Written and directed by Andrew Haigh
Our parents play a special role in how we come to terms with who we are. If not actively shaping our self-identity, their validation or lack thereof can make or break you, and for better or worse, the effects spread through time like rings in the water. But what if you never got to share an essential part of yourself with your parents? Can you reconcile with it, and be whole without knowing what they thought?
With All Of Us Strangers, Andrew Haigh looks to answer. Andrew Scott is Adam, a writer for the movies (and television when he has to) and his latest project is of a personal nature. He’s writing about his youth, himself, and his parents, and he’s hoping that if he can get his conflicted feelings down in black and white, it will somehow straighten out the knots his heart is in.
He’s stuck (long stares at an empty word document, sad gorging on cookies in front of the TV, depressing fridge contents) so he takes a train outside the city to where he grew up. Here he finds his parents still alive as he knew them at age 12. They invite him in, eager to catch up. Time to exorcise some demons.
Adam’s story is an act of intense wish fulfillment, and honestly, a writer’s idea of therapy. He gets to sit down the two biggest missing pieces in his life and play out the conversations he’s mulled over in his head ever since he lost them. Complete control, no chance of wobbling since there’s no opposite party, and the resolutions are already drawn up, because we of course want our deepest wishes fulfilled.
All Of Us Strangers is emotional stuff, and if you leave your seat completely unmoved, I think you can be declared legally dead. Our inner child’s desperate wish for our parents’ acceptance cannot be brushed aside, and Adam’s working through it with his parents is wrenching. Haigh does pour it on however, and his movie is like a river running straight towards the ocean. Predictable, with no drops, no hidden bends. Just a steadily increasing current that sweeps you out to where you no longer touch the ground. Long before the credits roll, it has turned into a very sentimental affair bordering on melodramatic.
I’d understand if All Of Us Strangers reduces you to a puddle, though, because the handiwork is unassailable, from performances to the artists hiding below the line.
Andrew Scott is a sensation, his eyes brimming with a want familiar to anyone who’s ever felt less than with no way to rebuild. Paul Mescal plays a modern twist on the manic pixie girl archetype (I guess that makes him a manic pixie boy) as Harry, a younger, more extroverted neighbor who promises a way back into society for Adam. Harry and Adam are two sad-eyed, but kind and caring boys at heart. You want to pick them up like dolls, make them smooch, and declare their happy ever after ending.
Jamie Ramsay’s camerawork puts them both in a place to shine, and it’s a cinematography of intense sensitivity. There’s only enough focus for one face, one object, one place at a time, and the thing being filmed is often only a few inches from the lens. When Harry and Adam share a screen, there’s left room for nothing else. If their faces were windows, they’d both be misted up with the other’s breath. Ramsay has redefined what we understand by intimate framing.
Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch’s score uses Adam’s heartstrings for an instrument, setting All Of Us Strangers to fractured, but not unpleasant melodies. They’re not symphonic, and make for the perfect accompaniment to a story about a man full of wistful thoughts working to put himself together.
All these elements come together so well, and the want of having our parents know us as we truly are is potent stuff, so it doesn’t need much massaging before the corners of your eyes glisten. Haigh wants to wring every drop from you, though, doubling-down on the same punchlines, and ultimately seems to care a little too much about his characters. A little distance to it all would’ve done everyone good.
Mikkel Frederiksen 