All Of Us Strangers (2023)

21-Jan-2024

Andrew Scott, Paul Mescal, Claire Foy, Jamie Bell star in this film set in Britain and directed by Andrew Haigh. I am not a film critic, but the reason I am writing about it is because it made me cry. A lot. Almost audible sobs in the cinema. Several times, such was the catharsis and tide of emotion.

Seeing a film set in Britain, with British accents in the Landmark theatre in Palo Alto was odd. Comforting, a sense of national identity and belonging and resonance that one doesn't get from reading about our semi-unelected Prime Minister in the news.

All of Us Strangers is a wonderfully subtle film. Hands grasped on the table. Those extra silences between a child and a British dad who doesn't quite know what to do with you. How the language used to describe queer people has evolved over time. The language you grew up hearing as a slur vs. the words you use to describe yourself. The empty skyscraper as the physical representation of how it feels to be a queer minority in a straight world.

Yet this isn't 'just' a film about being queer. I believe people are so much more than their sexuality, even if sexuality and experiences because of that do shape who you are.

What I liked most was it's vivid portrayal of how the trauma we may each carry is physically present for long after the events that caused it. It was so hard to tell what was reality and what was not. Indeed, my friend thought even after the film ended that the events Andrew Scott shared with Paul Mescal were actually real. It was a beautiful representation of what we perceive and what we remember vs. reality that only a special category of films play with. Mission Impossible wants you to suspend your disbelief, after all Tom Cruise does really run up the side of a building himself. All of Us Strangers wants you to be caught up in the dream, Andrew Scotts reality, the visceral reality of the past combined with reality of imagination, until that reality is brutally removed. You crash down to earth, wondering what might have been. What might have been, had the traumas of our past not been so vividly present. What might have been had the traumas never even occurred at all.

Grieving for the opportunity cost, life lost to trauma, grieving for the past.

Alex remarked 'it was brave, but I think he got away with using "The Power of Love". I think.' I'll protect you from the hooded claw, keep the vampires from your door. Such a nostalgic song, for us and for Andrew Scott's character. Nostalgia for some time-before has many of the same notes as grief, as does the longing for love, a fantastical love that keeps the darkenss away, present in the song.

I'll protect you. A song about visceral presence and vividity of feeling yet with nostalgic character was the perfect resolution to a film about trauma, grief and queerness.

I am grateful this film exists. The end.