All of Us Strangers (2023)
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All of Us Strangers Movie Review
All of Us Strangers is a 2023 British romantic fantasy directed by Andrew Haigh and starring Andrew Scott. It is an outstanding and incredibly affecting movie.
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“I suppose we don’t get to decide when it ends“
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A screenwriter drawn back to his childhood home enters into a fledgling relationship with a mysterious neighbor as he then discovers his parents appear to be living just as they were on the day they died, 30 years before. This is obviously a deeply personal film from writer-director Andrew Haigh, a filmmaker who has always had a knack at dealing with human relationships, romantic or otherwise. Although he’s made a couple of stellar movies before, this is by far his magnum opus.
You’d think that somebody had already done this type of simple, universal premise before, but my mind is blanking when I try to remember one such previous effort. Thus, All of Us Strangers is a very original story about a man who gets to meet his dead parents all through his mind. This is a deceptively simple story that becomes quite complex toward its end as it piles a couple of twists and turns in its devastating, unexpected ending.
You can take this movie literally, meaning that it’s a fantasy where he does get to meet his dead parents for a while. You can also understand it as a story about a man who’s already dead and is in some sort of purgatory. But obviously the most accurate interpretation would be that the entire plot was fabricated by his deeply damaged mind as not just his parents, but also his romantic relationship with his neighbor are just his projections.
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That last interpretation makes the movie utterly disturbing and heartbreaking. It’s a cautionary tale that living in the past is never a good option and that unresolved traumas can linger inside you and leave you vulnerable to a life of loneliness and despondence. It’s a powerful take on grief that is unlike any other as it feels intimate, authentic and unabashedly honest. As somebody who’s experienced the loss of a parent quite recently, I deeply related to this movie’s accurate depiction of the profound feeling of heartache and absence that leaves a mark on your soul forever and changes you into a different person.
All of Us Strangers has a strong dual narrative as it also deals with the gay experience. The collective trauma is a made-up term in regards to people experiencing it based on the suffering of their ancestors, but it’s very much a real thing when you yourself have experienced it as was the case with Adam, the film’s protagonist. There is a touching moment in the film that hints at the AIDS epidemic and how it negatively impacted his love life with paranoia. Every gay man who’s lived through this period has experienced the issues of homophobia and fear of disease and the movie was quite effective at untangling this complicated state of existence.
The scenes with his potential new boyfriend were quite romantic and sweet, but it is the parents storyline that is the core of the movie as this is where the deepest sequences can be found. The final goodbye sequence was so incredibly sad that it made me tear up. There is so much authenticity to be found in the dialogue in those sections as he would speak to his parents about their unresolved issues from the past as well as how he thinks they would react to his current life and him being gay etc. Every single line of dialogue was realistic and poignant.
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All of Us Strangers is a character study, so it wouldn’t have worked nearly as well as it did had it not been for the amazing central performance from Andrew Scott. He has always been an underrated actor, but this work should propel his career much further as he’s absolutely incredible. This is by far the best male acting performance of the year, one that showed so much range from Scott. Just in his eyes you can see so much sadness and longing, but the highlight for me was his acting in the scenes where he meets his parents as he turns to the childlike wonder and vulnerability in his facial expressions that were downright astonishing to witness. This is a very slow, meditative and minimalist film that relies heavily on Scott’s performance to carry it through the finish line, which is exactly what he did.
The film truly gets the potent feelings of nostalgia and longing that we have when we go back to our hometowns. I deeply related to the protagonist and his struggles and I found that tone of melancholy and otherworldliness wholly unique. It’s both beautiful and disturbing. As for the other members of this ensemble, they all did a great job – Paul Mescal is pretty good as the love interest Harry, Claire Foy is wonderful as the mother and the standout is Jamie Bell as Adam’s father in one of the best and most powerful supporting performances of the year.
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Andrew Haigh’s directing was top-notch. Couple that with superb editing and fittingly surreal cinematography and you’ve got a cinematic film that transcended its budgetary constraints with style. It’s a slow film, but one that is still engaging as the dialogue is stupendous and the emotions raw and very much earned. I would have personally gone with an even more ambiguous ending, but the one that we got was still quite great. It’s a fantasy movie rooted in reality in the best ways possible.
Having a uniquely melancholic, otherworldly tone that is simultaneously beautiful and disturbing, All of Us Strangers is a very original fantasy romance that has a deceptively simple, but complex and powerful story that functions as a cautionary tale about the dangers of being overcome by grief. This will be a deeply relatable movie to anyone who has ever lost a parent, but it’s also universal in its deeply resonant depiction of sadness, longing and despondence. Andrew Haigh’s directing is powerfully intimate while Andrew Scott’s performance was incredible to witness. This is a very minimalist film in dialogue and characterization, one that relied heavily on its main actor to carry it through the finish line, which is exactly what Scott did, delivering the best male performance of the entire year in the process. A fantasy rooted in reality, All of Us Strangers has the power to make you cry and think and for me it’s one the best movies of the year.
My Rating – 5
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