Things We Lost in the Fire
Review by Steven D. Greydanus | posted 10/19/2007
 1 of 3
My brother-in-law died this year. His name was David, and he wasn't far in age from David Duchovny, whose character Brian is killed in Things We Lost in the Fire. Like Brian in the film, David's death was both unexpected and sudden—there was no chance for goodbyes. Brian's wife Audrey is played by Halle Berry, who is close in age to my wife Suzanne, David's younger sister—who happens to have the same name as the film's director, Danish filmmaker Susanne Bier.
I can't really imagine what it would have been like to watch Things We Lost in the Fire last year, or the year before. It's one thing to bury a grandparent or even a parent. An immediate family member at one's own stage in life—one young to die—is very different.
Halle Berry as Audrey Burke, comforting her daughter (played by Alexis Llewellyn)
Death puts life in perspective. Brian's death is unrelated to the titular fire; the fire occurs years before the events depicted in the film. The point of the title is that the things that were lost in the fire—which to Audrey seemed at the time so important—were just things. "We still have each other," she remembers Brian reminding her even then (I keep starting to type David). Yes, they did, until they didn't. It's strange how that happens.
Death is not a single traumatic event. Like a wedding, it is a thousand mundane tasks. There are distant family members, long-neglected friends, acquaintances and business partners to be notified; arrangements to be made, flowers to be ordered, a large gathering to be prepared for; and always all the minutiae of ordinary life to be attended to.
E-mail and voicemail continues to trickle in from people who haven't heard, like an old college buddy of Brian's who writes on the day of the funeral to chat about the Sonics' new power forward. "What did he think of him?" Audrey asks her brother Neal (Omar Benson Miller), who sits at Brian's computer. Good rebounder, Neal replies slowly, somewhat abashed by the triviality of the subject. Outside jump shot needed work. "Well then, write that," Audrey decides.
Even when you think everyone has been told, there's always someone else. Just before the funeral Audrey remembers someone who must be notified right away—someone with no phone, who must be told in person, and if he wishes, to be brought to the funeral.
David Duchovny as Brian, Audrey's now-deceased husband
This would be Jerry (Benicio Del Toro), Brian's friend since second grade. In the film's somewhat nonlinear storytelling, we meet Jerry at the post-funeral gathering first, and only later see him first receiving the news of Brian's death. Jerry drags nervously on a cigarette, and has another tucked behind his ear like a pencil. Only later is it clear the extent to which the cigarettes are less a vice than a lifeline.
"I hated you for so many years," Audrey confesses to Jerry. "Now it seems so silly."
The missing bit of information that connects all these dots is that Jerry, a one-time lawyer, is a heroin addict living on skid row. For years, Brian was Jerry's only connection to his former life. To Audrey's chagrin, Brian makes regular visits to Jerry's skid row apartment, on one occasion tearing himself away from a very amorous moment with his wife to make a birthday visit to Jerry—which, when your wife looks like Halle Berry, says a lot about you as a friend.
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