By Stephen Hunter
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 19, 2007

Grief, as we all know, sucks. Painful, harsh, endless, spiritually debilitating, it reduces us to almost nothingness. But sooner or later, we find a use for it, or we die. Two of the films opening today, "Things We Lost in the Fire" and "Reservation Road," examine the uses of grief by people in otherwise prosperous circumstances, though each finds a different usage.

To take the less convincing first, "Things We Lost in the Fire" seems like a rebuke to an old bromide, the one that holds that "Women mourn, men replace." It's about a woman replacing.

The woman, Audrey Burke (played brilliantly by Halle Berry), seems to have it all: her husband, Brian (David Duchovny), is a successful Seattle developer and they live in a big house with a pool and two beautiful kids, amid a tribe of loving friends and family. It all ends when a police car pulls up the long drive with the tragic news that Brian has been murdered in a random street incident.

As preparations for a funeral ensue, Audrey discovers that her husband had a secret "best friend," a down-and-out lawyer living on skid row and dealing with terrible addiction problems. She sends her brother down there to pick up Jerry Sunborne (Benicio Del Toro), a twitchy, tormented user, living in a seedy one-room apartment in a faded hotel. His hair is greasy, his suit a mess, he wears a cigarette behind his ear, and when he smokes, it looks as if he draws the full nicotine charge through every single breath.

All this is real and hard, as dramatized by the filmmaker Susanne Bier, a Dane making an American debut after her success with the film "After the Wedding."

But at a certain point, "Things We Lost in the Fire" veers away from the real and hard and toward the fantastic. It continues to chronicle how all the traumatized survivors of Brian's tragedy decide to cope by inserting Jerry in Brian's place. So in a kind of spontaneous effort they seek to reclaim Jerry from the walking dead. Audrey offers him a spare room (thankfully, no sex is involved, although at times the movie plays with that suggestion). Brian's two beautiful kids bond with the chain-smoking ne'er-do-well and start asking him for parental wisdom. Brian's partner (affable John Carroll Lynch) helps get Jerry through a real estate lender's test as prelim to taking him into the company. Even Kelly, a fellow addict in recovery played by the impossibly pretty Alison Lohman, pitches in to help the unsavory and unreliable Jerry.

In fact, the movie could be called "Let's All Help Jerry," and am I the only one who thinks, "You know, I don't really give a damn about Jerry"? My movie would be "Let's All Mourn Brian a Lot Longer."

Del Toro will probably get an Oscar nod for his Jerry, because his portrayal is so full of Oscar moments, including a cold-turkey bit, though it does pass on other familiars, including "the Death of the Doggy." He rumbles and shivers and screeches and bangs his head on the wall and takes a shower in his clothes. I never believed a second of it.

"Reservation Road" is smaller in scale and budget and magnitude of star. That should make it a lot better but only makes it a little better. It's undone by the hamminess of its melodramatic contrivance. Again, it begins with people in prosperous, idealized circumstances, watches as tragedy strikes, then works out the ramifications.

The setting is equally upscale Connecticut. There, in idyllic circumstances, the Learners live; he's a college professor, earnest and handsome (Joaquin Phoenix behind a beard and a slightly fleshed-out face); she (Jennifer Connelly) is a super mom. They have two super kids, musically gifted. After a cello recital, the family stops at a picturesque country gas station and little Josh (Sean Curley) wanders to the roadside.

Who should be coming along but disorganized divorced lawyer Dwight Arno (Mark Ruffalo) with his 12-year-old son, Lucas (Eddie Alderson); late and rushing and sloppily dividing his attention among boy, road and cellphone, Dwight is not at all ready for what happens next. Another car falters, Dwight turns quickly to avoid hitting it and instead hits and immediately kills Josh. Realizing that this accident will probably result in his losing even partial custody of his son, he panics and flees.

The director, Terry George of "Hotel Rwanda" fame, evokes this terrible evening and the terrible pain that follows with great clarity. But the movie soon veers toward thriller junk. The cops can't find the hit-and-run driver, so Ethan Learner (Phoenix) begins his own search. He also hires a lawyer who by contrivance too cute to be taken seriously turns out to be Dwight. Ruffalo is so squirrelly in the role that he seems like a dead giveaway from the start.

But give "Reservation Road" some props for a few of its touches; it's the first movie to address the Googlization of America, by which software program Ethan is absorbed into and educated by the culture of parents of hit-and-run victims, even as he withdraws from his wife and begins his hunt. And the film doesn't end up in macho posturing. No warrior chest-thumping here.

Things We Lost in the Fire (120 minutes, at area theaters) is rated R for drug usage and profanity.

Reservation Road (102 minutes, at area theaters) is rated R for profanity and violence.