All Of Us Strangers is a drama with a tinge of supernatural elements based on the novel Strangers by Taichi Yamada, published in 1987. This is the second feature film adaptation of the book, the first was released in Japan in 1988, which is the country of the Author’s origin. The film is directed by Andrew Haigh and stars Andrew Scott, Paul Mescal, Jaimie Bell, Claire Foy and Carter John Grout. The story is about a gay screenwriter living in a London tower block, who is extremely secluded in part due to past traumas related to his sexuality and the death of his parents he never got to say goodbye to after they were torn from him in a tragic car crash. His grandmother would not let him see his mother as she lingered in the hospital two days following his father’s death at the accident site. Sometimes trying to shield others from trauma only serves to exasperate it.
One day Adam comes across a man named Harry, who after some awkward moments begins a relationship with him where they grow close. After taking ketamine one night at a club, Andrew comes across the house he grew up in and discovers not only are his parents still alive, but he is now back in the 1980s though his parents do not see him as the adult he has become per se. The movie is rather unclear though poignant so I took it more as a metaphor for healing from past experiences than a supernatural story even though the film kind of leans towards the more fantastic aspects yet has some leeway to view it in other ways.
Andrew Haigh really made the film more about himself in a sense complete with shooting the feature on location in the actual home he grew up in. I kind of had the impulse upon first learning this that it sounded a bit narcissistic, but I don’t know the guy so make of it what you will. I think a lot of people may relate to the core elements in the film and while it is a film about a homosexual man dealing with loss and alienation, I don’t think of it as a film about gay themes so much as I saw this film as a human story that was neither gender nor preference specific. It is a human drama carefully crafted with a subtle attention to detail without ever taking things to the more obvious territories that a film that features a kind of time travel might go, which is as far as I can go into this without spoiling it.
Through Movies Anywhere, I viewed the digital copy on iTunes and found it to be just fine. The picture was shot on film and the 4K presentation maintains the film look. It does not look over saturated or sharper than one might expect from a glossy Hollywood production. This is a personal film for the director and shooting it on film adds to the mystique of the picture. There are two short featurettes that run about six minutes each included about the making of the film with actors discussing the subtlety of the 1980s’ aesthetic employed and so forth. All Of Us Strangers is available on digital now through Movies Anywhere and other online video distributors.
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