The 2023 film, 'All of Us Strangers' enchanted festival enthusiasts. However, the absence of an Oscar nomination posed a separate challenge. Now, let's take a closer look at this film that has garnered critics' acclaim, raced from one award to another, and secured a special place in the hearts of moviegoers. 👇
Adam (Andrew Scott) is a solitary television scriptwriter living an isolated life in London. Despite initially hesitating to invite his drunk neighbor Harry (Paul Mescal) into his home, Adam eventually gives in to Harry's persistence. As their relationship progresses, they navigate through various events and embark on a life together. However, Adam is eventually confronted with Harry's death, forcing him to sever ties with his reality. Throughout this process, the ghosts of his family guide him. After accepting Harry's death, Adam embraces his spirit, and they peacefully fall asleep together, lost in a beam of light accompanied by music as the screen fades to black.
The film initially focuses on Adam's face reflected in the windows of the flat in the twilight of London. Adam immerses himself in the music of his childhood and sifts through a box of family treasures connecting him to the distant past. However, he appears detached – in the echoing, neat but cold apartment, almost empty in a Ballardian tower block, emphasizing his loneliness.
During a research visit for a script Adam is writing, he goes to his childhood home in the suburbs of Dorking. There, he encounters his deceased parents (Claire Foy and Jamie Bell), who remain unchanged, unaged, exactly as they were 30 years ago when they died. Scott balances the film's supernatural elements with emotional equilibrium, and the entire cast complements him in this harmony.
Time doesn't necessarily heal all wounds. Instead, it makes them deeper and more debilitating. Adam can't rewrite the moment his parents were killed in a car accident. However, he can recognize them not as a bullied and beaten child but as an adult gay man.
The 2023 film is not the first adaptation of the book; the initial one was Nobuhiko Obayashi's 'The Discarnates' in 1988. However, Haigh has left his mark on the story.
There are clues in this film that connect director Haigh to his previous works: it establishes a link with his second feature, the gay romance 'Weekend.' It also shares the sense of a window to the past and the cyclical nature of time, disrupting lives with the discovery of a lost lover's body preserved in ice, as seen in '45 Years.'
We believe that watching the film once is not enough to fully grasp it. The complexity of Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch's composed music harmoniously strengthens the film's meaning. The mastery of Jonathan Alberts' seamless editing subtly guides us through parallel timelines and simultaneous moments in Adam's life within a cityscape. In essence, we can say the film's success is a collaborative effort.