Things We Lost In The Fire Burns Brightest When Handling Drug Addiction

For her first foray into English language American feature film directing, Susanne Bier was not gonna take things slow, she was gonna hit the ground running with a film concentrated on a bleak topic. Specifically, this film in question, Things We Lost In The Fire, would kick off with the death of Brian Burke (David Duchovny) and chronicle how his demise affected two very important people in his life. These two people are his now widowed wife, Audrey Burke (Halle Berry), and his lifelong best friend, Jerry Sunborne (Benicio Del Toro), who has also been struggling with a crippling drug addiction.



The death of Brian sends these two individuals into a spiral, with Audrey Burke struggling to find a sense of normalcy again while Sunborne tries to clean himself up and remove drugs entirely from his life. Things We Lost In The Fire plays these two parallel storylines as reflections of one another, as both Audrey's coming to terms with the death of her husband and Sunborne going into rehab for his drug problems are shown to be two mental conditions that are not easily handled with and can linger over a person for the entirety of their lives. Coping with grief or addiction isn't a simple process and this film knows that,


The way Allan Loeb's screenplay (which I was shocked to discover isn't based on a play, for some reason I saw this movie translating to a stage adaptation quite easily) handles the specific topic of addiction in a more thoughtful manner is maybe the best trait of Things We Lost In The Fire as it takes a realistic approach to depicting the struggles recovering addicts go through in trying to get a handle their addiction. Showing that addiction recovery as a long term process that's rarely easy to endure is a thoughtful and smart decision that fits snugly into the more naturalistic approach of the entire production.


In the drug addiction storyline, Benicio Del Toro excels in his performance as Jerry Sunborne, depicting an internally troubled individual without lapsing into the numerous stereotypes that cinematic portrayals of addicts have garnered over the years. Sunborne is a human being, one with nuance and depth in his personality that emerges from both Del Toro's performance and the writing of the character. Having Loeb write the character in this particular way feels like a suitable thematic companion to the similarly realistic and carefully crafted depiction of drug-related rehab. Lord knows how many times the very real plight of drug addiction has been utilized solely for shallow melodrama so it's nice how Things We Lost In The Fire is at its best when its offering up a thoughtful depiction of such an individual.


Unfortunately, less success is found in the plotline of Audrey Burke coming to terms with the death of her husband. Loeb finds way less success penning the plight of Audrey as she never really comes alive as a character and her process of coping with the grief stemming from her husband's abrupt demise just never feels like it can escape being too stereotypical, too derivative of other movies depiction of the same process, there's just no real individuality to be found in her sorrow. Halle Berry's off-kilter performance that has her delivering lines in an over-the-top fashion doesn't fit at all with the rest of the movie and further hurts Audrey Burke from feeling as freshly realized as a character as she could be.


Instead of trying to wring some real palpable realistic pathos out Audrey's circumstance, director Susanne Brier opts instead to return again and again to a recurring visual motif of close-up shots of characters eyeballs as if the mere recurring sight of assorted pupils will help lend depth to this underdeveloped key storyline. Unfortunately, that never really works and since one of the two crucial plotlines of Things We Lost In The Fire fails to coalesce into something special, the movie as a whole ends up feeling underwhelming though at least the parts concentrated on Benicio Del Toro's character do manage to come to vivid life at least.