All of Us Strangers Review: Devastatingly Relatable

All of Us Strangers assaults and comforts hearts. Haigh’s personal, tender contemplation on grief is emotionally layered and devastatingly relatable. 

With quiet but touching works such as Weekend and 45 Years, Andrew Haigh’s filmography is a simple tapestry but an emotionally penetrating one. His are unique works of a storyteller who understands how not to let his signature overcome the gravity and power of his stories. All of Us Strangers continues to paint on this wide canvas of longing, connection, and intimacy; how easy it is to get lost in ourselves and become strangers towards who we once were.

Should come as no surprise how Haigh and the 1987 Taichi Yamada novel Strangers feel so perfectly tailored for one another: an ineffably personal ghost story that so deeply encompasses the corrosive effect one’s own emotional repression becomes an unending abyss of regression, forcing us back into the comfort of a previous self, impeding us from getting to know ourselves and those who would connect with us.

Haigh’s adaptation is so tenderly poignant, even the slightest different could make for a tale that ultimately rings hollow, and misses a spark that otherwise shines bright in what he ends up delivering.

We begin one night as struggling screenwriter Adam (Andrew Scott) sleepwalks his way through his days his near-empty tower block in contemporary London, but upon a chance encounter with his mysterious neighbor Harry (Paul Mescal), the rhythm of his everyday life is punctured. As a drunken Harry makes his first move by knocking on Adam’s door, this rejected advance nevertheless awakes something deep within Adam and soon enough a flourishing romance allows both men to open up to each other in ways neither expected.

When Adam seeks a reprieve from this unexpected, but very real, connection; he retrieves back to Croydon, the place he grew up with his parents as a closeted tween in the 70s and 80s. A train journey we observe, as if he’s travelling to past through an ethereally lit portal, even without realizing. It’s by sitting in a park bench, reminiscing on childhood, as he attempts to figure out his intended screenplay about his life with his parents, that Adam bumps into his long-dead father (Jamie Bell), who casually leads Andrew back to his childhood home.

The door is opened by Adam’s similarly late mom (Claire Foy), who is expecting her son for dinner. Is it a dream? Is it Adam’s imagination as he sits paralyzed in front of his laptop? The pair knows they haven’t seen their son in more than 35 years and seem to be aware of why. Such a naturalistic take on a parental point of view grounds this fantastical storytelling approach, making All of Us Strangers all the more of a tearjerker, earning each moment as it dives deeper into Adam’s burgeoning relationship with Harry, which slowly begins to parallel the one he resurrects with his parents.

Thanks to Haigh’s gentle touch, the story is told with such a comforting warm light. Even the dream-like scenario is balanced by grounded conversations that allow Adam to bravely confront what he internalized for so many years, and never had the chance to confront his parents with before they were so cruelly taken from him. It movingly echoes Adam’s yearning to be known, that the film always feels rooted in his emotional present, even as he himself perpetually regresses to the reassuring comfort of his childhood self. The one his parents knew.

The specters of Adam’s past earnestly keep their parental instincts, and unavoidably bring about Adam’s raw desire to know them on a deeper level. Adam’s true self is revealed not so much by his actions, but by his words, which allow them to know him as he is now by way of fascinating conversation between the different eras: Haigh delicately untangles the tied up repression that connect Adam’s loneliness as a closeted tween to the self-imposed isolation he suffers as an adult.

One scene unveils Adam coming out to his dead parents in 1987, but Haigh’s moving helm appeases the difficulty of this admission through the fantasy of finally being able to make it. At the same time, there’s enough awkwardness in these exchanges by way of his parents’ ’80s centric worldviews, simultaneously lamenting the present as it does the past: Adam can assure his mom and dad that “Everything’s different now” but back home his growing bond with a heartsick Harry reminds him of how deep certain fissures can cut through a family bond.

Harry, Adam, and his parents are products of their time that nevertheless share a universally relatable fear of vulnerability. It’s this fear that has emotionally crippled Adam and continues to do so since that fateful day in 1987, which Haigh’s leverages to focus his story into a personal narrative about the consequences of holding in our pain. Eventually building to a rewarding catharsis as Adam finally begins to let someone in, both in his past and his present.

Haigh’s modest direction instantly creates an ethereal atmosphere as seen through how Adam and Harry exist as if they’re the last people on Earth. A fire that burns so bright, and is handled with such care, Adam’s entire world, the entire world, goes dark when Harry isn’t around. Scott carries all this weight with pain-filled gentle smile. One that sees a career best performance in his first lead film role. Search for a lifetime of unspoken words, ungiven hugs, and unshared moment in each subtle glance of his eyes. The nuanced fragility exposed with each frame is exquisitely crafted word, and one that demands your attention unwaveringly.

Claire Foy naturally exudes mom energy, creating a sense of comfort and warmth that washes over Adam. It’s never more apparent than when she confesses she never knew what Adam was thinking or why he would run away from home, with Haigh’s final touch in each key moments being the comfort reassurance that while she may not understand, she is regardlessly devoted to her son. She can always be the shoulder he cries on and the person he confides in.

Jamie Bell’s moustachioed cham is not to be understated. A performance filled with melancholia is all the more effective given the actor is almost ten years younger than Scott. The powerful vulnerability of a typical ’80s dad is exposed when Adam and his father finally shared what went for so long over the young closeted child’s head, what his young mind was afraid to ask and what his dad, indoctrinated by another generations ideal of masculinity and fatherhood, was so afraid to open up about.

Haigh discards shattering revelations and melodramatic hysteria when these characters all sit across from each other and compare notes, but the generous comprehension Adam shows to his dead parents is almost as profoundly beautiful as the generosity that he keeps for himself in return. It’s a less is more approach, which has rarely ever been more effective, and Haigh’s own generosity is evident, ensuring us as an audience are allowed to share our own hurt to the table, whatever form it might take.

In the myriad of emotional crescendos, particular lines standout such as Harry’s: “I know how easy it can be to stop caring about yourself.” An idea All of Us Strangers is all too aware of, clear from how we see Harry beginning to struggle with his own advice, who Paul Mescal plays with such grace; disguising a similar internalized pain with each glance, but one that is observable as looking towards a gaping wound in his heart. It’s in it of itself a reflection of Adam’s emotional repression holding him back into his own stifled emotions that he fails to see what others close to him may be struggling with.

The ethereal glowing cinematography allows us into Adam’s worldview. It’s an intimately powerful way to place us in his shoes — a position even Harry isn’t privy too for most of the film. We bask in the visual warm light of retreating back to a comfortable time where the harsh reality of life was hidden away by our parents’ mere presence. An unconditional love that shields us from what, for many, becomes everyday ways our hearts can be broken.

It’s a sense of bittersweetness that envelops the soul-shattering moments Haigh has to offer, beginning to end, and allows him to tap into something deeply transcendent: the importance of connection; with ourselves and the people around us, who we may never get to know if we forever hide beneath our pain.

ALL OF US STRANGERS assaults and comforts hearts. It is Andrew Haigh’s personal, tender contemplation on grief and the words not spoken, the hugs not given, the moments not shared. A melancholic cry out for connecting with ourselves and the strangers in our lives. Emotionally layered and devastatingly relatable.

FINAL GRADE: A+

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About All Of Us Strangers

From director Andrew Haigh.

One night in his near-empty tower block in contemporary London, Adam (Andrew Scott) has a chance encounter with a mysterious neighbor Harry (Paul Mescal), which punctures the rhythm of his everyday life. As a relationship develops between them, Adam is preoccupied with memories of the past and finds himself drawn back to the suburban town where he grew up, and the childhood home where his parents (Claire Foy and Jamie Bell), appear to be living, just as they were on the day they died, 30 years before.

All Of Us Strangers hits Theaters December 22nd
and played at the 2023 London Film Festival.