Stranger(s) Things: Love, Loss and the Gay Gen Xer in All of Us Strangers
There are movies, there are films, and then there are pieces of cinematic art. Andrew Haigh’s hauntingly beautiful (or beautifully haunting), All of Us Strangers easily falls in the cinematic-art category. (For the purposes of this review/analysis, however, I’ll use the word, film.) Focusing on (queer) loneliness, familial (re)connection and the promise of new love, Strangers is somber and surreal, dreamy and devastating. Andrew Scott inhabits the character of Adam, a screenwriter who spends much of his time alone in his London high-rise apartment building. One night, Harry (Paul Mescal), seemingly the only other resident of the building, appears at Adam’s door, drunk, chatty and certainly flirty. During this brief exchange in the doorframe, Haigh sets up the dichotomy between the two men: outside/inside; younger/older; inebriated/sober; forward/reserved. Cue the phrase: opposites attract. Adam cordially declines Harry’s advances, and shuts the door… for now.
Making Peace with the Past
Later after Adam stares at his blank laptop screen, waiting for the creativity muses to pay him a visit instead, he discovers a photo of his childhood home. He decides to leave the confines of his apartment, and the city, to venture out into the suburbs to revisit his old haunts… and haunt it does. He meets two unlikely inhabitants, to put it simply, ghosts from his past, the meeting serving as inspiration for Adam to invite Harry, his potential future, into his home and into his heart.
As mentioned earlier, Adam’s reserved nature and initial reluctance toward letting Harry in (on varying levels) is representative, perhaps, in part, of his upbringing in the 1980s, at the start of the AIDS epidemic. (The film suggests that Adam was around 11 years old in 1987.) With so much uncertainty and fear surrounding the virus during the decade, these were, perhaps, additional factors that contributed to a future Adam, a gay Gen Xer, to choose abstinence (and self-isolation) over physical intimacy. The younger Harry, likely born in the mid-1990s, is part of the next generation, and seems to have a different, freer approach to sexual experiences. When Adam and Harry begin an intimate relationship, Adam is out of practice, even laughing awkwardly during their first kiss because he has to remind himself to breathe. Later, while Adam is in a bathtub, he is literally and figuratively naked, choosing to share a moment of vulnerability with Harry, who is sitting outside of the tub. Adam admits that for a long time the idea of being with someone physically meant death. These types of honest, heartbreaking disclosures permeate Haigh’s screenplay.
Holding Space
Haigh also chose to shoot parts of the film in his own childhood home. This is a writer and director dedicated to authenticity. One of the many poignant moments finds Adam walking into his childhood bedroom, which has been frozen in time: a boombox sits on his desk; he looks through a few vinyl records that encapsulate English pop music of the mid-‘80s: Erasure’s The Circus (1987) and Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s Welcome to the Pleasuredome (1984). The room looks like a fairly common kid’s bedroom in the ‘80s, but the inclusion of the albums from (and posters of) gay-fronted music groups suggest that a young Adam may have already begun gravitating toward these forms of gay iconography. The room was where 11-year-old Adam could be himself: it was a safe haven from school bullies; his own private quarters for crying; it’s where his musical and artistic interests hopefully brought him moments of joy. Haigh brilliantly incorporates other songs from the decade into the story: Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s “Power of Love” (1984); Alison Moyet’s “Is this Love?” (1986); Pet Shop Boys’ “Always On My Mind” (1987), which you’ll never hear the same way again. The latter, with its theme of regret, expressed from one lover to another, becomes repurposed as an apology from a parent to a child, during the film’s heartwarming Christmas scene.
For All of Us (Strangers)
The story is sure to resonate with many in the queer community, particularly gay Gen Xers, yet the film still allows for something universal, regardless of sexual orientation. Themes of love, loss, and second chances will likely confirm how much we all have in common, particularly after the third and final act, which is emotionally heavy. Ironically, for a story that deals with the importance of closure in order to move forward, its conclusion may, in fact, present more questions than answers, but it almost doesn’t matter with something this beautiful, for All of Us Strangers is a masterpiece that opens the heart, and the mind.