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| Images courtesy of Searchlight Pictures |
When we last saw British writer-director Andrew Haigh he
followed the American midwestern traversing of newcomer Charlie Plummer in the
coming-of-age teen drama Lean on Pete released by A24 in 2017. Since then, the mostly gay themed filmmaker
has dabbled in television including but not limited to the BBC2 miniseries The
North Water. A busy filmworker who
recently participated in the 2022 Sight & Sound poll of favorite films is
now back in the director’s chair post-COVID with perhaps the film he has been
working towards his whole career: an English language adaptation of Taichi
Yamada’s 1987 novel Strangers.
Previously adapted by House director Nobuhiko
Obayashi in 1988 as the horror film The Discarnates, Haigh reimagines
the Japanese story in contemporary America as a continuation of the homoerotic
themes percolating in his earlier works while delivering perhaps his most
accomplished work grasping at untold artistic and emotional heights. Think of it like Martin Scorsese’s adaptation
of Shusaku Endo’s Silence or Lewis John Carlino’s take on Yukio
Mishima’s The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea. While the story may have had its genesis in
ghostly horror, Haigh’s imprint on the material guides us towards an entirely
different light altogether.
In a mostly empty tower block in London is loner gay
screenwriter Adam (Andrew Scott) who gets a knock on his door one morning from
mysterious but charming gay neighbor Harry (Paul Mescal of Aftersun) who
stops by with some alcohol wanting to perhaps initiate a relationship. As their bond develops, Adam finds himself
increasingly fixated on his past memories of his suburban hometown where he
grew up with his parents played by Jamie Bell and Claire Foy who have since
passed on due to a car accident. However,
upon stopping and visiting the childhood home, his parents appear to be still
alive just as they were thirty years prior on the day of their death. From here, the film moves away from gay
romance to an increasingly surreal existential crisis as Adam reckons with his
past and present demons.
Like a great concerto or a powerfully written novel, Haigh’s
transcendent, emotionally involved epic spoken of the same breath as The
Hours with the steadily disjointed narrative logic of The Father is
a profound reimagining of Taichi Yamada’s novel with bullet points of the
director’s own life infused within the subtext and order of events. As much of a modernist localized adaptation
of Japanese writing as it is a semi-autobiographical confessional for Haigh,
one of the most striking aspects of All of Us Strangers is how it keeps
the essence of the novel while expanding upon its initially intended
meanings. At a certain point, it
completely becomes Haigh’s own story despite being grounded in renowned Asian
literature. Though potential ghostly
aspects do ruminate in the story, Haigh approaches it like a memory imprisoned
by the throes of grief.
From its ethereal, mystical opening titles to its dynamic,
precisely composed 2.35:1 widescreen cinematography by Jamie D. Ramsay and its
radiating ambient score by Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch, to sit and watch All
of Us Strangers is like slowly being lulled into a state of consciousness
tangentially linked to reality but clearly of the mind. Loaded with stunning compositions and
carefully controlled camera movement, the look and sound of the film is almost
hyperkinetic at times. In contrast to Lean
on Pete which seemed to view everything from a distance, All of Us
Strangers gets up, close and personal with its subjects.
Speaking of subjects, the cast consisting of only four main
characters despite encountering many figures throughout the film give powerful,
heartfelt performances with particular attention going to the two leads Andrew
Scott and Paul Mescal who go the full distance in terms of sex and nudity
before running the full gamut of emotional weathers. Equally strong are his parents played by The
Crown actress Claire Foy and Billy Elliot actor Jamie Bell who
wrestle with the knowledge of their son coming out while also being a product
of either their son Adam’s imagination or something perhaps supernatural.
A film better experienced as an emotional and perhaps
spiritual storm, Andrew Haigh’s take on Yamada’s novel is maybe the
writer-director’s most personal expression to date. A film that uses the skeleton of Strangers
as a springboard for the filmmaker to excavate and divulge his own past as
maybe a form of self-actualization while also posing pressing questions about
existential loneliness, All of Us Strangers starts out as a niche
romance that gradually evolves into a tapestry of unexpected emotional expression. The kind of film that burrows and evokes a
reaction without being completely clear about it, the film joins debut
filmmaker Celine Song’s Past Lives as an examination of the kind of life
we might’ve had versus the lives we ultimately end up leading. One of the most quietly powerful films of the
year and unquestionably Haigh’s grand masterpiece.
--Andrew Kotwicki
