All of Us Strangers ***** (2023, Andrew Scott, Paul Mescal, Claire Foy, Jamie Bell) – Classic Movie Review 12,755

Andrew Scott stars in the 2023 British film All of Us Strangers. He calls it ‘One of the saddest, most beautiful films you’ll ever see’. And it’s hard to disagree.

Ah, yes, the power of love. Writer/ director Andrew Haigh’s 2023 British film All of Us Strangers is a uniquely upsetting, emotionally devastating journey into past pain and loss, and present loneliness and despair, and the desperate need for love and a path to carry on life’s troubled journey. I should quickly add, it’s spiritually uplifting too, desperately sad and quite beautiful.

Andrew Scott plays gay screenwriter Adam, living alone in a near-empty new tower block in London. One night, he encounters mysterious queer neighbour Harry (Paul Mescal) when the building’s fire alarm goes off. Adam hasn’t found love in his life, apart from his parents, but a promising, caring relationship suddenly starts to develop between the two men.

Yet Adam is overwhelmed by his memories and is somehow drawn back to his suburban childhood home where his mother and father (Claire Foy and Jamie Bell) appear still to be living, just as they were before they died in a car crash, 30 years before. In his mind, he takes regular train journeys back home, and reconnects with them, explaining his life and revealing his true self to them.

Andrew Scott’s performance as a gay man who has shut himself down emotionally to survive is an agonising tour-de-force. It is difficult material, but he knows how to be fascinating, using mainly his hypnotic eyes. Paul Mescal, Claire Foy and Jamie Bell are really good in support, but its Scott’s show, oh and Haigh’s too of course. Haigh knows how to make the difficult material work, and somehow make it work quite magically.

It is freely adapted from the 1987 novel Strangers by Taichi Yamada, which previously inspired the 1988 film The Discarnates [Ijin-tachi to no natsu]. Haigh’s screenplay summons up the ghosts of the Eighties, putting a gay and highly personal spin across the novel. Actually, more than that, he transforms it into a personal statement.

It comes from Andrew Haigh, the director of Weekend, 45 Years, and Lean on Pete. All three are brilliant, but All of Us Strangers is on yet another level, a ghost film maybe, but still quite hard to handle. It is easy to be in tears at the end. Andrew Scott calls it ‘One of the saddest, most beautiful films you’ll ever see’. And it’s hard to disagree.

Scott has stated: ‘Mercifully, these days people don’t see being gay as a character flaw. But nor is it a virtue, like kindness. Or a talent, like playing the banjo. It’s just a fact. Of course, it’s part of my make-up, but I don’t want to trade on it.’

I ought to mention the imaginative cinematography by Jamie D Ramsay, with its colour experiments and exciting compositions, the sharply careful editing by Jonathan Alberts, the eerie score by Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch, and the Eighties soundtrack, which ends with British band Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s 1984 UK  Number One song The Power of Love, and brings us back to where we started here.

Holly Johnson, who co-wrote the song, recalled: ‘I always felt like The Power of Love was the record that would save me in this life. There is a biblical aspect to its spirituality and passion; the fact that love is the only thing that matters in the end.’

Poignantly, Haigh’s childhood home is the location for Adam’s parents’ house. The nightclub sequences are shot at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, South London’s oldest surviving gay venue.

Haigh said adapting the novel was ‘a long and sometimes painful process’. He said: ‘I wanted to pick away at my own past as Adam does in the film. I was interested in exploring the complexities of both familial and romantic love, but also the distinct experience of a specific generation of gay people growing up in the Eighties. I wanted to move away from the traditional ghost story of the novel and find something more psychological, almost metaphysical.’

All of Us Strangers is an ‘indie’ movie, yet Disney own it!

It was originally to be released on Hulu in the US but Searchlight Pictures shifted the film to a cinema release on 22 December 2023 and in the UK on 26 January 2024.

The film won seven awards at the 2023 British Independent Film Awards, including Best Director and Best Screenplay, but not including Andrew Scott for Best Lead Performance. Paul Mescal did win for Best Supporting Performance, and, though intense and effective, he’s the least of the four principals (Claire Foy and Jamie Bell are award-winningly moving).

It earned six nominations at the BAFTA Awards, including Outstanding British Film, but not including Andrew Scott for Best Lead Performance. He was nominated as Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama at the Golden Globe Awards, but did not win.

Andrew Scott better win some awards, or there will be trouble. At least I can vote for him in the London Critics’ Circle awards.

It was announced on 20 December 2022 that All of Us Strangers and Oppenheimer lead nominations for the London Critics’ Circle Awards. Andrew Haigh’s drama All of Us Strangers leads the field with nine nominations, followed by Christopher Nolan’s epic biopic Oppenheimer with seven.

The 44th London Critics’ Circle Film Awards were voted for by the 210-member film section of the Critics’ Circle. All Of Us Strangers won the Attenborough Award for British/Irish film of the year, with star Andrew Scott named actor of the year and his co-star Paul Mescal named British/ Irish performer for his body of work in 2023.

© Derek Winnert 2023 – Classic Movie Review 12,755

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