her kids for the tiniest thing, going through longer stages of insomnia. Jerry decides to try to go clean again, goes to meetings where he finds a friend in a fellow traveler (Allison Lohman). In a moment of clarity, Audrey offers a place in a renovated room to Jerry. She needs help around the place, she says. It’s easy to see that she needs another adult to be around while she copes with her loss. Jerry agrees begrudgingly. He tries to keep himself isolated, but the kids refuse to be ignored. They are intrigued by their father’s best friend, which they’ve only recently known existed at the funeral (no doubt Audrey’s doing). He strikes a friendship with them that they mistaken to be a means of replacing their father. The problem is that Audrey starts to feel that he’s starting to do just that as well. And it is when she pulls the rug out from under him that the story takes its final act to a sad yet satisfactory ending.
Things We Lost In The Fire is a good movie that stems from what could be bad stuff. That’s the trick with melodrama; finding characters that you are rooting for, hoping for, to care about and even love. Most melodrama is based on situation instead of character. When scenario dictates of how people respond, it’s rare that you’re going to find true human emotion. We feel sympathy for Jerry, Audrey, and the kids. We wonder if Steven would have been proud of them moving on as they are. When Jerry teeters closer to the edge of losing himself, we are truly afraid for him and for all of them since we know what he means to them.
And the best way to see how the film moves you is how the film is cast. I’m not a big fan of Halle Berry (whom I still say is the scrawnier, softer version of Angela Bassett), but she hits many of the right notes here. We believe that she loved her husband as much as she shows and that the loss is killing her inside. And then you put Benicio Del Toro as the broken yet recovering Jerry, and he knocks the ball out of the park. He is deadly when he underplays a character, which is exactly what he does here. We see his emotion behind the skin, in the subtle ways and tiny mannerisms. But I also want to talk about the performance of John Carroll Lynch who plays the neighbor who used to be friendly with Steven and sees in Jerry a man who could use a friend as well. Lynch has never received the recognition he deserves in his film and television work. He doesn’t steal scenes, but makes the scene work better just by playing the character out the way it should be played.
For Suzanne Bier’s first American film, she could have done worse. She plays to her strengths here, but she really needs to elevate her game if she wishes to become great. The film makes some very unusual artsy decisions, such as tons of close-ups on eyes of characters. I somewhat understand the reasoning, but it’s still very weak in context.
All in all, this is a pleasant movie that does a good job at getting into your heart without being cute about it. It shows that the heart can heal even when that’s the one thing you probably don’t want. And that the one thing that you thought was the bane of your existence turns out to be your lifeline in the time of true disaster. |
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