"All of Us Strangers" - Film Review
We are introduced to Adam (Andrew Scott) through a reflection as he stares out of his apartment window at the warm glow of the sunrise. That slow, meditative feeling of longing is the essence of All of Us Strangers. Adam is a lonely screenwriter living in a nearly empty apartment building in London. His solitude is broken by his similarly lonely neighbor, Harry (Paul Mescal). After their first encounter, Adam returns to his childhood home in the suburbs and is invited to dinner by his parents (Jamie Bell & Claire Foy). On the surface, there’s nothing out of the ordinary with a son having dinner with his parents, but Adam’s parents have been dead for thirty years. Everything in their home is as it was the night they died, and Adam finds himself returning again and again to spend time with his somehow-still-here parents.
Writer/director Andrew Haigh has once again created a profoundly earnest and sentimental film about the inherent grief of being alive. All of Us Strangers is achingly lonely, but insistent that humans, at their core, don’t want to be lonely. Separating yourself from others creates a false sense of self-preservation that accelerates depression and doesn’t actually make a person safer. Cutting yourself off from the world does no one any good. It’s never easy and it’s never simple, but there is strength in vulnerability. It’s a theme Haigh returns to time and again, offering a new guide map for young men and a different take on masculinity. A softer, kinder, more tender version that values emotional strength, not physicality.
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The romance of All of Us Strangers provides for an interesting intersection of queer experiences. Even using “queer” in that sentence would raise an eyebrow from Adam, who mentions that he still feels uncomfortable using the word to describe himself. He grew up in the ’80s, through the AIDS crisis when “queer” was thrown around as an insult. It’s the same reason Harry is drawn to the word “gay.” That was the chosen insult of the early 2000s. These are two queer/gay men separated by twenty years. In the microcosm of their relationship, we see how much things have changed and how much they’ve stayed the same for LGBTQ+ people. It’s interesting to watch them talk about coming out or strained family relationships. They come from two vastly different worlds, yet they exist in this moment together.
Adam’s talks with his parents are cathartic. They’re moments he never got to have, and he’s stealing back the thirty years that were taken from him. Of course not every conversation is warm and rosy, like when he comes out to his mother, but he wants her to truly know him. Even if the responses aren’t always the ones he wants, there’s something freeing about the opportunity to ask these versions of his parents about the truth of his childhood. Parents aren’t perfect, but each conversation Adam has with them is an attempt to heal the pieces of his younger years he has tried to forget.
© 2023 SEARCHLIGHT PICTURES
All of Us Strangers is a ghost story, and as Mike Flanagan’s gorgeous Haunting of Bly Manor series taught us, all ghost stories are love stories. Haunting isn’t limited to spooky or sinister entities. A ghost can be a loved one who doesn’t loiter because they want to wreak havoc or ruin the lives of the living. A ghost can be a remnant of love, the lingering presence of a deep compassion for someone who is no longer with us. We can be haunted by our past in positive and negative ways. A ghost can ruin us, drive us to madness, and show the path forward. In the best way, All of Us Strangers is devastating. The sort of simple-on-paper film that packs an absolute emotional wallop, a true gift of a film.
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