{"id":1534,"date":"2024-02-09T16:18:31","date_gmt":"2024-02-09T16:18:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.craigsilliphant.com\/?p=1534"},"modified":"2024-02-09T16:18:36","modified_gmt":"2024-02-09T16:18:36","slug":"all-of-us-strangers-movie-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.craigsilliphant.com\/index.php\/2024\/02\/09\/all-of-us-strangers-movie-review\/","title":{"rendered":"All of Us Strangers – Movie Review"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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I\u2019ve been a fan of English filmmaker Andrew Haigh since his HBO show, Looking<\/em>, as well as movies like 45<\/em>, Weekend<\/em>, and Lean on Pete<\/em>. With his new film, All of Us Strangers<\/em>, he\u2019s not only made his so-far career best film, but one of the best films of the year. (Technically it came out in America at the end of 2023, but it rolled out bigger and in the UK in 2024, so I\u2019m counting it as a 2024 release. It\u2019s still early in 2024, but it has set the bar high).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the film, Andrew Scott (Hot Priest from Fleabag<\/em>) plays Adam, a screenwriter who is writing about the 80s. He travels back to his childhood home for inspiration and is surprised to find his late parents there (Jamie Bell and Claire Foy). They died when he was a child, but they appear as they were back then, the house unchanged. He is, in fact, older now than they were then. Parallel to this, Adam meets Harry (Paul Mescal) and they start a romantic relationship, though Adam\u2019s experiences in life have left him guarded and alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The film is fairly low key; sometimes it feels like a play on screen (it was actually adapted from the 1987 novel, Strangers<\/em>, by Taichi Yamada, though with some liberal changes). Between the pacing and some of the well-chosen music, it has a tone of sadness and melancholy throughout. It\u2019s quiet and not flashy on the surface. However, it goes bone deep and there are some incredibly powerful moments. There is a scene where Adam\u2019s father, having just learned that that Adam is gay, remembers hearing him crying in his room as a child — but didn\u2019t try to comfort him. Now, as a ghost decades later, his regret at not being there for his son is lump-in-the-throat palpable, quietly devastating. It\u2019s not played for melodrama. It doesn\u2019t manipulate. It earns its emotions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Haigh\u2019s script is simply magnificent, the four main actors bring it to life. All four deliver powerful performances, but it\u2019s worth singling out Andrew Scott. I\u2019ve always liked him but he deserves every inch of praise you\u2019re hearing about his performance and more. In fact, there are moments in the script that could have easily felt too on-the-nose or cloying but Scott and his scene mates bring such striking humanity to their characters that it soars. Often with just a look of love or a wince of pain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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You can speculate as to whether these are ghosts or figments of Adam\u2019s imagination, or whether (as my wife theorized) we\u2019re inside his screenplay somehow. It\u2019s fun to ponder that, but ultimately — and brilliantly — it\u2019s beside the point. It\u2019s easy to argue that this is a sci-fi concept of sorts, and like sci-fi, the mechanism is interesting, but it serves to show us something deeper about ourselves, about humanity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The film explores these human truths, like grief and longing, like not being who you want to be in life, and about finding out that you can<\/em> allow yourself that freedom. I\u2019m sure this movie would hit like a ton of bricks if you had a gay experience growing up, or you were an orphan. But it\u2019s such a well-made, beautifully written film that you don\u2019t have to have those experiences to have the film touch something inside you, in the place where things like love and regret live.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I won\u2019t give away the ending but let me say that some people online felt it was a bummer. I can\u2019t criticize someone else\u2019s experience, but to me, they aren\u2019t looking deeply enough. While the same sadness that permeates the movie lingers at the ending, what he goes through opens Adam up to a new universe, which is about the most beautiful, uplifting, and human thing I can think of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I\u2019ve been a fan of English filmmaker Andrew Haigh since his HBO show, Looking, as well as movies like 45, Weekend, and Lean on Pete. With his new film, All…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1539,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,57],"tags":[224,225,226,69,230,59,78,227,231],"class_list":["post-1534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movies","category-writing","tag-all-of-us-strangers","tag-andrew-haigh","tag-andrew-scott","tag-craig-silliphant","tag-jamie-bell","tag-movie-review","tag-movies","tag-paul-mescal","tag-queer-cinema","article","has-excerpt","has-avatar","has-author","has-date","has-comment-count","has-category-meta","has-read-more","thumbnail-"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.craigsilliphant.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/strangers-3.webp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.craigsilliphant.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.craigsilliphant.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.craigsilliphant.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.craigsilliphant.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.craigsilliphant.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1534"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.craigsilliphant.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1534\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1540,"href":"https:\/\/www.craigsilliphant.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1534\/revisions\/1540"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.craigsilliphant.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.craigsilliphant.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.craigsilliphant.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.craigsilliphant.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}