 |
| Writer/director Andrew Haigh |
 |
| Paul Mescal and Andrew Scott |
 |
| Haigh on the set with Paul Mescal |
 |
| Haigh with cinematographer Jamie D. Ramsay |
ALL OF US STRANGERS A Great Britain USA (105 mi) 2023 ‘Scope d: Andrew Haigh
Little things I should have said and done, I never took the time. —Always On My Mind, The Pet Shop Boys, 1987
British-born writer/director Andrew Haigh, creator of Weekend (2011), 45 Years (2016), and Lean On Pete (2017), has crafted his most mature and compelling work, a haunting meditation on loneliness that offers more than a few surprises, emotionally raw and deeply connecting, expressing a unique vulnerability that is brilliantly told, feeling very grown up, where nothing else like it comes to mind, as it really establishes its own unorthodox path, where the reflective originality is literally off the charts without using any cinematic trickery. What truly stands out is just how achingly personal it is, where every single moment feels heartfelt, and the title tells all, poetically revealing how we all revolve around each other’s lives, like planets in alignment, reminiscent of that spectacular opening sequence in Béla Tarr’s WERCKMEISTER HARMONIES (2000), Werckmeister Harmonies (Opening Scene - GR-EN sub) YouTube (10:12). The degree of complexity in this film is surprising, as it starts out simple enough, with nothing out of the ordinary, where the realist aesthetic becomes ingrained with viewers, setting the tone for what follows, providing the building blocks of an intense theatrical exploration of memory and identity, loosely adapting Taichi Yamada’s 1987 Tokyo-based novel Strangers, the first recipient of the Yamamoto Shūgorō Prize, changing the central character to a gay man with the blessing of Yamada (who died recently at the age of 89) and his family, who were incredibly respectful of Haigh’s vision of finding hope in dark places. At the center of the story is Irish actor Andrew Scott as Adam, a reclusive writer working on a story that has to do with his past and his deceased parents, currently living alone on the 27th floor of a block high-rise building with a panoramic view of the London landscape below, where the clouds on the horizon offer a contemplative vantage point, recalling Sofia Coppola’s far-reaching hotel room vista in Lost in Translation (2002), or the quiet perch in Spike Jonze’s futuristic Her (2013), where the window in each case is a barrier to the world outside. Despite the massive size of what appears to be a new building, it is strangely deserted, where it comes as a surprise that he is the only one exiting during a fire drill, an incident that allows Adam to spot his only neighbor in a window, Harry (Paul Mescal from 2023 Top Ten List #7 Aftersun), who pays him a visit afterwards in an excessively awkward flirtatious gesture that reveals his off-putting drunken state, with a half-empty bottle of Japanese whisky in his hands, ALL OF US STRANGERS | “Do I Scare You” Clip | Searchlight Pictures YouTube (54 seconds). He’s younger and more gregarious, but Adam declines the invitation, as he’s largely a solitary figure, but has second thoughts afterwards, believing there’s something there, and a short time later the two reconnect as gay lovers, where the awkwardness of an initial sexual encounter is everpresent, yet there’s also a heartfelt connection that bonds them together, some of which comes from sharing the difficulties they each encountered from the realization they were gay. Both are estranged from their families and share the same feeling of alienation and not belonging, with Adam confessing he lost his parents in a car crash thirty years earlier just before he turned twelve years old, with Harry sensing that kind of pain never goes away, leaving Adam suddenly flooded by memories of his past, while Harry is himself trapped by his own struggles with drugs and alcohol. Rising to the surface are grief and loss, with elements of warmth, melancholy, loneliness, and sorrow, opening a dialogue between the past and the present, something that was previously explored in Céline Sciamma’s Petite Maman (2021), or more recently Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron (Kimitachi wa dô ikiru ka) (2023). But this is something different altogether, a profoundly moving experience that may leave some emotionally shattered, becoming a deeply philosophical Proustian essay on the power of love and the power of remembrance.
Andrew Haigh films are known for being quiet, intimate, well-acted, and intensely real, where the root of them all is an emotional honesty expressed with extraordinary tenderness, where his eloquent use of music and camera movement feels effortlessly fluid and graceful, a bit like Xavier Dolan, luring us into an emotionally devastating fictional world that viewers are suddenly thrust into, as if we’re living it ourselves. Premiering at the Telluride Film Festival, this is another LGBTQ story with a surreal aspect to it, bearing some resemblance to Enys Men (2022), as each is a brilliantly original exposé on loneliness, but things are expressed quite differently, conveyed largely through conversations, with regular bursts of humor in highlighting the absurdities of the situation, where it’s such a deeply personal and imaginative vision that it takes us places where we’ve never been, much of it stemming from the unique architectural blueprint from the Yamada novel. While stuck on a page that simply reads “External, suburban house, 1987,” this film leaves audiences continually off-balance, as we question what we’re seeing, wondering just what to make of it all, taking place in a netherworld of memory and the imagination, where there’s a textured, indelible sense of pathos running through the entire film, which feels more like a metaphysical experience. The overall weirdness may not work for everyone, but this is a director at the height of his powers pressing the artistic boundaries in pursuit of something completely different, where it’s a bit of a challenge to keep up with the dizzying turns in the road, but the place he takes us is something to be cherished. Some twenty or thirty minutes into the film, Haigh pulls the rug out from underneath us, leaving us floating on air in a state of suspended incomprehension and disbelief, where it doesn’t matter if it defies all rational logic, as he instead creates an immensely satisfying alternative universe, with no explanation, and simply leaves us there to fend for ourselves. While off on a long walk, Adam encounters a strange man (Jamie Bell) and follows him into the suburban neighborhood of Croydon, where we thoroughly expect an anonymous sexual encounter, but once they get to the door, the man happily introduces Adam to his wife (Claire Foy from 2023 Top Ten List #1 Women Talking), only to discover they affectionately call him their son, someone they haven’t seen in a long while, which is an alarming development, ALL OF US STRANGERS | “Hi” Clip | Searchlight Pictures YouTube (30 seconds). Viewers are quick to think they may be stepparents, or foster parents, yet the strange thing is there appears to be little difference in their age as they immediately rehash childhood memories, which are in no way idealized or romanticized, but presented matter-of-factly, exposing the obvious discomfort that generation either failed to recognize or ignored. As mind-blowing as this seems, blurring the boundaries of reality, they’re actually picking up their relationship where it left off decades earlier (“Is this real?” he asks), having conversations with his parents that he never got to have, where they all seem perfectly comfortable with the visit afterwards, as if it was a cathartic experience, which only elevates the emotional authenticity of the reconnection, a very unusual way to tackle the haunting memories of grief and death, like traveling through an invisible portal. In this ghost story, however, Haigh leaves out any horror or supernatural elements, and rather than being about the dead, it’s about the living communing with the dead, tapping into feelings people didn’t know they had. In a subsequent visit with just his mother at home, ALL OF US STRANGERS | “You Were Just A Boy” Clip | Searchlight Pictures YouTube (2:00), Adam confesses he is openly gay, which hits her like a ton of bricks, not really bringing herself to believe what she hears, as it’s not what she ever envisioned, yet this is the moment every gay kid has with their parents, and it’s completely relatable.
One of the unlocking keys to the film is viewing the album cover of Welcome to the Pleasuredome by Frankie Goes to Hollywood, a pivotal 1980’s album that exploded onto the music scene in a wave of controversy, where the blatant sexuality was groundbreaking, dangerous, and exciting, along with its immersion into gay culture during the AIDS epidemic of the 80’s which took so many innocent young lives. This film is caught in a time warp, carrying the distinct experience of a specific generation of gay people growing up in the 80’s, battered by the relentless homophobia of the Reagan and Thatcher era where they were meant to feel ashamed and abandoned, as no one cared, where it’s not nostalgia, which can often hide the truth, but the burden of alienation and self-loathing still carried around by generations of grown-up gay children who have been traumatized from the harm done by an unsympathetic mainstream that was not inclined to question or reshape the world around them but simply accept the status quo. Moving away from the traditional ghost story of the novel, Haigh creates something more psychological and distinctly metaphysical that is intentionally abstract in its revelations. While the film takes place in a contemporary setting, the sequences when Adam returns to his childhood home to see his parents returns us to a 1980’s version of their world, where time has literally stopped, which has the effect of stepping into a dream, or a hazy, nostalgia-induced memory, where one of the more haunting sequences is a Christmas they spend together, with his mom humming along to an old Elvis tune as they decorate the tree, yet the cover version heard on TV with a gay lead singer has a completely different, more heartbreaking connotation for Adam, Pet Shop Boys - Always on my mind (Official Video) [4k Upgrade] YouTube (5:12). In order to accentuate the realism and deep personal connection, these scenes were actually shot in Haigh’s childhood home, beautifully expressed on 35mm by cinematographer Jamie D. Ramsay, with rich colors and evocative lighting, exacerbating a feeling of being out of time, or in spaces inhabited only by the mind, while the eerie, mind-altering electronic musical score was conceived by Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch. Haigh explores the complexities of both familial and romantic love, with Harry and Adam, in a moment of joyous abandon, heading out into the world together as a couple, where one of the film’s memorable sequences takes place in a nightclub, shot on location at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, an iconic queer London institution which is entrenched with local history and culture, where the neon-lit color scheme immerses viewers in the richness of a drug-induced experience, ALL OF US STRANGERS | “Will You Look After Me?” Clip | Searchlight Pictures YouTube (55 seconds), which is a dizzying and terrifying turn, set to the music of Blur’s Death of a Party (2012 Remaster) - YouTube (4:33), where their loneliness mirrors one other, two men adrift, lost souls brought into each other’s lives, trapped by invisible scars that continue to inhibit their ability to connect with others. Easily one of the more original and important films seen in a while, as it speaks to something that simply isn’t being told elsewhere. There are wow moments in this film, achieved through exquisite writing and tender emotional restraint, where some of the most stunning moments come from quietly intimate deliveries, where the vast majority of the film’s complexities rest firmly on the shoulders of Adam, where much of the emotional punch comes from the tender, heart-wrenching, and healing bond between Adam and his parents, leading to one of the more powerful finales in recent memory, exemplified by a moment of infinite beauty and the majestic quality of Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Frankie Goes To Hollywood - The Power Of Love - Remastered - 4K - 5.1 Surround YouTube (5:05), suggesting that more than anything our lives revolve around the transcendent importance of relationships and the power of love.
Andrew Haigh Answers All of My Burning Questions About ' ... engaging Evan Ross Katz interview from Shut Up Evan, November 7, 2023
