All of Us Strangers confronts us with a stomach-churning reminder of our familial relationships and past sorrows. British Filmmaker Andrew Haigh greets us with a soul-submerging film in which grief, family and queer acceptance enacts a knotting impression that sat within my chest long after the film drew to a close.
Adam (Andrew Scott) lives in a new, almost unoccupied apartment complex in London where he spends his days in isolation attempting to write a script relating to his childhood in the 1980s. One night, a drunk Harry (Paul Mescal) arrives on his doorstep, and their relationship blossoms as Harry helps Adam with his ceaseless grief over the loss of his parents. An unnerving and eerie atmosphere is kindled when Adam journeys back to hischildhood home and is greeted at the door by his parents, who appear just as they were before their passing in the 80s.
Grief can leave one with a hollowed-out heart; I know this first hand. It is not always about the initial shock that accompanies the loss of someone, but rather the prolonged sorrow that stews tightly in your chest. For me, Haigh manages to encapsulate this feeling of lingering grief excellently and highlights how the mundane can act as a constant reminder of one’s loss. He takes us on both a physical and metaphorical journey with Adam in which he attempts to heal his inner self and process his grief through confronting conversations left unsaid, most notably coming out to his parents, resulting in an idealised construction of their responses. Scott, praised for his ability to sadden a soul with a singular glance, delivers a heart panging performance as we witness the tail-end of Adam’s mental descent into a sunken depression, in which he implores unhealthy coping mechanisms to deal with his loss.
Haigh depicts the fears and pains of a generation of queer people who grew up surrounded and confronted by the AIDs crisis, hypermasculinity and rampant homophobia. He places this in direct contrast to some of the experiences of the modern-day young man, represented by Mescal. Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s ‘The Power of Love’ and The Pet Shop Boy’s ‘Always on My Mind’ both reoccur throughout the film score, adding to that nostalgic queer 80s atmosphere and acting as a mirror for Adam’s emotional journey. The constant re-runs of old Top of The Pops episodes coupled with Mescal’s hybrid 80s and modern-day appearance continues to blur these lines between the past and present for Adam. This constant haze leaves Adam confronting his grief at every turn and ultimately passing off one grief surrogate for another.
Haigh’s film gifts us a confrontation of loss and mental strife that leaves us hoping that we too can keep the vampires of grief from our door.
“Paul mescal 2022 2” by Quinzaine des Réalisateurs is licensed under CC BY 3.0.