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| Interview: Susanne Bier on "Things We Lost In The Fire" |
by Peter Sobczynski
The acclaimed Danish filmmaker talks about her English-language debut film, the Halle Berry-Benicio Del Toro drama "Things We Lost In the Fire"
Having built up a considerable reputation in the world of international filmmaking thanks to such works as “Open Season,” “Brothers” and “After the Wedding,” Danish director Susanne Bier decided to find a project that would allow her to take a chance on working within the American film industry. That film turned out to be “Things We Lost In the Fire,” a wrenching melodrama in which a recently widowed woman (Halle Berry) tries to cope with the loss of her husband (David Duchovny) by inviting his best friend, a burned-out junkie (Benicio Del Toro) whom he inexplicably stayed loyal to, to move in with her and her two children as a way of keeping his memory alive. Although not perfect by any means, the film comes closer to matching the tone of her previous work than most European directors are able to do when they come to Hollywood. More importantly, it also features Del Toro in one of the year’s very best performances, a high-wire act that cuts through the occasionally hard-to-swallow melodramatics in order to convey the kind of raw, powerful truth that is rarely seen these days.
Just before presenting the film, which is currently in release, at the Chicago International Film Festival, Bier got on the phone for a few minutes to discuss the project and her adventures working in Hollywood.
Before “Things We Lost In The Fire” came along, had you been actively looking for a project to do in America?
I had been wanting to do an English-language movie for a while because I was curious. My Danish films had very big audiences locally and they also traveled pretty well for being Danish-language movies. I was kind of curious to see whether something I did could reach a naturally larger audience by being in the English language. I had been reading scripts but not really falling in love with any of them but this one I fell in love with.
What was it about this particular script that made you fall in love with it?
The characters were real human beings and not some sort of comic-strip caricatures. In many of the scripts I read, the characters were not real. I felt that these people were real and I was crying at the end after reading the script.
Was it difficult to try to convince Dreamworks to let you make your Hollywood debut with this particular project?
Sam Mendes was the producer and we got along really well right from the beginning, so I think he managed to convince Dreamworks to take me on as the director even before I met them. We actually had a very good and very creative meeting. For me, it wasn’t difficult and I didn’t know about it if it was.
From a directorial standpoint, did you notice much of a difference between making films in your home country and making them within the Hollywood studio structure?
Being a filmmaker involves being with the story, being with the characters and being with the artists involved with the making of the movie and that is the same wherever you do it. I had decided this before I was doing an American film because I had seen a number of European directors who were doing interesting and quite personal stuff in Europe but when they came to Hollywood, you couldn’t tell who had done them anymore. I decided that if anyone was going to hire me to do a movie, I would just have to stick with the kind of filmmaking that I believed in and not try to aim at something that might have been expected. I did that and I was being supported in that all the way through.
The film does share some common themes and elements with your earlier works–people dealing with tragedy, family conflicts and the like. Were those elements present in the original script or did that change at all once you came on board?
Allan Loeb and I actually did some extensive work on the script and he was very open and creative. While we were shooting, we would improvise many of the scenes and then we would change some around in the editing. However, I think that the core of the movie was already in the script.
There are some scenes in the film that are striking in that they don’t seem as if they have been written and staged at all–they feel as if a camera has somehow been dropped into the middle of a real-life situation and recorded what took place. The one that immediately leaps to mind is the dinnertime sequence in which the Alison Lohman character is peppering the others with questions about Steven and the way that he affected the lives of everyone else at the table.
I like to work that way. I like to generate an atmosphere among the actors where they genuinely feels that they are part of a real thing. One of the advantages of having more cameras around is that they always feel as they are a part of things and not off at times. There is an intensity to it–we don’t take many breaks to change the lighting.
I wanted to ask you about the casting of the central roles of Jerry and Audrey. Benicio Del Toro is pretty amazing in the film and in a way, it is really his story that we watching–he is the one who goes through the biggest changes as the story unfolds. Where did the idea of casting him come from?
In my mind, as soon as he was mentioned, that was it–it had to be him. I have always been a fan of his and I thought that he was just so right for the part. With Halle, it was interesting because the script was written for a Caucasian woman. I had met with Dreamworks and met with a few actresses but she had sort of pursuing the project for a bit before I came on board. Then we met and the first thing that she asked me–we met for 20 minutes for coffee in New York–was “What do you think about the idea of a black woman playing this part?” and I told her that quite frankly, I didn’t care about the color of the skin. The reason why I thought she was right from the part is that Audrey was written for a woman who closes down and freezes her emotions. I was concerned that with the wrong actress, you might perceive her as cold. With Halle, she has so much warmth and passion in her that you would always understand that she was covering up her grief and not simply being cold.
One striking thing about the film is that, unlike many American films, the central conflicts are not neatly resolved by the time the end credits begin rolling. Yes, it appears that Audrey has finally begun to emerge from her shell and that Jerry may have finally cleaned up for good but in both cases, especially in regards to Jerry, there is the sense that this resolve is more fragile than meets the eye and that it could all fall apart again in an instant.
That’s right, but the film is about redemption and overcoming grief. At the point that the movie ends, it is the first time in the movie that he has a deep desire to get out of what he has been caught in. He has moved on but obviously his sobriety is fragile and that is the way it is supposed to be. The movie leaves you with a lot of hope but it doesn’t promise you anything.
The movie doesn’t not completely unfold in a linear manner–there are many points where we flash back to see Steven, who is already dead at the beginning of the film, and his relationships with Audrey and Jerry. Did this structure already exist in the screenplay or did it develop later on?
That was done in the editing–the script was linear and we did all that in the editing. We felt that in the original version, you were waiting for the first half-hour for something to happening and it began to annoy you. Also, David Duchovny’s character just seemed to disappear–he was very prevalent in the opening and then he was gone–there was an imbalance that felt wrong. We tried it this way and we really liked the way it felt–because of the notion that they were in grief right from the beginning, it makes us in the audience closer to them right from the start because of their loss. It gives you an access to them that you wouldn’t have had otherwise.
We talked earlier about your experiences of making a film within the Hollywood studio structure for the first time. Along those lines, what has the process of selling a film within that same structure being like for you?
It has been so positive. People have been acting very emotionally and feeling very positive towards it. It has been quite overwhelming. I am kind of wondering whether Americans are more spontaneous and grateful than other people in the world.
link directly to this feature at http://hollywoodbitchslap.com/feature.php?feature=2289
originally posted: 10/20/07 12:17:26
last updated: 10/20/07 16:14:13
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