Alone, together
Adam (Andrew Scott) is a gay screenwriter living in what appears to be an empty apartment complex in London. The plot of “All of Us Strangers” begins with a knock at his door. It’s Harry (Paul Mescal, memorable as always), the building’s only other resident. He’s tipsy, thanks to the half-empty bottle of booze in his fist. He’s also quite flirtatious, offering Adam a swig of his liquor and a bout of casual sex. Stunned, Adam declines and closes the door on him.
Director Andrew Haigh’s camera lingers on that closed door for a moment, allowing us to contemplate whether it will reopen. It doesn’t, and there’s a sense of regret on Adam’s part. Until the interruption, he’d been puttering around his apartment, putting off working on his latest screenplay. Loneliness hangs on his countenance, highlighted by the surreal glow emanating from his apartment windows and the oddness of living in a high-rise with only two residents.
A mild sense of unease permeates these early scenes, though it’s not due to Harry’s appearance. I thought that Adam closing the door on Harry felt more like an involuntary reflex than a thought-out decision. Growing up in the AIDS era has made Adam more cautious, a fact he will discuss with the much younger Harry once they meet again and start a halting and tender romance.
Meanwhile, Adam occasionally takes the bus to his childhood home to visit his parents, played by Jamie Bell and Claire Foy. These scenes are shot in Haigh’s own childhood home, the first sign the director is working through some of his own feelings and memories. I should mention that Adam lost his parents in a car accident when he was 12. So, when he visits them, they haven’t aged; he’s now older than they are.
Are Mum and Dad ghosts? Figments of Adam’s imagination brought about by the unresolved shock of losing his parents at such a young age? Is Adam dead, or in some kind of limbo? “All of Us Strangers” provides no answers, and the ambiguous ending is divisive enough to sink the film for some viewers. You
Writer-director Andrew Haigh’s ‘All of Us Strangers’ is a stunner featuring equally stunning performances
are on your own here, and it’s that freedom of interpretation and emotional response that makes the film so powerful and haunting.
Haigh’s screenplay is an adaptation of Taichi Yamada’s 1987 novel, “Strangers,” which was made into the horror film “The Discarnates” by Japanese director Nobuhiko Ôbayashi. Note the genre of that film. “All of Us Strangers” isn’t a horror movie in a conventional sense — or maybe not at all, depending on your take — but this is your warning that the film has the power to stun, even shock.
I’ve seen “The Discarnates,” which is as gloriously bonkers as Ôbayashi’s most famous movie, 1977’s ghost story “Hausu.” I’ve also read the English translation of the novel. So I walked into this movie with an idea of what I was going to see, which may have influenced my own interpretation.
What weighed far more heavily on my thought process, however, is Haigh’s decision to replace the novel’s heterosexual hero with a gay one. Though the central question “All of Us Strangers” asks is universal — that is, what would a second chance to talk to someone who died feel like? And what would you tell them? — the material lends itself to being viewed through a queer lens. Adam’s journey will resonate strongly with LGBTQ+ audiences. I saw it as a metaphor for the closet, a forced trauma we can escape but never forget.
Movies like Francis Ford Coppola’s “Peggy Sue Got Married” (1986) have addressed the notion of reconnecting with one’s past armed with knowledge obtained since then, but this is the first movie I can recall that does so from a gay perspective. For example, Adam never had the opportunity to come out to his parents. When he does, Mum reacts the way a Thatcher-era mother would.
Watch how Scott plays this scene with Foy. You can see Adam regress to his 12-year-old self. When Mum says she worries his life will be lonely, Adam snaps back to the reality of his current existence, which, despite his new love interest, shows his mother’s words have a sting of truth to them.
Scott is in almost every frame of this movie, and his work is Oscar-worthy. In his scenes with Foy and Bell (who are also excellent), he’s as joyous as he is melancholy. The conversations between Harry and Adam deftly navigate how different generations of gay men perceive themselves; they reminded me of the discussions between the lovers in Haigh’s “Weekend” (2011), another example of the director’s penchant for investigating the highs and lows of intimacy.
Additionally, Haigh’s staging of the first meeting between Adam and his father plays as if Adam were cruising him; at the time, we don’t know their familial connection. On my second viewing, I noticed the physical similarities between Harry and Adam’s father, which makes sense. Conventional wisdom says that a straight man would go for someone who reminds him of his mother, so why wouldn’t a gay man favor a reminder of his father?
Another scene between father and son, beautifully played by Bell and Scott, ripped my heart out. Adam’s father tells him he wishes he had gone into his room to comfort him when he heard his son crying after being bullied at school. He also tells Adam that, had they been classmates, he probably would’ve been one of those mean kids tormenting him.
When I attended a reception for this film that included Haigh, Scott, and Bell, I watched several of my gay colleagues approach Bell to tell him how that scene destroyed them. I told him that it got to me as well. Such is the power of “All of Us Strangers.” It’s simultaneously cathartic and heartbreaking.
Adam’s journey will resonate strongly with LGBTQ+ audiences. I saw it as a metaphor for the closet, a forced trauma we can escape but never forget.