Last updated on April 18, 2025
Overview
One night, in his nearly empty tower block in modern London, Adam unexpectedly encounters a mysterious neighbour named Harry, who disrupts the rhythm of his daily life.
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All of Us Strangers (2023) 105 min | Romance | Drama | Fantasy | 2023-12-22
Rating: 7.463 out of 10 from 772 users
MPAA Rating: R
Language: English
Director: Andrew Haigh
Creator: Andrew Haigh|Taichi Yamada
Actors: Andrew Scott, Paul Mescal, Carter John Grout, Jamie Bell, Claire Foy
TagLine: All of us hurt. All of us hope. All of us love.
All of Us Strangers (2023) Trailer
All of Us Strangers (2023) Trailer
Hello.
Hi.
Saw you looking at me from the street.
I'm assuming you're not with anyone.
Never see you with anyone.
This your mum and dad?
Yeah.
They died just before I was 12.
I'm trying to write about them at the
moment.
How's it going?
Strangely.
Hi.
Hi.
Is this real?
Does it feel real?
Our boy's back home.
Our son.
Look at you.
You were just a boy.
And now you're not.
It was a long time ago.
Yeah, I don't think that matters.
I've always felt like a stranger in my
own family.
I'm always scared of something.
Always running away, do you remember?
Sorry I never came in your room when
you were crying.
It's funny, it doesn't take much...
...to make you feel the way you felt
back there again.
Do you think you'd like to be in
love with him?
I'd always felt alone.
This is a new feeling.
You and me.
You and me.
Together.
Into the world.
Hi.
Saw you looking at me from the street.
I'm assuming you're not with anyone.
Never see you with anyone.
This your mum and dad?
Yeah.
They died just before I was 12.
I'm trying to write about them at the
moment.
How's it going?
Strangely.
Hi.
Hi.
Is this real?
Does it feel real?
Our boy's back home.
Our son.
Look at you.
You were just a boy.
And now you're not.
It was a long time ago.
Yeah, I don't think that matters.
I've always felt like a stranger in my
own family.
I'm always scared of something.
Always running away, do you remember?
Sorry I never came in your room when
you were crying.
It's funny, it doesn't take much...
...to make you feel the way you felt
back there again.
Do you think you'd like to be in
love with him?
I'd always felt alone.
This is a new feeling.
You and me.
You and me.
Together.
Into the world.
Review for All of Us Strangers (2023)
There are movies you watch, and then there are movies that stick with you—All of Us Strangers is one of the latter. Andrew Haigh has made something very personal, very soft, and almost like a ghost in how it makes you feel. Watching it felt like walking into a memory, one that’s both known and strange, like a dream that stays even after you wake.
My Time With The Movie
From the first scene, I could feel the deep quiet around Adam (Andrew Scott). There’s something haunting about his life—living in a nearly empty London tower, writing about a past he can’t seem to leave behind. His world is soft and far away, as if he’s just passing through life, not really living it.
Then Harry (Paul Mescal) comes in, a stranger who sees Adam’s aloneness and reaches out to him in a way that feels both urgent and very human.
Their bond is quick, but not rushed. Haigh lets their closeness grow slowly, making every look, every pause, every touch matter. It’s rare to see queer love shown with such softness and truth, without stereotyps and full of real feeling.
But then there’s the other part of the story—Adam’s strange meetings with his long-gone parents (Claire Foy and Jamie Bell). These parts are where the movie goes beyond real life and into something more dream-like. Watching Adam sit at the kitchen table with his mum and dad, talking to them like they never left, was truly captivating.
The movie never fully explains these parts—are they ghosts? Are they memories? Or is this Adam’s way of healing? The mystery only makes the movie hit harder, making it feel like a soft hint of grief rather than a loud cry of sadness.
What Stood Out to Me
Andrew Scott’s Performance
I’ve always liked Andrew’s work, but here, he gives something really special. His Adam is so many-layered. There’s a silent sadness in his eyes, a slow way he moves, as if he’s been keeping feelings inside that are now close to coming out. Every time he’s with his parents, I felt my own heart squeeze. It’s the kind of acting that doesn’t need big speeches or big moments; it shines in the quiet, in the small gaps between words.
Paul Mescal’s Impact
Paul Mescal’s Harry is just right against Adam’s quiet sadness. He’s open yet sure, wanting yet careful.
His link with Scott is strong—there’s a truth in how they are together that feels so real, so natural. Watching their love grow was one of the most touching parts of the movie.
The Look & Sound
The views are stunning. The difference between Adam’s cold, modern flat and the warm light of his old home is sharp. Each scene is carefully made, with soft light that adds to the dreamy feel. The sound is just as gentle—long quiet parts, soft background sounds, and a beautifully simple score by Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch make the movie feel like a close whisper, not a loud shout.
Themes That Hit Me Hard
- Grief and Memory – The way the past stays, not letting go, was something I really felt. Adam’s journey isn’t just about facing his parents—it’s about finding peace with himself.
- Loneliness and Connection – This movie shows the deep pain of being alone in a way that feels very real. The space between Adam’s alone-ness and his need for closeness is at the center of the story.
- Queer Love & Acceptance – By changing the original book to have a queer main character, the write, Haigh adds a whole new layer of meaning. Adam’s fight isn’t just about love—it’s about accepting himself, about the burden of growing up in a world that didn’t always welcome him.
Final Thoughts
When the credits came, I just sat there, feeling the emotions flow over me. All of Us Strangers isn’t just a movie—it’s an experience. It’s deeply sad yet oddly comforting, like a soft reminder that love, in all its shapes, never really leaves us.
Would I recommend it? Without hesitation. But be prepared—it’s the kind of film that lingers in your bones long after you’ve left the cinema.
Rating: 9.5/10
All of Us Strangers (2023) Audio Files
Movie Audio and Descriptive Audio
Includes English subtitles and an English transcript. To change the subtitle and transcript language, please use the language drop-down menu at the bottom left of the page. You can reposition the transcript box by holding onto the ‘AutoScroll’ section.
[somber music playing]
[music swells]
[man on TV] Meanwhile, work goes on for the Brits
who relocated to the Costa.
Running a bar in the sun is the classic British dream.
It can easily turn into a nightmare,
but Gary and Cherry from Macclesfield
have made it work.
- The Bamboo Bar is a success. - [people shout indistinctly on TV]
[inhales deeply]
[exhales softly]
[yawns]
[fridge whirring]
[fire alarm beeping]
[beeping continues]
[alarm continues beeping]
[car horn blares]
["The Power of Love" playing on TV]
[singing on TV] ♪ Ay, ay, ay, ay ♪
[doorbell ringing]
♪ Feels like fire ♪
♪ I'm so in love with you ♪
[knocking at door]
[singing stops]
[door opens]
Hello.
Hello.
I saw you looking at me from the street.
I've seen you a bunch of times
coming and going with your head down.
One day, it'll be for real, that alarm.
- [chuckles] - [Adam] Hmm.
We're basically the only ones here.
Can you fucking believe that?
I mean, they haven't got security guards yet.
I'm Harry.
Adam.
How do you cope?
With, with what?
Listen.
[low rumbling]
[chuckles]
It's so quiet.
I mean, London's out there,
but we can't hear a fucking thing.
[sighs]
[clicks tongue] I play music, right,
but it's worse when it ends.
Yeah, I even got one of those, um,
white noise machines, right?
But it's like there's someone
in the corner of the room whispering about me.
I mean, we can't even open, the windows, but I guess
they don't really want us to jump.
It's bad for business. You know,
bodies broken on the concrete.
I mean, who's gonna move in then? [chuckles]
Drink?
It's Japanese.
It's meant to be the best in the world,
but I, I couldn't tell you why, so...
- No, thanks. - Okay, um...
Okay. How about I come in anyway?
If not for a drink,
then for whatever else you might want.
Um...
I don't think that's a good idea.
[chuckles] Do I scare you?
No.
We don't have to do anything if I'm not your type.
[softly] There's vampires at my door.
Huh.
[pensive music playing]
[elevator bell dings]
[somber music playing]
[upbeat music playing on radio]
[keyboard clacking]
- [clattering] - [upbeat music continues]
- [music on radio fades out] - [ominous music playing]
[lighter clatters]
[sighs]
[tense music playing]
[indistinct announcement on PA]
[train rumbles past]
[birds chirping]
[pensive music playing]
[children speaking indistinctly]
[leaves rustling]
[insects chittering]
[breathes deeply]
[bottles clink]
[tires screeching]
[screeching recedes]
Hi.
Hi.
I thought something strong for a night like this.
No thanks.
Shall we go?
- [lighter clicks] - Go where?
Home.
[doorbell rings]
She's gonna be over the moon to see ya.
Guess who I found loitering in the park.
[woman] Is it him?
Oh, yeah, it's definitely him.
Look in his eyes.
Yes, it is you.
Hi.
Hi.
Don't just stand there. Get yourself inside.
[Dad] So, where are you living now?
Not around here, I'm sure.
[Adam] Uh... I'm, I'm in London.
- [Mum] Fancy. - [Dad] Whereabouts?
[Mum] Do you live by yourself?
[Dad] Do you own your own place?
Uh, yeah, it's just a, it's just a flat.
What did I tell ya? What did I tell ya?
I told you he'd be doing well for himself, didn't I?
Can't be cheap living up there in the smoke.
And what is it that you do?
- I'm a writer. - And what did I tell you?
No, no, no.
I'm not particularly rich or anything. Not really.
Well, I always knew you'd be creative.
And what kind of writer are you?
You know how I love, um, Stephen King.
Carrie, Cujo, Different Seasons.
No, no, no. I'm not a proper writer.
I, I write scripts.
Uh, for film, TV. When I have to.
[chuckles] A writer.
God, this is so bloody exciting.
If I knew the neighbors, I'd run over and I'd tell them right now.
I've always said that writers know less about the real world
- than almost anyone else. - [Mum] Mmm.
What the hell would you know?
- [Adam chuckles] - You can barely write
- joined up. - That's true. But...
[Mum exhales]
A writer.
Our son.
[Dad] We're very bloody pleased
to see you doing so well, then.
Yeah.
Enough of that poofy shit.
- Our boy's back home. - [Mum] Hmm.
What are you puttin' on?
[Dad] Oh, you'll see.
["Is This Love" by Alison Moyet playing]
[Dad groans, exhales]
[Mum] Oh, do you remember
your little red car that you had?
You loved it and you wanted
to take it out onto the main road,
and drive it with all the big cars.
[Adam] Yeah. That's my first memory, actually.
[Dad] It was a Ford Granada that hit him, wasn't it?
- No, it, it was... - Yeah. It was.
It was racing green. Do you remember that?
- [Mum] Mmm. - [Dad] It, it, flung you
like a rag doll. You went so high up in the air.
- I'll never forget it. - Oh, but you were fine, though.
You were fine. You had a couple of bruises.
I think they thought I was exaggerating when I took you in.
What about that one Bonfire Night
when you lost it?
You remember that Bonfire Night?
How old were you? Six?
[Mum] No, he was not. He was older than that.
[Dad] Well, when the fireworks went off,
poor boy, started screaming and howling.
- I had to carry him all the way home. - [Adam] You did?
Yeah. You fell asleep on my shoulder.
I don't remember that.
[Dad] You were, you were really beside yourself.
You were really having a hard time,
and I was trying,
we were just trying to get you to enjoy the fireworks.
And you didn't...
[Mum] You've always been a sensitive boy, haven't you?
[Adam] Maybe.
Are you still afraid of fireworks now?
- [Adam chuckles] No! - [Mum] Do you know who you sound like?
- You sound just like my mother. - He does.
- Doesn't he? You noticed that? - [Dad] Yeah, no, he does.
[Mum] You did say something earlier.
[Dad] Yeah. It's when, it's when you said,
it's when you said, "I'm not a proper writer."
- [Mum] Say it again. - [Dad] Go on.
- [Mum] Say it again. - [Adam] Don't make me say it.
- [Dad] Just say it. - [Mum] Say, "a proper writer," again.
[Adam] Like Nan or like me?
- [Dad] Say it like you. Say it like you. - [Mum] "Like Nan or like me." [laughs]
It's so bloody lovely to see you again.
[Adam] Yeah.
Weren't sure if we ever would.
Here you are.
Here I am.
Come back soon, hmm?
One of us will be in.
Hmm?
Please.
Yeah, I will.
Good.
[Mum shivers]
- Let's go in, eh? - Night.
- Good night, sweetheart. - Good night, son.
Night.
[pensive music playing]
- Hello. - Hi.
I'm really sorry about the other night.
Oh, that's all right.
Don't worry about it.
- [elevator thuds] - See ya.
See ya.
I actually do like whiskey if you want, um,
wanna have a drink or...
[elevator doors close]
[exhales]
[clock ticking]
[grunts]
[sighs]
["Build" by the Housemartins playing on record player]
[keyboard clacking]
♪ Clambering men in big bad boots ♪
♪ Dug up my den, dug up my roots ♪
♪ Treated us like plasticine town ♪
[pen clicking]
♪ They built us up and knocked us down ♪
♪ From Meccano to Legoland ♪
♪ Here they come with a brick in their hand ♪
♪ Men with heads filled up with sand ♪
♪ Let's build... ♪
♪ Let's build a house... ♪
[Adam] Hi.
[music stops]
[Harry] Hello.
- Hi. - [elevator dings]
[chuckles] Hi.
- Do you wanna come in? - [Harry] Sure.
[Adam] Do you want a drink?
Yeah, what have you got?
Uh... I got vodka and some beer.
I got some weed if you prefer that.
Yeah, weed's better.
I'm off alcohol...
Do you like living here?
[Adam] I think I'll like it more
when people move in.
If people move in.
You got friends nearby?
No, not really.
Do you?
No, not really.
Most of my friends have moved out of London.
Wanna have gardens for their kids,
and they want to be near the grandparents so they can look after the kids.
[Harry] I'm guessing you didn't want to move too?
Uh, no.
What am I gonna do in Dorking?
It's not for people like me.
I'm just checking. You are queer, right?
- [both chuckling] - Yeah. Yeah.
- [Harry] That's good. - [chuckles]
Or gay.
- Right. - Queer, I'm not...
I can't get used to calling myself queer.
- It was always such an insult. - Hmm.
It's probably why we hate "gay" so much now.
I mean, it was always like, um,
[chuckles] Uh "Your haircut's gay,"
or "This sofa's gay,"
"Your trainers are gay,"
"Your schoolbag's gay." [shorts]
Yeah.
Queer does feel polite, somehow, though, you know.
It's like, um...
I don't know, it's like
all the dick sucking's been taken out.
[both chuckling]
Yeah. I'm assuming you're not with anyone.
I never see you with anyone.
- No. - No.
You often single?
- Am I often single? - Mmm-hmm.
Uh...
I suppose so. Yeah.
- Are you? - Yeah.
Yeah, but not for want of trying.
[clicks tongue]
How about I kiss ya?
Yeah, all right.
[both moaning]
[Adam] Ooh! [coughs]
- [clears throat] Sorry. - No.
- You all right? - No. Yeah, yeah.
- Just haven't done... - [laughs]
I haven't done this in a while.
I have to remember to, remember to breathe.
- Okay. - Yeah, yeah. It's okay.
Okay.
- It's okay. - You all right?
[Adam] Uh-huh.
Yeah.
[Harry grunts]
[music builds]
[Harry chuckles]
[Adam chuckles]
[Harry chuckles]
[chuckles]
[Harry] Is this you?
Afraid it is.
You were cute.
I hate my photos.
I was a fat kid.
Right, but,
when you're a fat kid, no one asks
why you don't have a girlfriend.
[both chuckling]
We'd have been friends for sure, though.
Bunked off football to spy on the boys.
Is this your dad?
Yeah.
He's handsome.
Yeah.
I'm... I'm trying to write about them at the moment.
Is that what you do?
[Adam] Yeah.
[Harry] How's it going?
[Adam] Uh, strangely.
I don't see my dad much.
Do you, do you see yours, no?
No, they died.
Just before I was twelve.
[Harry] Both of them?
Yeah. Yeah, car crash.
Not the most original of deaths.
[chuckles]
I'm really sorry.
No, thanks, it was a long time ago.
Yeah, I don't think that matters.
Well.
I'd like to see you again.
Yeah, okay.
I could stay the night if you...
How about, actually, better idea...
Not tonight. Yeah?
No, no. I would like to s...
- No, you... - I would like to see you again.
- you don't need to explain. - I'm just...
Okay?
- [pensive music playing] - [Adam] Okay.
Thanks.
[train compartment clattering]
[rain pattering]
[doorbell ringing]
Sweetheart, you came back.
Of course I came back.
Jesus, you're sodden.
Come on, take it all off.
No, I'm, I'm not taking my clothes off.
Don't be silly, it's only me. Come on, arms up.
I'll put them in the dryer.
It's just me today. Is that all right?
- Yeah, of course it is. - Good.
There's so much I want to know.
I want to hear everything.
Right, go on. Upstairs, get changed.
My goodness. This is so exciting.
[chuckles]
[snickers]
[footsteps approaching]
[knocking on door]
[both chuckling]
[Mum] Suppose nothing's gonna fit you anymore, is it?
- Nope. - [Mum chuckles]
Yeah. Well, I brought you some of your dad's things instead.
- Okay. - [clicks tongue] Oh, look.
Come on, take these off as well,
and I'll put them in to dry with the rest.
- Uh... - [Mum sighs]
Oh, will you take them off, Adam?
Honestly.
[chuckles]
God, look at you.
What?
You were just a boy.
And now you're not.
No.
You look totally different, but it's still you.
Well, I thought you'd be hairier.
- Like your dad. - [chuckles]
Okay, sorry.
[Mum chuckles]
I like a hairy chest, myself.
[Adam chuckles] Okay.
Christ, you know who you remind me of?
Uh, who?
You look just like my dad.
Really?
[Mum] Hmm.
How I remember him anyway, when I was a little girl.
God, isn't that mad?
It's like seeing you both at exactly the same time.
[timer dings]
[gasps] Oh.
I've made your favorite. Well, I hope it's still your favorite.
I'll just go and pop the kettle on,
and then you can tell me everything.
[pensive music playing]
Delicious.
[Mum] Good.
Now, your dad told me not to ask,
and I don't see a wedding ring,
so I'm presuming you're not married,
but have you got a girlfriend?
Hmm?
I'm picturing her with brown hair,
not too skinny.
Smart, obviously.
Well?
Well, what?
[Mum] Do you?
I don't have a girlfriend. No.
That's a shame.
I don't have a girlfriend because I'm not into girls,
[clears throat] into women.
What do you mean?
I mean...
I'm gay. [chuckles]
As in homosexual?
As in that, yeah.
- Really? - Yeah.
Since when?
Uh, since a long time.
How long?
Forever.
You don't look gay.
Well, I'm not sure what that means.
It means what it means. You know what it means.
[Adam chuckles]
Well, bet you're glad
you don't know the neighbors now.
Hmm. I must admit I'm a bit surprised.
Not really sure what I feel about it.
What, you didn't, didn't think it would be a possibility?
No, of course not.
What parent wants to think that about their child?
No parent that I know.
Well, I'm very okay with it, so.
But aren't people nasty to you?
Um, no, no.
No, things are different now.
What, so they aren't nasty?
Not out loud, anyway.
Well, does everybody know?
I mean, are you open about it? I mean...
I don't know, down the High Street at WHSmith's?
Well, it depends on the, on the street.
Yeah. Everybody knows, everyone's fine.
Well, don't you want to get married and have kids?
I can have kids.
Men can marry. Women, too.
What, to each other?
- Yeah. - Why?
What do you mean "why"?
Well, isn't that like having your cake and eating it?
So, do you want to get married and have kids?
I don't know. It wasn't a possibility
for such a long time.
So, I didn't think it was worth the effort
of wanting to get married and have kids.
[chuckles]
[Mum] Huh.
Oh. [mumbles]
[water running]
- You okay? - Hmm, I'm fine.
Sure?
[exhales] I suppose I never did know what was going on
in that odd little head of yours.
You were always running away. Do you remember?
Yeah.
[Mum] There was that time
that you got as far as the train station,
but then you'd lost your money
and so you couldn't buy a ticket.
Do you remember that?
[Adam] Yes, it was Granny's five-pound note.
Yeah, that was it.
Where were you hoping to go?
Don't know.
London, I guess.
[Mum] London?
God.
Oh, there was that time that you got as far as
the bottom of the garden, but then you cut your thumb
on an old milk bottle and you came running back up
all sheepish with blood all over your shirt,
and you were banging and banging
- on that window to be let in. - Yeah.
There it is.
Just.
[Adam sniffles] Hmm.
They say it's a very lonely kind of life.
[tense music playing]
They don't actually say that anymore.
[Mum] So, you're not lonely?
If I am, it's not because I'm gay.
Not really.
Not really.
Oh, God. And what about this awful, ghastly disease?
I've seen the adverts on the, on the news, and the,
and with the gravestone.
Should I be worried about that?
No. Jesus.
Everything's different now.
Everything's different.
Well, I guess I wouldn't know about that.
Your clothes will be dry now.
You should take these flapjacks with you,
if you want. I won't be eating them.
[train whooshing]
[pensive music playing]
[Adam grunts]
[shoes thudding on floor]
[elevator dings]
[pensive music playing]
What's wrong?
[elevator dings]
I'm okay.
I just got a bit of a chill.
Hey, you're hot.
Yeah.
I was just, I was just...
I just got caught in the rain.
Okay.
Well, why don't I run you a hot bath?
My nan says there's literally nothing
a hot bath couldn't solve.
I don't really like baths.
Fuck off. Who doesn't like baths?
[water running]
You don't need to be shy around me.
Yes, that's easier said than done.
[Harry chuckles]
Would you like me to close my eyes?
- Yes, please. - Okay. [chuckles]
Better?
- Yeah. - [Harry] Hmm.
[Harry] Been thinking about you all week, today.
[Adam] Hmm.
[Harry] Was thinking about
watching crappy TV with you on a Friday night.
[Harry] Eating takeaway on your sofa.
Watching all the episodes of Top of the Pops
from before I was born.
[both chuckling]
[Harry] Yeah. I thought about something else, too.
Thought about fucking you.
- Yeah? - [Harry] Yeah.
Or you fuck me. I don't really care which.
Are you into that?
Yeah.
It's okay if you're not. We all don't need to be into fucking.
Well, I wasn't for the longest time,
for obvious reasons.
[Harry] Obvious reasons?
I thought that if I fucked anybody, I'd die.
It's probably pretty difficult for you to imagine, isn't it?
[Harry] A little.
[Harry moaning]
[moaning]
[Adam] Yeah. Come on.
[gentle music playing]
You said the other day you don't see your dad much.
Yeah.
What about your mum?
Yeah, same.
How come?
They know you're queer?
Yeah, course.
- [Adam] Are they okay with it? - Yeah.
They're okay.
I mean, they're really old school.
Probably less okay than everyone's meant to be.
Yeah. But they got used to it, sort of, it's just,
they don't say too much.
You could say that I have
drifted to the edge.
Or right up to the edge, almost.
Over the edge.
What's that mean?
I'm edge of the family.
My sister and her kids,
and my older brother, who just got married,
they've all, they got this spot in the center.
But it's okay.
[Adam] Why is it okay?
Because,
I don't go home much.
Does that make you sad?
Um. No, I think it's just inevitable, really.
Why?
[chuckling]
Um... [inhales]
I've always felt like a stranger in my own family.
And then
coming out just puts a name
to that difference that's always been there.
So, in the end,
it's not really anyone's fault.
Hmm. What's wrong?
It's funny.
Things are better now. Course they are,
but doesn't take much to make you feel the way you felt,
back there again, skin all raw.
Am I still hot?
[Harry] Just a little.
You wanna stay the night?
[Harry chuckles]
[trees rustling]
[inaudible conversation]
[doorbell ringing]
[Dad] Sure she won't be long.
It's okay.
Just wanted to talk to her.
Yeah, I know you do.
This was your granddad's favorite.
I never really liked it much at the time,
but it's grown on me.
If you wanna see your mum really lose her shit,
go ahead and break that bloody thing.
["l Don't Want to Set the World on Fire" playing]
Come on, then, lad. Sit yourself down.
♪ I don't want
♪ To set the world on fire ♪
♪ I just want to start... I
Well, she told you, then?
Was scared you wouldn't come back.
But you know what your mum's like.
You know, don't be, don't be too disappointed in her.
No, I'm not.
Yeah, she just needs to rearrange some things in her head,
and all the stories that she's built up.
Yeah. She'll soon realize it's not actually about her.
What about you?
What about me?
What do you think?
Well, I mean, it was hardly a shock.
I always knew you were a bit tutti-frutti.
Couldn't throw a ball for shit,
no matter how many times I tried to teach you.
- Jesus. - Couldn't for shit.
Couldn't do it.
You make me sound like a horrible cliché.
Well, can you throw a ball?
- Not at all. - Well, there you go.
[Adam chuckles]
[Dad chuckles]
♪ To set the world on fire... ♪
Would you have liked me to have known?
I don't know.
I would hear you crying in your room after school.
Did the boys bully you, then?
Not just the boys.
What would they do?
Oh, call me a girl,
ignore me, refuse to play with me,
stick my head down the toilet,
flick drawing pins in my face.
Christ's sake.
Yeah. Well, you know,
kids are little cunts, aren't they?
[clears throat]
♪ And that one desire is you ♪
♪ And I know... ♪
So, why didn't you come into my room
if you heard me crying?
Why didn't you tell me what was happening at school?
You know, you answer me first.
Be honest.
I just didn't want to think of you as the kind of boy
that the other lads would pick on.
And I knew that if I was at your school,
I'd probably have picked on you, too.
Yeah, I think I always probably thought that, anyway.
Probably why I didn't tell you
what was happening to me at school.
♪ Set the world on... ♪
Well...
♪ Fire ♪
[Dad exhales]
♪ I just want to start ♪
♪ Aflame... I
- [music stops] - You know, when she told me,
it did make me think about all the jokes that we make,
and, you know, we did impressions
of your English teacher,
when he'd mince around with his limp wrist.
[chuckles]
You told me not to cross my legs,
like a woman, over, and over, and over again.
Did 1?
[Adam] Yeah, I still...
Still think about it every time I cross my legs.
I have good memories, too.
[Dad] Yeah, I hope so. Fuck.
I hope so. I hope you did. [chuckles]
Remember you used to love decorating the tree.
[Dad chuckles]
That's...
[Adam] You were crazy for it, every year.
And you'd always let me, um,
put the fairy on top of the tree.
The fairy. I did.
[clock ticking]
[Dad sobs]
I'm sorry I never came in your room when you were crying.
No, really, it's okay.
[Dad] No, it's not okay, though, really, is it?
- It's not. - Dad. Dad, I get it.
It was, it was so long...
[sobbing]
[voice breaks] It was so long ago. Stop!
[sobs]
Can I hug you now?
Yeah, please.
[sniffles]
[sniffling]
[Dad] You're all right, son.
You're all right.
[pensive music playing]
[Harry chuckles]
[Adam] After this,
I wanna go out.
You,
- and me... - [Harry moaning]
- [Adam] ...together... - [Harry chuckling]
[Adam] ...into the world.
["l Want a Dog" by Pet Shop Boys playing over speakers]
[indistinct chattering]
♪ My dog will bark at any passersby ♪
♪ Oh, you can get lonely ♪
♪ I want a dog... ♪
- What do you want to drink? - Uh... A pint.
Thank you.
Sorry.
Whoops, sorry.
Sorry.
Ah, fuck. I've missed this feeling.
I can't hear ya.
Do you dance?
If I'm wasted enough.
Then let's get wasted enough.
[dance music playing]
C'mon.
[Harry] Yeah.
[Adam] Where'd you get this?
[Harry] Found it in my wallet.
Fuck knows how long it's been there.
[sniffs]
[sniffs]
I think that's ketamine.
- Really? - Mmm-hmm.
Have you done it before?
No.
- Will you look after me? - I'll do my best.
- Okay. That'll have to do. - Okay.
["Death of a Party" by Blur playing over speakers]
♪ The death of the party ♪
♪ Came as no surprise ♪
♪ Why did we bother I
♪ Should have stayed away ♪
♪ Another night ♪
♪ And I thought well well ♪
♪ Go to another party ♪
♪ And hang myself ♪
♪ Gently on the shelf ♪
[inaudible conversation]
♪ Another night ♪
♪ And I thought well well ♪
♪ Go to another party ♪
♪ And hang myself ♪
♪ Gently on the shelf ♪
♪ Another party ♪
♪ And I thought well well ♪
♪ Go to another party ♪
♪ And hang myself ♪
♪ The death of the party ♪
♪ Came as no surprise ♪
- [music goes off tune] - [tempo drops]
[screaming]
[music fades out]
[man on TV speaking indistinctly]
[man on TV] ...for the next 30 minutes,
some surely good tunes coming your way.
Like down here, we have
at number four, The Pet Shop Boys
and You Were Always on My Mind.
["Always on My Mind" by Pet Shop Boys playing on TV]
[fire crackling]
- [Dad grunts] - [Mum] Adam.
What's wrong?
Oh, you're really hot.
No, he's really hot.
What?
Now, here you go.
Come on.
Squeeze in, squeeze in, squeeze in.
♪ Little things I should have said and done ♪
♪ I never took the time ♪
♪ You were always on my mind ♪
♪ You were always on my mind ♪
[singing] ♪ Maybe I didn't hold you ♪
♪ All those lonely, lonely times ♪
♪ And I guess I never told you ♪
♪ I'm so happy that you're mine ♪
♪ If I made you feel second best ♪
♪ I'm so sorry I was blind ♪
♪ You were always on my mind ♪
♪ You were always on my mind ♪
[both singing] ♪ Tellme ♪
♪ Tell me that your sweet love hasn't died ♪
♪ Give me ♪
♪ One more chance to keep you satisfied ♪
♪ Satisfied ♪
[Dad vocalizing]
Okay, get together.
Yeah. Yeah. Are you ready? I'm gonna press it.
Okay, it's going.
All right, we have to be quick ‘cause it goes off in a sec.
It's about ten seconds.
- Merry Christmas. - Merry Christmas.
- Here we go! - Merry Christmas. [chuckles]
- Merry Christmas! - Go...
♪ You were always on my mind ♪
♪ Tellme ♪
[music slows down, goes off tune]
Is this real?
[Mum] Does it feel real?
Yeah.
There you go, then.
[Adam] For how long, though?
I can't answer that.
I suppose we don't get to decide when it's over.
[Adam] You're not going out now, are you?
[Mum echoes] Where would we go?
The Walshes'.
[Mum] The Walshes'?
The Walshes'.
[Adam] No, no. Wait.
Promise me you're not gonna go out now.
[Mum] I promise.
We're just gonna be asleep next door.
Promise. [echoes]
All right?
Get some sleep.
[door closes]
[sighs]
[Adam] No.
[knocking on door]
[Mum] What is it, sweetheart?
I can't sleep.
Well, do you wanna get in?
- Can 1? - Course you can.
[Dad grunts]
Still smells the same in here.
You'd creep in here night after night,
saying you couldn't sleep.
You're always scared of something.
Murderers breaking in, or rabies,
or nuclear war.
Do people still get rabies?
- No. - Oh!
I was desperate for you to grow up
just so I could get a good night's sleep.
[clock ticking]
Sorry.
What are you sorry for?
I'm the sorry one.
I should've relished you driving me bananas.
Where did you go?
You know, afterwards.
I lived with Granny.
She took me to Dublin.
Yeah, I thought so.
Why didn't you live with his lot?
Why didn't you live with Granny May?
They said she was too heartbroken.
About what?
Well, she'd lost her son.
Oh, I see. But my mother was fine
about losing her only daughter?
No, no.
She was not fine.
I just can't believe that she
got to look after you and I didn't.
Are any of them still around now?
No.
Guess they wouldn't be, would they?
And how did you get on over there with Mum?
Did you manage to fit in better at school?
I made sure I did.
I hate that we weren't around
when you needed us most, sweetheart.
And I hate even more
that I wasn't there before that, not really.
No, that's not true.
Come on. Well, I was hardly Mother of the Year, was I?
But I like to think that
I would've got better at it in time.
You know, given time.
You know, when I was a teenager,
or even later, into my twenties,
I used to plot it all out.
What do you mean?
What we might've done together
in intricate detail. Trips to the Whitgift Centre,
birthdays,
trips to London,
the Planetarium, the London Dungeon.
Oh, I always wanted to go there.
[chuckles]
- I know. - [chuckles]
There were holidays
that we might've gone on together.
Did we make it to Disneyland?
We did.
When I was 14.
- It rained nonstop. - Oh!
And they shut down Space Mountain.
And we fought every day.
Why did we have to fight?
Because that's what everyone did with their parents.
They fought and bickered
and pretended that they
were ruining each other's lives.
Did we make up?
No, we didn't need to make up.
We were together,
SO,
so it didn't matter.
You okay?
- [sobs] no. - [Dad] You're okay, son.
You're okay.
What are you doing here?
You're not supposed to be here.
[vehicle approaching]
[gravel crunching]
[car door opens]
[indistinct radio chatter]
[door closes]
[indistinct radio chatter]
[knocking at door]
[phone ringing]
[gasps]
[eerie music playing]
[indistinct announcement on PA]
[eerie music playing]
[coughing]
[brakes squealing]
[screaming]
[Adam] Mum? Mum?
- [yells] - [Harry shushing]
[Adam breathing heavily]
You're okay.
You're okay.
[Adam sobbing]
- What day... What day is it? - Sunday.
Why is it...
How come... How... Why is it still Sunday?
[Harry] You kept screaming out for your parents
over and over again in the club.
And then
I didn't know what to do, so I just
took you back here and lay with you till you fell asleep.
[Adam breathing heavily]
[Harry] You looked so scared.
I am.
[Harry] Hey, come here. Come here.
Hey, come here.
- [shushing] - [Adam groaning]
I'm here. It's okay.
[Adam crying]
[Adam continues crying]
You're okay.
[Adam] I was sleeping in their bed
the night they went out.
I was meant to go with them.
To Christmas drinks at the Walshes'.
Around midnight, um,
two police came to the door. A man and a woman.
He had really beautiful, kind eyes
and this thick, dark stubble.
Looked like it had been drawn on.
The car skidded on black ice. [sighs]
Both of them had been drinking.
Dad was killed right away, but they took Mum to, uh,
Saint Mary's in Croydon, and she died a few days later.
Did you get to see her?
What do you mean? To say goodbye?
Mmm-hmm. Yeah.
No.
My granny thought it would be too scarring.
[Adam sniffles]
Mum went through the windscreen
and she lost an eye,
so she was pretty fucked up.
Jesus.
Yeah.
I went looking for that eye.
I don't know why. Didn't want anyone else to find it.
Thought it would be on the side of the road.
[chuckling]
staring up at me. "Hi." [chuckles]
I did find a tiny piece
of the windscreen glass, though.
In my head, it had blood on it,
but maybe that's not true.
The nurse said that Mum woke up
just before she died.
She must've been so confused. Can't hardly see and...
Dad wasn't there, I wasn't there.
I can't even begin to imagine how you felt.
How lonely you must've been.
Yeah, but, like, I'd always felt lonely,
even before.
This was a new feeling.
Like...
a terror,
that I'd always be alone now.
And then, as I got older, that feeling just,
just solidified.
Just a...
Just a knot here all the time.
And then losing them,
it just got tangled up with all the other stuff,
about being gay,
and just feeling like...
the future doesn't matter.
Does that make sense?
Yeah.
Mmm-hmm.
I know how easy it can be to stop caring about yourself.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Adam.
Will you come with me?
[chuckles]
Where to?
Just let me show you.
[doorbell ringing]
Whose house is this?
My parents'.
Yeah. Who lives here now?
It's okay. Don't worry.
Hello?
Adam.
[knocking on door]
[Adam] Hello?
- Where are they? - [Harry] Who?
[Adam] Hello?
[Harry] Who?
[Adam] My parents.
This is our house. This is our kitchen.
This is our wallpaper. That's our table where we had
fish and chips every Friday night
so my mother could pretend
we were still Catholic.
Adam, I want to go home. Let me take you home.
- This is my home. - No, it used to be.
- It's not anymore. Adam! - Mum?
- Dad? - Adam, listen.
Let me take you home.
You go home!
You go home. I'm not going.
[Adam] Where are they?
Where are they?
[banging on door]
Mum?
- Adam, stop it. - Dad?
[eerie music playing]
[Adam] Can you see them?
Let me in.
Please.
Please let me in.
Please let me in.
[glass shattering]
[Dad whispering] He has to stop now.
He has to get on with his life.
He can't keep coming here.
We're not allowing him to get on with his life.
[Mum whispering] I think we are helping him.
[Dad] No, we're not. It's not normal.
- It's not... - Why didn't you let us in?
Where is he? Is he here? Is Harry here?
[Mum] No.
We did see him, though.
But I wanted you to meet him.
I know, but I don't think this works like that.
Looked like a handsome fellow, though.
Is he your special friend?
Do you mean my boyfriend?
Is he my boyfriend? You can say it.
Okay. Well, is he your boyfriend?
Um... Uh, I don't know.
Are you in love with him?
[Adam chuckles]
Why is that so strange?
I don't know, I've never been in love before, so...
Not really.
So, this...
I don't know if this is it.
[Mum] Sweetheart.
Well,
he certainly seems to care about you a whole heap,
in my not so humble opinion.
Do you think you'd like to be in love with him?
Yeah?
[soft music playing]
- Son, I think we... - No.
Don't say it.
- Please don't say it. - No, we have to.
We have to.
Um...
Me and your mum,
we think that it's best you don't come visit us anymore.
All right.
You're just gonna keep coming and coming, I know you are.
And we can see what this is doing to you.
It's not doing anything to me.
Yes, itis.
It won't let you move on.
Okay, well, I'll come less.
I'll come once a year. I'll come at Christmas.
Come on, lad, we...
You have to have known that this wasn't gonna last forever.
I'm not asking for it to last forever.
I'm just...
It hasn't been long enough.
Hasn't been close to long enough.
I know, but it never could be, could it?
Hey, listen.
I've got an idea.
How's about...
How's about we go to your favorite place
in the whole bloody world, huh?
I'm sure it's still open.
It's the next best thing to Disneyland.
It's fucking cheaper too.
[Adam laughing]
[Adam sighs]
What do you think?
[engine whirring]
["If I Could See the World (Through the Eyes of a Child)" playing]
♪ If I could see the world ♪
♪ Through the eyes of a child I
♪ What a wonderful world ♪
♪ This would be ♪
♪ There'd be no trouble...
[Adam] Uh, can I get the "family special," please?
[server] That's a lot of food.
That's okay.
Not really very hungry.
- No, me neither. - No.
Hey, I wanna ask you something.
- God, no, don't ask. - No, no, I'm gonna ask him.
- Was it quick? - Oh, Jesus.
- I told you not to ask. - You're the... You wanna know.
Yeah, but what if it was slow and horribly painful?
- Yeah, but what difference does it make? - Ilt makes a big difference.
[Adam] It was quick.
- Was it? - [Adam] Yeah.
For both of us?
Mmm-hmm.
[Mum] No, you don't seem sure.
Don't be fibbing now.
It was quick.
It was really quick.
Well, okay.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, but that's a relief, isn't it? Of sorts.
It's been playing on my mind, that has.
What do you think we should say
to each other? [chuckles]
Not sure I have much wisdom to share.
I don't know, maybe, Adam being older,
should be sharing some with us.
Maybe we shouldn't say anything.
Maybe.
Although, I will say that getting
to know you has made us very proud, son.
I haven't done anything to be proud of.
- I've just muddled through. - No, but you got through.
Some tough times, I'm sure,
and you're still here.
That's what we're proud of.
Yeah.
Dad?
[Dad] Hmm?
Stay. Stay. Stay a bit longer.
[Dad] No, I don't think so, son.
[Mum] Love you, darling.
You do?
Sometimes, I wasn't so sure.
Whatever problems we had,
I'm glad we got to be together at the end.
Me too.
Now, I...
I know I was never good at saying it.
I just couldn't get the words out.
I do love you very much.
Somehow, even more, now that I know you.
It's important that you believe me.
I do.
[voice breaks] And I love you very much.
Dad?
[patting on hand]
Dad, did... Dad, did you hear that?
[Mum sobs] Oh, Adam, are you there?
I can't see you. Why can't I see you?
I'm here, Mum.
[Mum] Oh, there you are.
I can feel you.
Skin's lovely and warm.
Now, you listen.
You promise me
that you're gonna try with this Harry boy.
Yeah.
I'd have liked him. I know it.
He might need a bit of taking care of, mind you.
He's got such a sad face.
- Do you hear me? - Yeah.
Yeah, I hear you.
That's good.
I hope you make each other a bit happier.
Such a kind and gentle boy.
- [server] Enjoy. - Thank you.
[Adam exhales]
[somber music playing]
[beeps]
[music fades out]
[TV static buzzing]
[buzzing stops]
[dripping]
Harry?
[ominous music playing]
[coughing]
[door rattles, opens]
What are you doing down here?
I came to find you.
Why are you here?
l... I said goodbye to them, so I came to see you.
[Harry exhales]
[Harry groans]
- It's okay. - [Harry] It's not okay, though, is it?
I was so scared that night. I just needed to not be alone.
I know.
I'm sorry.
I was too scared
to let you in.
I'm in there, aren't I?
- Let's just go upstairs. - No, no, no.
I just need you to tell me, okay?
Because I can smell it. I can...
taste it in my throat.
[exhales]
How come no one found me?
Where was my mum and my dad?
- I found you... - [voice breaks] I know,
but I... Adam, I don't want you
to see me like that in there. It's...
You're not in there. You're not in there.
You're not in there.
You're here.
You're here.
You're here.
With me.
Let's just go upstairs.
[Harry chuckles]
I saw her, you know.
Your mum.
Your dad, too, at the house.
They saw you, too.
They did?
Mmm-hmm.
My dad says you're a handsome fellow.
[Harry chuckling]
Hmm.
[Adam] They'd have loved you.
They both would.
That's good.
Did you get to say what you wanted to say?
I don't know, but I got to be with them.
[Harry] It's good that you were all together.
Yeah.
I'm scared.
I know.
But I'm here with you.
[Harry] Don't let this get tangled up again.
Okay, come on.
Okay.
[grunting]
[exhales]
It's so quiet.
Never could stand how quiet this place was.
Will you put a record on?
- What would you like? - You choose.
["The Power of Love" playing]
"I'll protect you from the hooded claw."
"Keep the vampires from your door."
♪ Ay, ay, ay, ay ♪
♪ Feels like fire ♪
♪ I'm so in love with you ♪
♪ Dreams are like angels ♪
♪ They keep bad at bay, bad at bay ♪
♪ Love is the light ♪
♪ Scaring darkness away, yeah ♪
♪ I'm so in love with you ♪
♪ Purge the soul ♪
♪ Make love your goal ♪
♪ The power of love ♪
♪ A force from above ♪
♪ Cleaning my soul ♪
♪ Flame on, burn desire ♪
♪ Love with tongues of fire ♪
♪ Purge the soul ♪
♪ Make love your goal ♪
♪ I'll protect you from the hooded claw ♪
♪ Keep the vampires from your door ♪
♪ When the chips are down I'll be around ♪
♪ With my undying, death-defying love for you ♪
♪ Envy will hurt itself ♪
♪ Let yourself be beautiful ♪
♪ Sparkling love, flowers and pearls and pretty girls I
♪ Love is like an energy ♪
♪ Rushin' an' rushin' inside of me, eh ♪
♪ The power of love ♪
♪ A force from above ♪
♪ Cleaning my soul ♪
♪ Flame on, burn desire ♪
♪ Love with tongues of fire ♪
♪ Purge the soul ♪
♪ Make love your goal ♪
♪ This time we go sublime ♪
♪ Lovers entwine, divine, divine ♪
♪ Love is danger, love is pleasure
♪ Love is pure, the only treasure ♪
♪ I'm so in love with you Purge the soul ♪
♪ Make love your goal ♪
♪ The power of love ♪
♪ A force from above ♪
♪ Cleaning my soul ♪
♪ The power of love ♪
♪ A force from above ♪
♪ A sky-scraping dove ♪
♪ Flame on, burn desire ♪
♪ Love with tongues of fire ♪
♪ Purge the soul ♪
♪ Make love your goal ♪
♪ I'll protect you from the hooded claw ♪
♪ Keep the vampires from your door ♪
[music swells]
[man on TV] Meanwhile, work goes on for the Brits
who relocated to the Costa.
Running a bar in the sun is the classic British dream.
It can easily turn into a nightmare,
but Gary and Cherry from Macclesfield
have made it work.
- The Bamboo Bar is a success. - [people shout indistinctly on TV]
[inhales deeply]
[exhales softly]
[yawns]
[fridge whirring]
[fire alarm beeping]
[beeping continues]
[alarm continues beeping]
[car horn blares]
["The Power of Love" playing on TV]
[singing on TV] ♪ Ay, ay, ay, ay ♪
[doorbell ringing]
♪ Feels like fire ♪
♪ I'm so in love with you ♪
[knocking at door]
[singing stops]
[door opens]
Hello.
Hello.
I saw you looking at me from the street.
I've seen you a bunch of times
coming and going with your head down.
One day, it'll be for real, that alarm.
- [chuckles] - [Adam] Hmm.
We're basically the only ones here.
Can you fucking believe that?
I mean, they haven't got security guards yet.
I'm Harry.
Adam.
How do you cope?
With, with what?
Listen.
[low rumbling]
[chuckles]
It's so quiet.
I mean, London's out there,
but we can't hear a fucking thing.
[sighs]
[clicks tongue] I play music, right,
but it's worse when it ends.
Yeah, I even got one of those, um,
white noise machines, right?
But it's like there's someone
in the corner of the room whispering about me.
I mean, we can't even open, the windows, but I guess
they don't really want us to jump.
It's bad for business. You know,
bodies broken on the concrete.
I mean, who's gonna move in then? [chuckles]
Drink?
It's Japanese.
It's meant to be the best in the world,
but I, I couldn't tell you why, so...
- No, thanks. - Okay, um...
Okay. How about I come in anyway?
If not for a drink,
then for whatever else you might want.
Um...
I don't think that's a good idea.
[chuckles] Do I scare you?
No.
We don't have to do anything if I'm not your type.
[softly] There's vampires at my door.
Huh.
[pensive music playing]
[elevator bell dings]
[somber music playing]
[upbeat music playing on radio]
[keyboard clacking]
- [clattering] - [upbeat music continues]
- [music on radio fades out] - [ominous music playing]
[lighter clatters]
[sighs]
[tense music playing]
[indistinct announcement on PA]
[train rumbles past]
[birds chirping]
[pensive music playing]
[children speaking indistinctly]
[leaves rustling]
[insects chittering]
[breathes deeply]
[bottles clink]
[tires screeching]
[screeching recedes]
Hi.
Hi.
I thought something strong for a night like this.
No thanks.
Shall we go?
- [lighter clicks] - Go where?
Home.
[doorbell rings]
She's gonna be over the moon to see ya.
Guess who I found loitering in the park.
[woman] Is it him?
Oh, yeah, it's definitely him.
Look in his eyes.
Yes, it is you.
Hi.
Hi.
Don't just stand there. Get yourself inside.
[Dad] So, where are you living now?
Not around here, I'm sure.
[Adam] Uh... I'm, I'm in London.
- [Mum] Fancy. - [Dad] Whereabouts?
[Mum] Do you live by yourself?
[Dad] Do you own your own place?
Uh, yeah, it's just a, it's just a flat.
What did I tell ya? What did I tell ya?
I told you he'd be doing well for himself, didn't I?
Can't be cheap living up there in the smoke.
And what is it that you do?
- I'm a writer. - And what did I tell you?
No, no, no.
I'm not particularly rich or anything. Not really.
Well, I always knew you'd be creative.
And what kind of writer are you?
You know how I love, um, Stephen King.
Carrie, Cujo, Different Seasons.
No, no, no. I'm not a proper writer.
I, I write scripts.
Uh, for film, TV. When I have to.
[chuckles] A writer.
God, this is so bloody exciting.
If I knew the neighbors, I'd run over and I'd tell them right now.
I've always said that writers know less about the real world
- than almost anyone else. - [Mum] Mmm.
What the hell would you know?
- [Adam chuckles] - You can barely write
- joined up. - That's true. But...
[Mum exhales]
A writer.
Our son.
[Dad] We're very bloody pleased
to see you doing so well, then.
Yeah.
Enough of that poofy shit.
- Our boy's back home. - [Mum] Hmm.
What are you puttin' on?
[Dad] Oh, you'll see.
["Is This Love" by Alison Moyet playing]
[Dad groans, exhales]
[Mum] Oh, do you remember
your little red car that you had?
You loved it and you wanted
to take it out onto the main road,
and drive it with all the big cars.
[Adam] Yeah. That's my first memory, actually.
[Dad] It was a Ford Granada that hit him, wasn't it?
- No, it, it was... - Yeah. It was.
It was racing green. Do you remember that?
- [Mum] Mmm. - [Dad] It, it, flung you
like a rag doll. You went so high up in the air.
- I'll never forget it. - Oh, but you were fine, though.
You were fine. You had a couple of bruises.
I think they thought I was exaggerating when I took you in.
What about that one Bonfire Night
when you lost it?
You remember that Bonfire Night?
How old were you? Six?
[Mum] No, he was not. He was older than that.
[Dad] Well, when the fireworks went off,
poor boy, started screaming and howling.
- I had to carry him all the way home. - [Adam] You did?
Yeah. You fell asleep on my shoulder.
I don't remember that.
[Dad] You were, you were really beside yourself.
You were really having a hard time,
and I was trying,
we were just trying to get you to enjoy the fireworks.
And you didn't...
[Mum] You've always been a sensitive boy, haven't you?
[Adam] Maybe.
Are you still afraid of fireworks now?
- [Adam chuckles] No! - [Mum] Do you know who you sound like?
- You sound just like my mother. - He does.
- Doesn't he? You noticed that? - [Dad] Yeah, no, he does.
[Mum] You did say something earlier.
[Dad] Yeah. It's when, it's when you said,
it's when you said, "I'm not a proper writer."
- [Mum] Say it again. - [Dad] Go on.
- [Mum] Say it again. - [Adam] Don't make me say it.
- [Dad] Just say it. - [Mum] Say, "a proper writer," again.
[Adam] Like Nan or like me?
- [Dad] Say it like you. Say it like you. - [Mum] "Like Nan or like me." [laughs]
It's so bloody lovely to see you again.
[Adam] Yeah.
Weren't sure if we ever would.
Here you are.
Here I am.
Come back soon, hmm?
One of us will be in.
Hmm?
Please.
Yeah, I will.
Good.
[Mum shivers]
- Let's go in, eh? - Night.
- Good night, sweetheart. - Good night, son.
Night.
[pensive music playing]
- Hello. - Hi.
I'm really sorry about the other night.
Oh, that's all right.
Don't worry about it.
- [elevator thuds] - See ya.
See ya.
I actually do like whiskey if you want, um,
wanna have a drink or...
[elevator doors close]
[exhales]
[clock ticking]
[grunts]
[sighs]
["Build" by the Housemartins playing on record player]
[keyboard clacking]
♪ Clambering men in big bad boots ♪
♪ Dug up my den, dug up my roots ♪
♪ Treated us like plasticine town ♪
[pen clicking]
♪ They built us up and knocked us down ♪
♪ From Meccano to Legoland ♪
♪ Here they come with a brick in their hand ♪
♪ Men with heads filled up with sand ♪
♪ Let's build... ♪
♪ Let's build a house... ♪
[Adam] Hi.
[music stops]
[Harry] Hello.
- Hi. - [elevator dings]
[chuckles] Hi.
- Do you wanna come in? - [Harry] Sure.
[Adam] Do you want a drink?
Yeah, what have you got?
Uh... I got vodka and some beer.
I got some weed if you prefer that.
Yeah, weed's better.
I'm off alcohol...
Do you like living here?
[Adam] I think I'll like it more
when people move in.
If people move in.
You got friends nearby?
No, not really.
Do you?
No, not really.
Most of my friends have moved out of London.
Wanna have gardens for their kids,
and they want to be near the grandparents so they can look after the kids.
[Harry] I'm guessing you didn't want to move too?
Uh, no.
What am I gonna do in Dorking?
It's not for people like me.
I'm just checking. You are queer, right?
- [both chuckling] - Yeah. Yeah.
- [Harry] That's good. - [chuckles]
Or gay.
- Right. - Queer, I'm not...
I can't get used to calling myself queer.
- It was always such an insult. - Hmm.
It's probably why we hate "gay" so much now.
I mean, it was always like, um,
[chuckles] Uh "Your haircut's gay,"
or "This sofa's gay,"
"Your trainers are gay,"
"Your schoolbag's gay." [shorts]
Yeah.
Queer does feel polite, somehow, though, you know.
It's like, um...
I don't know, it's like
all the dick sucking's been taken out.
[both chuckling]
Yeah. I'm assuming you're not with anyone.
I never see you with anyone.
- No. - No.
You often single?
- Am I often single? - Mmm-hmm.
Uh...
I suppose so. Yeah.
- Are you? - Yeah.
Yeah, but not for want of trying.
[clicks tongue]
How about I kiss ya?
Yeah, all right.
[both moaning]
[Adam] Ooh! [coughs]
- [clears throat] Sorry. - No.
- You all right? - No. Yeah, yeah.
- Just haven't done... - [laughs]
I haven't done this in a while.
I have to remember to, remember to breathe.
- Okay. - Yeah, yeah. It's okay.
Okay.
- It's okay. - You all right?
[Adam] Uh-huh.
Yeah.
[Harry grunts]
[music builds]
[Harry chuckles]
[Adam chuckles]
[Harry chuckles]
[chuckles]
[Harry] Is this you?
Afraid it is.
You were cute.
I hate my photos.
I was a fat kid.
Right, but,
when you're a fat kid, no one asks
why you don't have a girlfriend.
[both chuckling]
We'd have been friends for sure, though.
Bunked off football to spy on the boys.
Is this your dad?
Yeah.
He's handsome.
Yeah.
I'm... I'm trying to write about them at the moment.
Is that what you do?
[Adam] Yeah.
[Harry] How's it going?
[Adam] Uh, strangely.
I don't see my dad much.
Do you, do you see yours, no?
No, they died.
Just before I was twelve.
[Harry] Both of them?
Yeah. Yeah, car crash.
Not the most original of deaths.
[chuckles]
I'm really sorry.
No, thanks, it was a long time ago.
Yeah, I don't think that matters.
Well.
I'd like to see you again.
Yeah, okay.
I could stay the night if you...
How about, actually, better idea...
Not tonight. Yeah?
No, no. I would like to s...
- No, you... - I would like to see you again.
- you don't need to explain. - I'm just...
Okay?
- [pensive music playing] - [Adam] Okay.
Thanks.
[train compartment clattering]
[rain pattering]
[doorbell ringing]
Sweetheart, you came back.
Of course I came back.
Jesus, you're sodden.
Come on, take it all off.
No, I'm, I'm not taking my clothes off.
Don't be silly, it's only me. Come on, arms up.
I'll put them in the dryer.
It's just me today. Is that all right?
- Yeah, of course it is. - Good.
There's so much I want to know.
I want to hear everything.
Right, go on. Upstairs, get changed.
My goodness. This is so exciting.
[chuckles]
[snickers]
[footsteps approaching]
[knocking on door]
[both chuckling]
[Mum] Suppose nothing's gonna fit you anymore, is it?
- Nope. - [Mum chuckles]
Yeah. Well, I brought you some of your dad's things instead.
- Okay. - [clicks tongue] Oh, look.
Come on, take these off as well,
and I'll put them in to dry with the rest.
- Uh... - [Mum sighs]
Oh, will you take them off, Adam?
Honestly.
[chuckles]
God, look at you.
What?
You were just a boy.
And now you're not.
No.
You look totally different, but it's still you.
Well, I thought you'd be hairier.
- Like your dad. - [chuckles]
Okay, sorry.
[Mum chuckles]
I like a hairy chest, myself.
[Adam chuckles] Okay.
Christ, you know who you remind me of?
Uh, who?
You look just like my dad.
Really?
[Mum] Hmm.
How I remember him anyway, when I was a little girl.
God, isn't that mad?
It's like seeing you both at exactly the same time.
[timer dings]
[gasps] Oh.
I've made your favorite. Well, I hope it's still your favorite.
I'll just go and pop the kettle on,
and then you can tell me everything.
[pensive music playing]
Delicious.
[Mum] Good.
Now, your dad told me not to ask,
and I don't see a wedding ring,
so I'm presuming you're not married,
but have you got a girlfriend?
Hmm?
I'm picturing her with brown hair,
not too skinny.
Smart, obviously.
Well?
Well, what?
[Mum] Do you?
I don't have a girlfriend. No.
That's a shame.
I don't have a girlfriend because I'm not into girls,
[clears throat] into women.
What do you mean?
I mean...
I'm gay. [chuckles]
As in homosexual?
As in that, yeah.
- Really? - Yeah.
Since when?
Uh, since a long time.
How long?
Forever.
You don't look gay.
Well, I'm not sure what that means.
It means what it means. You know what it means.
[Adam chuckles]
Well, bet you're glad
you don't know the neighbors now.
Hmm. I must admit I'm a bit surprised.
Not really sure what I feel about it.
What, you didn't, didn't think it would be a possibility?
No, of course not.
What parent wants to think that about their child?
No parent that I know.
Well, I'm very okay with it, so.
But aren't people nasty to you?
Um, no, no.
No, things are different now.
What, so they aren't nasty?
Not out loud, anyway.
Well, does everybody know?
I mean, are you open about it? I mean...
I don't know, down the High Street at WHSmith's?
Well, it depends on the, on the street.
Yeah. Everybody knows, everyone's fine.
Well, don't you want to get married and have kids?
I can have kids.
Men can marry. Women, too.
What, to each other?
- Yeah. - Why?
What do you mean "why"?
Well, isn't that like having your cake and eating it?
So, do you want to get married and have kids?
I don't know. It wasn't a possibility
for such a long time.
So, I didn't think it was worth the effort
of wanting to get married and have kids.
[chuckles]
[Mum] Huh.
Oh. [mumbles]
[water running]
- You okay? - Hmm, I'm fine.
Sure?
[exhales] I suppose I never did know what was going on
in that odd little head of yours.
You were always running away. Do you remember?
Yeah.
[Mum] There was that time
that you got as far as the train station,
but then you'd lost your money
and so you couldn't buy a ticket.
Do you remember that?
[Adam] Yes, it was Granny's five-pound note.
Yeah, that was it.
Where were you hoping to go?
Don't know.
London, I guess.
[Mum] London?
God.
Oh, there was that time that you got as far as
the bottom of the garden, but then you cut your thumb
on an old milk bottle and you came running back up
all sheepish with blood all over your shirt,
and you were banging and banging
- on that window to be let in. - Yeah.
There it is.
Just.
[Adam sniffles] Hmm.
They say it's a very lonely kind of life.
[tense music playing]
They don't actually say that anymore.
[Mum] So, you're not lonely?
If I am, it's not because I'm gay.
Not really.
Not really.
Oh, God. And what about this awful, ghastly disease?
I've seen the adverts on the, on the news, and the,
and with the gravestone.
Should I be worried about that?
No. Jesus.
Everything's different now.
Everything's different.
Well, I guess I wouldn't know about that.
Your clothes will be dry now.
You should take these flapjacks with you,
if you want. I won't be eating them.
[train whooshing]
[pensive music playing]
[Adam grunts]
[shoes thudding on floor]
[elevator dings]
[pensive music playing]
What's wrong?
[elevator dings]
I'm okay.
I just got a bit of a chill.
Hey, you're hot.
Yeah.
I was just, I was just...
I just got caught in the rain.
Okay.
Well, why don't I run you a hot bath?
My nan says there's literally nothing
a hot bath couldn't solve.
I don't really like baths.
Fuck off. Who doesn't like baths?
[water running]
You don't need to be shy around me.
Yes, that's easier said than done.
[Harry chuckles]
Would you like me to close my eyes?
- Yes, please. - Okay. [chuckles]
Better?
- Yeah. - [Harry] Hmm.
[Harry] Been thinking about you all week, today.
[Adam] Hmm.
[Harry] Was thinking about
watching crappy TV with you on a Friday night.
[Harry] Eating takeaway on your sofa.
Watching all the episodes of Top of the Pops
from before I was born.
[both chuckling]
[Harry] Yeah. I thought about something else, too.
Thought about fucking you.
- Yeah? - [Harry] Yeah.
Or you fuck me. I don't really care which.
Are you into that?
Yeah.
It's okay if you're not. We all don't need to be into fucking.
Well, I wasn't for the longest time,
for obvious reasons.
[Harry] Obvious reasons?
I thought that if I fucked anybody, I'd die.
It's probably pretty difficult for you to imagine, isn't it?
[Harry] A little.
[Harry moaning]
[moaning]
[Adam] Yeah. Come on.
[gentle music playing]
You said the other day you don't see your dad much.
Yeah.
What about your mum?
Yeah, same.
How come?
They know you're queer?
Yeah, course.
- [Adam] Are they okay with it? - Yeah.
They're okay.
I mean, they're really old school.
Probably less okay than everyone's meant to be.
Yeah. But they got used to it, sort of, it's just,
they don't say too much.
You could say that I have
drifted to the edge.
Or right up to the edge, almost.
Over the edge.
What's that mean?
I'm edge of the family.
My sister and her kids,
and my older brother, who just got married,
they've all, they got this spot in the center.
But it's okay.
[Adam] Why is it okay?
Because,
I don't go home much.
Does that make you sad?
Um. No, I think it's just inevitable, really.
Why?
[chuckling]
Um... [inhales]
I've always felt like a stranger in my own family.
And then
coming out just puts a name
to that difference that's always been there.
So, in the end,
it's not really anyone's fault.
Hmm. What's wrong?
It's funny.
Things are better now. Course they are,
but doesn't take much to make you feel the way you felt,
back there again, skin all raw.
Am I still hot?
[Harry] Just a little.
You wanna stay the night?
[Harry chuckles]
[trees rustling]
[inaudible conversation]
[doorbell ringing]
[Dad] Sure she won't be long.
It's okay.
Just wanted to talk to her.
Yeah, I know you do.
This was your granddad's favorite.
I never really liked it much at the time,
but it's grown on me.
If you wanna see your mum really lose her shit,
go ahead and break that bloody thing.
["l Don't Want to Set the World on Fire" playing]
Come on, then, lad. Sit yourself down.
♪ I don't want
♪ To set the world on fire ♪
♪ I just want to start... I
Well, she told you, then?
Was scared you wouldn't come back.
But you know what your mum's like.
You know, don't be, don't be too disappointed in her.
No, I'm not.
Yeah, she just needs to rearrange some things in her head,
and all the stories that she's built up.
Yeah. She'll soon realize it's not actually about her.
What about you?
What about me?
What do you think?
Well, I mean, it was hardly a shock.
I always knew you were a bit tutti-frutti.
Couldn't throw a ball for shit,
no matter how many times I tried to teach you.
- Jesus. - Couldn't for shit.
Couldn't do it.
You make me sound like a horrible cliché.
Well, can you throw a ball?
- Not at all. - Well, there you go.
[Adam chuckles]
[Dad chuckles]
♪ To set the world on fire... ♪
Would you have liked me to have known?
I don't know.
I would hear you crying in your room after school.
Did the boys bully you, then?
Not just the boys.
What would they do?
Oh, call me a girl,
ignore me, refuse to play with me,
stick my head down the toilet,
flick drawing pins in my face.
Christ's sake.
Yeah. Well, you know,
kids are little cunts, aren't they?
[clears throat]
♪ And that one desire is you ♪
♪ And I know... ♪
So, why didn't you come into my room
if you heard me crying?
Why didn't you tell me what was happening at school?
You know, you answer me first.
Be honest.
I just didn't want to think of you as the kind of boy
that the other lads would pick on.
And I knew that if I was at your school,
I'd probably have picked on you, too.
Yeah, I think I always probably thought that, anyway.
Probably why I didn't tell you
what was happening to me at school.
♪ Set the world on... ♪
Well...
♪ Fire ♪
[Dad exhales]
♪ I just want to start ♪
♪ Aflame... I
- [music stops] - You know, when she told me,
it did make me think about all the jokes that we make,
and, you know, we did impressions
of your English teacher,
when he'd mince around with his limp wrist.
[chuckles]
You told me not to cross my legs,
like a woman, over, and over, and over again.
Did 1?
[Adam] Yeah, I still...
Still think about it every time I cross my legs.
I have good memories, too.
[Dad] Yeah, I hope so. Fuck.
I hope so. I hope you did. [chuckles]
Remember you used to love decorating the tree.
[Dad chuckles]
That's...
[Adam] You were crazy for it, every year.
And you'd always let me, um,
put the fairy on top of the tree.
The fairy. I did.
[clock ticking]
[Dad sobs]
I'm sorry I never came in your room when you were crying.
No, really, it's okay.
[Dad] No, it's not okay, though, really, is it?
- It's not. - Dad. Dad, I get it.
It was, it was so long...
[sobbing]
[voice breaks] It was so long ago. Stop!
[sobs]
Can I hug you now?
Yeah, please.
[sniffles]
[sniffling]
[Dad] You're all right, son.
You're all right.
[pensive music playing]
[Harry chuckles]
[Adam] After this,
I wanna go out.
You,
- and me... - [Harry moaning]
- [Adam] ...together... - [Harry chuckling]
[Adam] ...into the world.
["l Want a Dog" by Pet Shop Boys playing over speakers]
[indistinct chattering]
♪ My dog will bark at any passersby ♪
♪ Oh, you can get lonely ♪
♪ I want a dog... ♪
- What do you want to drink? - Uh... A pint.
Thank you.
Sorry.
Whoops, sorry.
Sorry.
Ah, fuck. I've missed this feeling.
I can't hear ya.
Do you dance?
If I'm wasted enough.
Then let's get wasted enough.
[dance music playing]
C'mon.
[Harry] Yeah.
[Adam] Where'd you get this?
[Harry] Found it in my wallet.
Fuck knows how long it's been there.
[sniffs]
[sniffs]
I think that's ketamine.
- Really? - Mmm-hmm.
Have you done it before?
No.
- Will you look after me? - I'll do my best.
- Okay. That'll have to do. - Okay.
["Death of a Party" by Blur playing over speakers]
♪ The death of the party ♪
♪ Came as no surprise ♪
♪ Why did we bother I
♪ Should have stayed away ♪
♪ Another night ♪
♪ And I thought well well ♪
♪ Go to another party ♪
♪ And hang myself ♪
♪ Gently on the shelf ♪
[inaudible conversation]
♪ Another night ♪
♪ And I thought well well ♪
♪ Go to another party ♪
♪ And hang myself ♪
♪ Gently on the shelf ♪
♪ Another party ♪
♪ And I thought well well ♪
♪ Go to another party ♪
♪ And hang myself ♪
♪ The death of the party ♪
♪ Came as no surprise ♪
- [music goes off tune] - [tempo drops]
[screaming]
[music fades out]
[man on TV speaking indistinctly]
[man on TV] ...for the next 30 minutes,
some surely good tunes coming your way.
Like down here, we have
at number four, The Pet Shop Boys
and You Were Always on My Mind.
["Always on My Mind" by Pet Shop Boys playing on TV]
[fire crackling]
- [Dad grunts] - [Mum] Adam.
What's wrong?
Oh, you're really hot.
No, he's really hot.
What?
Now, here you go.
Come on.
Squeeze in, squeeze in, squeeze in.
♪ Little things I should have said and done ♪
♪ I never took the time ♪
♪ You were always on my mind ♪
♪ You were always on my mind ♪
[singing] ♪ Maybe I didn't hold you ♪
♪ All those lonely, lonely times ♪
♪ And I guess I never told you ♪
♪ I'm so happy that you're mine ♪
♪ If I made you feel second best ♪
♪ I'm so sorry I was blind ♪
♪ You were always on my mind ♪
♪ You were always on my mind ♪
[both singing] ♪ Tellme ♪
♪ Tell me that your sweet love hasn't died ♪
♪ Give me ♪
♪ One more chance to keep you satisfied ♪
♪ Satisfied ♪
[Dad vocalizing]
Okay, get together.
Yeah. Yeah. Are you ready? I'm gonna press it.
Okay, it's going.
All right, we have to be quick ‘cause it goes off in a sec.
It's about ten seconds.
- Merry Christmas. - Merry Christmas.
- Here we go! - Merry Christmas. [chuckles]
- Merry Christmas! - Go...
♪ You were always on my mind ♪
♪ Tellme ♪
[music slows down, goes off tune]
Is this real?
[Mum] Does it feel real?
Yeah.
There you go, then.
[Adam] For how long, though?
I can't answer that.
I suppose we don't get to decide when it's over.
[Adam] You're not going out now, are you?
[Mum echoes] Where would we go?
The Walshes'.
[Mum] The Walshes'?
The Walshes'.
[Adam] No, no. Wait.
Promise me you're not gonna go out now.
[Mum] I promise.
We're just gonna be asleep next door.
Promise. [echoes]
All right?
Get some sleep.
[door closes]
[sighs]
[Adam] No.
[knocking on door]
[Mum] What is it, sweetheart?
I can't sleep.
Well, do you wanna get in?
- Can 1? - Course you can.
[Dad grunts]
Still smells the same in here.
You'd creep in here night after night,
saying you couldn't sleep.
You're always scared of something.
Murderers breaking in, or rabies,
or nuclear war.
Do people still get rabies?
- No. - Oh!
I was desperate for you to grow up
just so I could get a good night's sleep.
[clock ticking]
Sorry.
What are you sorry for?
I'm the sorry one.
I should've relished you driving me bananas.
Where did you go?
You know, afterwards.
I lived with Granny.
She took me to Dublin.
Yeah, I thought so.
Why didn't you live with his lot?
Why didn't you live with Granny May?
They said she was too heartbroken.
About what?
Well, she'd lost her son.
Oh, I see. But my mother was fine
about losing her only daughter?
No, no.
She was not fine.
I just can't believe that she
got to look after you and I didn't.
Are any of them still around now?
No.
Guess they wouldn't be, would they?
And how did you get on over there with Mum?
Did you manage to fit in better at school?
I made sure I did.
I hate that we weren't around
when you needed us most, sweetheart.
And I hate even more
that I wasn't there before that, not really.
No, that's not true.
Come on. Well, I was hardly Mother of the Year, was I?
But I like to think that
I would've got better at it in time.
You know, given time.
You know, when I was a teenager,
or even later, into my twenties,
I used to plot it all out.
What do you mean?
What we might've done together
in intricate detail. Trips to the Whitgift Centre,
birthdays,
trips to London,
the Planetarium, the London Dungeon.
Oh, I always wanted to go there.
[chuckles]
- I know. - [chuckles]
There were holidays
that we might've gone on together.
Did we make it to Disneyland?
We did.
When I was 14.
- It rained nonstop. - Oh!
And they shut down Space Mountain.
And we fought every day.
Why did we have to fight?
Because that's what everyone did with their parents.
They fought and bickered
and pretended that they
were ruining each other's lives.
Did we make up?
No, we didn't need to make up.
We were together,
SO,
so it didn't matter.
You okay?
- [sobs] no. - [Dad] You're okay, son.
You're okay.
What are you doing here?
You're not supposed to be here.
[vehicle approaching]
[gravel crunching]
[car door opens]
[indistinct radio chatter]
[door closes]
[indistinct radio chatter]
[knocking at door]
[phone ringing]
[gasps]
[eerie music playing]
[indistinct announcement on PA]
[eerie music playing]
[coughing]
[brakes squealing]
[screaming]
[Adam] Mum? Mum?
- [yells] - [Harry shushing]
[Adam breathing heavily]
You're okay.
You're okay.
[Adam sobbing]
- What day... What day is it? - Sunday.
Why is it...
How come... How... Why is it still Sunday?
[Harry] You kept screaming out for your parents
over and over again in the club.
And then
I didn't know what to do, so I just
took you back here and lay with you till you fell asleep.
[Adam breathing heavily]
[Harry] You looked so scared.
I am.
[Harry] Hey, come here. Come here.
Hey, come here.
- [shushing] - [Adam groaning]
I'm here. It's okay.
[Adam crying]
[Adam continues crying]
You're okay.
[Adam] I was sleeping in their bed
the night they went out.
I was meant to go with them.
To Christmas drinks at the Walshes'.
Around midnight, um,
two police came to the door. A man and a woman.
He had really beautiful, kind eyes
and this thick, dark stubble.
Looked like it had been drawn on.
The car skidded on black ice. [sighs]
Both of them had been drinking.
Dad was killed right away, but they took Mum to, uh,
Saint Mary's in Croydon, and she died a few days later.
Did you get to see her?
What do you mean? To say goodbye?
Mmm-hmm. Yeah.
No.
My granny thought it would be too scarring.
[Adam sniffles]
Mum went through the windscreen
and she lost an eye,
so she was pretty fucked up.
Jesus.
Yeah.
I went looking for that eye.
I don't know why. Didn't want anyone else to find it.
Thought it would be on the side of the road.
[chuckling]
staring up at me. "Hi." [chuckles]
I did find a tiny piece
of the windscreen glass, though.
In my head, it had blood on it,
but maybe that's not true.
The nurse said that Mum woke up
just before she died.
She must've been so confused. Can't hardly see and...
Dad wasn't there, I wasn't there.
I can't even begin to imagine how you felt.
How lonely you must've been.
Yeah, but, like, I'd always felt lonely,
even before.
This was a new feeling.
Like...
a terror,
that I'd always be alone now.
And then, as I got older, that feeling just,
just solidified.
Just a...
Just a knot here all the time.
And then losing them,
it just got tangled up with all the other stuff,
about being gay,
and just feeling like...
the future doesn't matter.
Does that make sense?
Yeah.
Mmm-hmm.
I know how easy it can be to stop caring about yourself.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Adam.
Will you come with me?
[chuckles]
Where to?
Just let me show you.
[doorbell ringing]
Whose house is this?
My parents'.
Yeah. Who lives here now?
It's okay. Don't worry.
Hello?
Adam.
[knocking on door]
[Adam] Hello?
- Where are they? - [Harry] Who?
[Adam] Hello?
[Harry] Who?
[Adam] My parents.
This is our house. This is our kitchen.
This is our wallpaper. That's our table where we had
fish and chips every Friday night
so my mother could pretend
we were still Catholic.
Adam, I want to go home. Let me take you home.
- This is my home. - No, it used to be.
- It's not anymore. Adam! - Mum?
- Dad? - Adam, listen.
Let me take you home.
You go home!
You go home. I'm not going.
[Adam] Where are they?
Where are they?
[banging on door]
Mum?
- Adam, stop it. - Dad?
[eerie music playing]
[Adam] Can you see them?
Let me in.
Please.
Please let me in.
Please let me in.
[glass shattering]
[Dad whispering] He has to stop now.
He has to get on with his life.
He can't keep coming here.
We're not allowing him to get on with his life.
[Mum whispering] I think we are helping him.
[Dad] No, we're not. It's not normal.
- It's not... - Why didn't you let us in?
Where is he? Is he here? Is Harry here?
[Mum] No.
We did see him, though.
But I wanted you to meet him.
I know, but I don't think this works like that.
Looked like a handsome fellow, though.
Is he your special friend?
Do you mean my boyfriend?
Is he my boyfriend? You can say it.
Okay. Well, is he your boyfriend?
Um... Uh, I don't know.
Are you in love with him?
[Adam chuckles]
Why is that so strange?
I don't know, I've never been in love before, so...
Not really.
So, this...
I don't know if this is it.
[Mum] Sweetheart.
Well,
he certainly seems to care about you a whole heap,
in my not so humble opinion.
Do you think you'd like to be in love with him?
Yeah?
[soft music playing]
- Son, I think we... - No.
Don't say it.
- Please don't say it. - No, we have to.
We have to.
Um...
Me and your mum,
we think that it's best you don't come visit us anymore.
All right.
You're just gonna keep coming and coming, I know you are.
And we can see what this is doing to you.
It's not doing anything to me.
Yes, itis.
It won't let you move on.
Okay, well, I'll come less.
I'll come once a year. I'll come at Christmas.
Come on, lad, we...
You have to have known that this wasn't gonna last forever.
I'm not asking for it to last forever.
I'm just...
It hasn't been long enough.
Hasn't been close to long enough.
I know, but it never could be, could it?
Hey, listen.
I've got an idea.
How's about...
How's about we go to your favorite place
in the whole bloody world, huh?
I'm sure it's still open.
It's the next best thing to Disneyland.
It's fucking cheaper too.
[Adam laughing]
[Adam sighs]
What do you think?
[engine whirring]
["If I Could See the World (Through the Eyes of a Child)" playing]
♪ If I could see the world ♪
♪ Through the eyes of a child I
♪ What a wonderful world ♪
♪ This would be ♪
♪ There'd be no trouble...
[Adam] Uh, can I get the "family special," please?
[server] That's a lot of food.
That's okay.
Not really very hungry.
- No, me neither. - No.
Hey, I wanna ask you something.
- God, no, don't ask. - No, no, I'm gonna ask him.
- Was it quick? - Oh, Jesus.
- I told you not to ask. - You're the... You wanna know.
Yeah, but what if it was slow and horribly painful?
- Yeah, but what difference does it make? - Ilt makes a big difference.
[Adam] It was quick.
- Was it? - [Adam] Yeah.
For both of us?
Mmm-hmm.
[Mum] No, you don't seem sure.
Don't be fibbing now.
It was quick.
It was really quick.
Well, okay.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, but that's a relief, isn't it? Of sorts.
It's been playing on my mind, that has.
What do you think we should say
to each other? [chuckles]
Not sure I have much wisdom to share.
I don't know, maybe, Adam being older,
should be sharing some with us.
Maybe we shouldn't say anything.
Maybe.
Although, I will say that getting
to know you has made us very proud, son.
I haven't done anything to be proud of.
- I've just muddled through. - No, but you got through.
Some tough times, I'm sure,
and you're still here.
That's what we're proud of.
Yeah.
Dad?
[Dad] Hmm?
Stay. Stay. Stay a bit longer.
[Dad] No, I don't think so, son.
[Mum] Love you, darling.
You do?
Sometimes, I wasn't so sure.
Whatever problems we had,
I'm glad we got to be together at the end.
Me too.
Now, I...
I know I was never good at saying it.
I just couldn't get the words out.
I do love you very much.
Somehow, even more, now that I know you.
It's important that you believe me.
I do.
[voice breaks] And I love you very much.
Dad?
[patting on hand]
Dad, did... Dad, did you hear that?
[Mum sobs] Oh, Adam, are you there?
I can't see you. Why can't I see you?
I'm here, Mum.
[Mum] Oh, there you are.
I can feel you.
Skin's lovely and warm.
Now, you listen.
You promise me
that you're gonna try with this Harry boy.
Yeah.
I'd have liked him. I know it.
He might need a bit of taking care of, mind you.
He's got such a sad face.
- Do you hear me? - Yeah.
Yeah, I hear you.
That's good.
I hope you make each other a bit happier.
Such a kind and gentle boy.
- [server] Enjoy. - Thank you.
[Adam exhales]
[somber music playing]
[beeps]
[music fades out]
[TV static buzzing]
[buzzing stops]
[dripping]
Harry?
[ominous music playing]
[coughing]
[door rattles, opens]
What are you doing down here?
I came to find you.
Why are you here?
l... I said goodbye to them, so I came to see you.
[Harry exhales]
[Harry groans]
- It's okay. - [Harry] It's not okay, though, is it?
I was so scared that night. I just needed to not be alone.
I know.
I'm sorry.
I was too scared
to let you in.
I'm in there, aren't I?
- Let's just go upstairs. - No, no, no.
I just need you to tell me, okay?
Because I can smell it. I can...
taste it in my throat.
[exhales]
How come no one found me?
Where was my mum and my dad?
- I found you... - [voice breaks] I know,
but I... Adam, I don't want you
to see me like that in there. It's...
You're not in there. You're not in there.
You're not in there.
You're here.
You're here.
You're here.
With me.
Let's just go upstairs.
[Harry chuckles]
I saw her, you know.
Your mum.
Your dad, too, at the house.
They saw you, too.
They did?
Mmm-hmm.
My dad says you're a handsome fellow.
[Harry chuckling]
Hmm.
[Adam] They'd have loved you.
They both would.
That's good.
Did you get to say what you wanted to say?
I don't know, but I got to be with them.
[Harry] It's good that you were all together.
Yeah.
I'm scared.
I know.
But I'm here with you.
[Harry] Don't let this get tangled up again.
Okay, come on.
Okay.
[grunting]
[exhales]
It's so quiet.
Never could stand how quiet this place was.
Will you put a record on?
- What would you like? - You choose.
["The Power of Love" playing]
"I'll protect you from the hooded claw."
"Keep the vampires from your door."
♪ Ay, ay, ay, ay ♪
♪ Feels like fire ♪
♪ I'm so in love with you ♪
♪ Dreams are like angels ♪
♪ They keep bad at bay, bad at bay ♪
♪ Love is the light ♪
♪ Scaring darkness away, yeah ♪
♪ I'm so in love with you ♪
♪ Purge the soul ♪
♪ Make love your goal ♪
♪ The power of love ♪
♪ A force from above ♪
♪ Cleaning my soul ♪
♪ Flame on, burn desire ♪
♪ Love with tongues of fire ♪
♪ Purge the soul ♪
♪ Make love your goal ♪
♪ I'll protect you from the hooded claw ♪
♪ Keep the vampires from your door ♪
♪ When the chips are down I'll be around ♪
♪ With my undying, death-defying love for you ♪
♪ Envy will hurt itself ♪
♪ Let yourself be beautiful ♪
♪ Sparkling love, flowers and pearls and pretty girls I
♪ Love is like an energy ♪
♪ Rushin' an' rushin' inside of me, eh ♪
♪ The power of love ♪
♪ A force from above ♪
♪ Cleaning my soul ♪
♪ Flame on, burn desire ♪
♪ Love with tongues of fire ♪
♪ Purge the soul ♪
♪ Make love your goal ♪
♪ This time we go sublime ♪
♪ Lovers entwine, divine, divine ♪
♪ Love is danger, love is pleasure
♪ Love is pure, the only treasure ♪
♪ I'm so in love with you Purge the soul ♪
♪ Make love your goal ♪
♪ The power of love ♪
♪ A force from above ♪
♪ Cleaning my soul ♪
♪ The power of love ♪
♪ A force from above ♪
♪ A sky-scraping dove ♪
♪ Flame on, burn desire ♪
♪ Love with tongues of fire ♪
♪ Purge the soul ♪
♪ Make love your goal ♪
♪ I'll protect you from the hooded claw ♪
♪ Keep the vampires from your door ♪
More About All of Us Strangers (2023)
Memory, Identity, and the 1980s
This discussion delves into All of Us Strangers, exploring its themes of memory, identity, and the lasting influence of the past. The conversation highlights how memories evolve with us and how the film invites viewers to reflect on their pasts and how they shape the present. Ultimately, All of Us Strangers is a reminder that while the past is always with us, it also offers opportunities for growth and self-understanding.
All Of Us Strangers (2023) - Memory, Identity, and the 1980s
All right, so we're diving into another deep dive, and today it's all about
all of us strangers. This film that's been generating quite a buzz lately, and you know,
it's based on a Japanese novel, Strangers. But the director, Andrew Haig, he didn't just like adapt
the story, you know, he kind of took it and wove in his own memories, his own experiences. And
we're going to explore how he did that, focusing on how the film uses memory and personal history,
even the setting of his childhood home, to make something really unique.
Yeah, it's interesting, you know, the original novel, Strangers, by Tachi Yamada, presents this
very cool concept, you know, an adult encounters their parents at the same age as them. And Haig
took that idea and, you know, he infused it with elements of his own life, his relationship with
his parents, exploring themes of family dynamics coming to terms with the past.
So the novel, Strangers, is kind of like the jumping off point. Then Haig takes that,
sort of fantastical premise and makes it really personal. And what really struck me was that he
chose to film in his actual childhood home. Can you imagine the emotional impact of that?
The psychological impact of childhood homes is, I mean, it's huge, right? Those spaces are
intertwined with our earliest memories. You know, our sense of self, our relationships with our
family. So for Haig, returning to that environment, it must have been like stepping into a time
capsule, you know, allowing him to tap into those deep-seated emotions and memories.
It's like the house itself becomes a character in the film. And then they recreate the 1980s
setting in these incredible details. They use old photos and they even found specific items from
Haig's memories to give it that authentic 80s feel.
You know, that meticulous attention to detail goes beyond just aesthetics, I think. By recreating the
80s so thoroughly, Haig is using sensory details as a bridge to the past. Music clothes, even the
way things were arranged in the house, they all have the power to evoke these really vivid memories
and transport us back to that time. The actors even talked about feeling
transported back in time because of the set design. But I read that Haig didn't want to go
overboard with like, you know, the 80s cliches, like the typical 80s stuff. Instead, he went with
a subtle, realistic style, like a snapshot of everyday life for just a regular family living
in that era. That's a smart approach.
Yeah. Because it avoids falling into that trap of nostalgia for nostalgia's sake.
You are right. Instead, the 80s setting becomes a backdrop
for exploring deeper themes. Take, for instance, the way people dressed back then.
Oh, yeah. You know, the muted tones, the structured clothing.
It reflects a certain restraint. Yeah.
Which kind of mirrors how the characters in the film struggle to express their true feelings.
So the 80s setting isn't just like a visual thing. It's like a commentary almost on the
emotional landscape of the film. Exactly.
That's really insightful. It makes me think about the cultural context of that era,
especially in terms of masculinity and how emotions were expressed or not expressed.
Exactly. The film kind of subtly hints at these societal pressures of the time.
Yeah. Right.
Particularly for men, there was this expectation to conform to a certain image of masculinity.
Yeah. Which often involves
suppressing emotions and vulnerability. And Haig, growing up in that era, would have
experienced those pressures firsthand. Oh, absolutely.
It adds a whole other layer to his exploration of memory and identity in the film.
Right. This is already getting so fascinating.
Yeah. But before we get too deep into, like,
you know, the 80s. Yeah.
Let's circle back to the heart of the story, this concept of reparenting.
So reparenting, in the context of this film, refers to the idea of revisiting and potentially
reframing your relationship with your parents as an adult.
Okay. Often with a deeper understanding
of their complexities and your own. Okay.
The novel and the film both delve into this concept, you know, exploring how our perceptions
of our parents and their actions can shift as we mature.
So it's not about literally going back in time and, like, you know.
Right. Changing things.
It's more about gaining a new perspective on the past.
Yeah. And how it shaped us.
Precisely in the film, the main characters encounter with his parents at the same age as him.
It serves as this catalyst for re-evaluating the relationship.
Okay. It forces him to confront his childhood
perceptions and potentially gain a deeper understanding of their actions and motivations.
So it's like he's given a chance to see things from their perspective.
Yeah. To have a conversation that maybe he
couldn't have had as a child. Right.
And that ties into this whole idea the film is like a meditation on memory and identity.
You're absolutely right. The film is essentially asking
how much of who we are today is shaped by our past?
And can we ever truly escape the influence of our memories?
Those are some pretty heavy questions. Yeah.
But I think that's what makes this film so compelling.
Right. It's not afraid to
delve into those existential themes. Exactly. And by weaving in those elements
of his own life and memories, Haig makes those themes even more poignant and personal.
All right. I'm hooked. Let's dive deeper into how Haig explores
memory and the past in All of Us, Strangers. I'm ready to unpack this even further.
Let's do it. There's so much more to explore from the symbolism of the house
to the nuanced way the film portrays the fallibility of memory.
And we're back continuing our deep dive into All of Us, Strangers,
where Andrew Haig took this concept of reparenting
and kind of wove it into this whole tapestry of memory and identity.
We left off talking about how going back to his childhood home must have unlocked
so many memories for him. And it makes me think about how our memories, they aren't always
reliable. You know, they can be fuzzy, they can be fragmented, even completely fabricated sometimes.
That's so true. Memory is a very slippery concept. It's not like a video recording
that perfectly captures the past. Right.
It's more like a puzzle. Yeah.
With missing pieces. And our brains are trying to fill in those gaps.
Yeah. Sometimes with inaccurate or incomplete information.
So even when we think we're remembering something,
clearly our brains could be playing tricks on us.
Absolutely. There's a whole field of research dedicated to the fallibility of memory.
Wow. Elizabeth Loftus,
a renowned cognitive psychologist, has done some groundbreaking work in this area,
demonstrating how susceptible our memories are to suggestion and distortion.
That's kind of unsettling, but it makes sense when you think about
how our emotions and perceptions can color the way we remember things.
Exactly. And All of Us Strangers plays with this idea in some really fascinating ways.
By having the main character confront his parents as younger versions of themselves,
the film forces him and us as viewers to question the narratives we've built around our own pasts.
It's like he's given this second chance to understand his parents,
not just as authority figures from his childhood,
but as these complex individuals who are also shaped by their own experiences.
Precisely. And that ties into the film's exploration of reparenting.
You know? Yeah.
It's about recognizing that our parents were once young and
figuring things out just like we are now.
There's this scene where the main character, he finds his childhood diary.
And reading those entries, you can almost see those memories flooding back for him,
both good and bad. It made me think about how certain objects can
act as these triggers for our memories.
Objects, places, even smells can act like keys that unlock these very specific memories.
Yeah.
It's as if our memories are stored in this vast network,
and these sensory details act as pathways to retrieve those stored experiences.
So the diary becomes like a portal to the past for him.
Yes.
Helping him piece together his own history and confront those unresolved emotions.
And the film doesn't shy away from the fact that revisiting the past can be painful.
Right.
There's a line that really stuck with me. Memories are like ghosts.
They're never quite what they seem.
That's so true. Sometimes we romanticize the past, you know,
forgetting the challenges and complexities that we faced back then.
It's easy to look back on our childhoods with this sense of nostalgia.
But All of Us Strangers reminds us that even these seemingly idyllic times can
hold these hidden sorrows and unspoken truths.
The 1980s, for example, are often portrayed as like this carefree decade.
Right.
But as we discussed earlier, the film uses that 80s setting
to subtly comment on the social pressures and unspoken rules of that time,
particularly around gender and emotional expression.
And for Haig, who grew up in that era, that 80s setting is likely very personal.
He's not just recreating a time period.
He's exploring how the cultural norms of that era impacted his own coming of age experience.
Especially as a gay man coming of age in a time when
societal acceptance was much different than it is today.
Exactly. It adds another layer of complexity to the film's exploration of identity.
Right.
It's not just about individual memories.
Yeah.
It's about how those memories intersect with the larger social and historical context.
So it's like our personal stories are always
unfolding against this backdrop of a larger cultural narrative.
We're shaped by our families, our communities and the times in which we live.
All of Us Strangers invites us to consider those intersections to
reflect on how our own memories and identities have been shaped by the world around us.
So we've got this blend of personal and societal influences
all wrapped up in this mystery of the original ghost story.
It's almost like Haig is holding up a mirror to us,
urging us to examine our own pasts and how they've shaped who we are today.
It's not just entertainment. It's a call to self-reflection.
And that brings us to another key aspect of the film.
It's a unique tone and atmosphere.
Right.
It's not your typical horror film, is it?
Definitely not.
I would describe it more as like a melancholic meditation on
lost grief and the enduring power of the past.
It's beautifully shot with this dreamlike quality that really draws you in.
You get the sense that we're being invited to grieve alongside the main character,
to feel the weight of his loss and the bitter nature of his journey back into the past.
And the visual style reinforces that tone with its muted colors, soft lighting,
and those almost ethereal transitions between scenes.
There's that one scene where he's walking through his childhood home,
and it's almost like he's floating detached from the present moment.
It blurs the lines between reality and memory, past and present.
Exactly.
It highlights how our memories aren't just these static images or events.
Right.
They're part of our ongoing experience,
shaping our perceptions and influencing our emotions in these subtle ways.
This deep dive has been incredibly insightful.
We've uncovered so many layers of meaning in All of Us Strangers,
from its literary inspiration to the nuanced way it portrays
memory identity and the complexities of family relationships.
It's been fascinating to unpack all of this with you.
It just goes to show that even a seemingly simple story
can contain a wealth of insights and complexities just waiting to be discovered.
We've covered so much ground already, but I feel like there's still so much more to explore.
We haven't even touched on the ending of the film,
which I know left some viewers with a lot of questions.
I'm intrigued.
What aspects of the ending are you most curious about?
Well, for one, I'm wondering how you interpret that final scene
where we were talking about how All of Us Strangers isn't like a typical horror movie.
It's more of a meditation on loss and the power of the past.
And that ending, oh man, it definitely left me with some questions.
Yeah, the ending is really interesting.
It doesn't tie everything up neatly.
Right.
Which I think adds to the film's impact.
It leaves you thinking about reality, memory, and the possibility of second chances.
Exactly.
So without giving too much away for anyone listening,
I'm curious what you thought about that last scene where it seems like
the main character has a choice to make.
Stay in the past or go back to the present.
That scene is so powerful.
It speaks to that universal desire to go back to certain moments in our lives.
Maybe to do things differently or to see people we've lost again.
But it also makes you wonder, is it really possible to change the past?
And should we even try?
Yeah. Is it a real chance or is it just a trick of the mind?
Escaping from reality for a little bit.
I love that the film doesn't give us a clear answer.
It lets each person decide what they think.
It makes us wrestle with those big questions ourselves.
It's like the director saying, here's something to think about.
Figure it out for yourself.
There's no right or wrong answer.
And that makes it even more powerful, right?
Absolutely.
It stays with you after the movie is over.
You keep thinking about your own life and the choices you've made.
Yeah. It's a film that you can watch again and again and talk about with other people you know.
Yeah.
Every time you see it, you might pick up on new things or see it in a new way.
I know. I want to watch it again after this deep dive.
It's amazing how much we've talked about.
Right.
Just from these few sources, it shows you how deep and complex this film is.
It really shows the director's skill and the power of storytelling
to bring up these big emotions and questions.
Not just entertainment.
It's about engaging with the important parts of life.
Before we finish up, I have to ask,
what was the most interesting thing for you out of all of this?
Was there something that really resonated with you personally?
You know what really stood out to me was this idea that
memories, they aren't stuck in time.
Yeah.
They're always changing as we change.
Right.
That hit home for me because it reminds us that our past doesn't define us.
We can look at those memories differently and use them to help us move forward.
That's such a powerful thought.
You know, it's like we aren't just controlled by our past.
Yeah.
We can learn from it and become who we want to be.
And that message, I think, is really important today
when we're constantly getting so much information, you know?
And it can feel like the past is weighing us down both personally and as a society.
It feels like all of us strangers is offering some hope.
It shows us that even though the past can be hard,
it can also help us grow and understand things.
It's a reminder that we're all always changing and becoming something new.
Yeah.
Very well said.
And I think that's a good place to wrap up this deep dive.
Okay.
But before we go, I have one last thought for everyone listening.
Oh, I like this.
Imagine you could go back to a certain time or place in your own past.
Where would you go and why?
What would you want to learn or experience?
That's a great question.
Yeah.
It really makes you think about the film personally
and what parts of your own past you'd want to go back to or look at again.
Yeah.
Maybe there are feelings you need to deal with,
lessons to learn, or just a desire to reconnect with your younger self.
All of us strangers shows us that the past never really goes away.
It's a part of us and shapes who we are now and who we will be.
So to everyone listening, pay attention to the memories that come up.
Embrace them.
Think about them and let them help you understand yourself better.
Until next time, keep exploring.
all of us strangers. This film that's been generating quite a buzz lately, and you know,
it's based on a Japanese novel, Strangers. But the director, Andrew Haig, he didn't just like adapt
the story, you know, he kind of took it and wove in his own memories, his own experiences. And
we're going to explore how he did that, focusing on how the film uses memory and personal history,
even the setting of his childhood home, to make something really unique.
Yeah, it's interesting, you know, the original novel, Strangers, by Tachi Yamada, presents this
very cool concept, you know, an adult encounters their parents at the same age as them. And Haig
took that idea and, you know, he infused it with elements of his own life, his relationship with
his parents, exploring themes of family dynamics coming to terms with the past.
So the novel, Strangers, is kind of like the jumping off point. Then Haig takes that,
sort of fantastical premise and makes it really personal. And what really struck me was that he
chose to film in his actual childhood home. Can you imagine the emotional impact of that?
The psychological impact of childhood homes is, I mean, it's huge, right? Those spaces are
intertwined with our earliest memories. You know, our sense of self, our relationships with our
family. So for Haig, returning to that environment, it must have been like stepping into a time
capsule, you know, allowing him to tap into those deep-seated emotions and memories.
It's like the house itself becomes a character in the film. And then they recreate the 1980s
setting in these incredible details. They use old photos and they even found specific items from
Haig's memories to give it that authentic 80s feel.
You know, that meticulous attention to detail goes beyond just aesthetics, I think. By recreating the
80s so thoroughly, Haig is using sensory details as a bridge to the past. Music clothes, even the
way things were arranged in the house, they all have the power to evoke these really vivid memories
and transport us back to that time. The actors even talked about feeling
transported back in time because of the set design. But I read that Haig didn't want to go
overboard with like, you know, the 80s cliches, like the typical 80s stuff. Instead, he went with
a subtle, realistic style, like a snapshot of everyday life for just a regular family living
in that era. That's a smart approach.
Yeah. Because it avoids falling into that trap of nostalgia for nostalgia's sake.
You are right. Instead, the 80s setting becomes a backdrop
for exploring deeper themes. Take, for instance, the way people dressed back then.
Oh, yeah. You know, the muted tones, the structured clothing.
It reflects a certain restraint. Yeah.
Which kind of mirrors how the characters in the film struggle to express their true feelings.
So the 80s setting isn't just like a visual thing. It's like a commentary almost on the
emotional landscape of the film. Exactly.
That's really insightful. It makes me think about the cultural context of that era,
especially in terms of masculinity and how emotions were expressed or not expressed.
Exactly. The film kind of subtly hints at these societal pressures of the time.
Yeah. Right.
Particularly for men, there was this expectation to conform to a certain image of masculinity.
Yeah. Which often involves
suppressing emotions and vulnerability. And Haig, growing up in that era, would have
experienced those pressures firsthand. Oh, absolutely.
It adds a whole other layer to his exploration of memory and identity in the film.
Right. This is already getting so fascinating.
Yeah. But before we get too deep into, like,
you know, the 80s. Yeah.
Let's circle back to the heart of the story, this concept of reparenting.
So reparenting, in the context of this film, refers to the idea of revisiting and potentially
reframing your relationship with your parents as an adult.
Okay. Often with a deeper understanding
of their complexities and your own. Okay.
The novel and the film both delve into this concept, you know, exploring how our perceptions
of our parents and their actions can shift as we mature.
So it's not about literally going back in time and, like, you know.
Right. Changing things.
It's more about gaining a new perspective on the past.
Yeah. And how it shaped us.
Precisely in the film, the main characters encounter with his parents at the same age as him.
It serves as this catalyst for re-evaluating the relationship.
Okay. It forces him to confront his childhood
perceptions and potentially gain a deeper understanding of their actions and motivations.
So it's like he's given a chance to see things from their perspective.
Yeah. To have a conversation that maybe he
couldn't have had as a child. Right.
And that ties into this whole idea the film is like a meditation on memory and identity.
You're absolutely right. The film is essentially asking
how much of who we are today is shaped by our past?
And can we ever truly escape the influence of our memories?
Those are some pretty heavy questions. Yeah.
But I think that's what makes this film so compelling.
Right. It's not afraid to
delve into those existential themes. Exactly. And by weaving in those elements
of his own life and memories, Haig makes those themes even more poignant and personal.
All right. I'm hooked. Let's dive deeper into how Haig explores
memory and the past in All of Us, Strangers. I'm ready to unpack this even further.
Let's do it. There's so much more to explore from the symbolism of the house
to the nuanced way the film portrays the fallibility of memory.
And we're back continuing our deep dive into All of Us, Strangers,
where Andrew Haig took this concept of reparenting
and kind of wove it into this whole tapestry of memory and identity.
We left off talking about how going back to his childhood home must have unlocked
so many memories for him. And it makes me think about how our memories, they aren't always
reliable. You know, they can be fuzzy, they can be fragmented, even completely fabricated sometimes.
That's so true. Memory is a very slippery concept. It's not like a video recording
that perfectly captures the past. Right.
It's more like a puzzle. Yeah.
With missing pieces. And our brains are trying to fill in those gaps.
Yeah. Sometimes with inaccurate or incomplete information.
So even when we think we're remembering something,
clearly our brains could be playing tricks on us.
Absolutely. There's a whole field of research dedicated to the fallibility of memory.
Wow. Elizabeth Loftus,
a renowned cognitive psychologist, has done some groundbreaking work in this area,
demonstrating how susceptible our memories are to suggestion and distortion.
That's kind of unsettling, but it makes sense when you think about
how our emotions and perceptions can color the way we remember things.
Exactly. And All of Us Strangers plays with this idea in some really fascinating ways.
By having the main character confront his parents as younger versions of themselves,
the film forces him and us as viewers to question the narratives we've built around our own pasts.
It's like he's given this second chance to understand his parents,
not just as authority figures from his childhood,
but as these complex individuals who are also shaped by their own experiences.
Precisely. And that ties into the film's exploration of reparenting.
You know? Yeah.
It's about recognizing that our parents were once young and
figuring things out just like we are now.
There's this scene where the main character, he finds his childhood diary.
And reading those entries, you can almost see those memories flooding back for him,
both good and bad. It made me think about how certain objects can
act as these triggers for our memories.
Objects, places, even smells can act like keys that unlock these very specific memories.
Yeah.
It's as if our memories are stored in this vast network,
and these sensory details act as pathways to retrieve those stored experiences.
So the diary becomes like a portal to the past for him.
Yes.
Helping him piece together his own history and confront those unresolved emotions.
And the film doesn't shy away from the fact that revisiting the past can be painful.
Right.
There's a line that really stuck with me. Memories are like ghosts.
They're never quite what they seem.
That's so true. Sometimes we romanticize the past, you know,
forgetting the challenges and complexities that we faced back then.
It's easy to look back on our childhoods with this sense of nostalgia.
But All of Us Strangers reminds us that even these seemingly idyllic times can
hold these hidden sorrows and unspoken truths.
The 1980s, for example, are often portrayed as like this carefree decade.
Right.
But as we discussed earlier, the film uses that 80s setting
to subtly comment on the social pressures and unspoken rules of that time,
particularly around gender and emotional expression.
And for Haig, who grew up in that era, that 80s setting is likely very personal.
He's not just recreating a time period.
He's exploring how the cultural norms of that era impacted his own coming of age experience.
Especially as a gay man coming of age in a time when
societal acceptance was much different than it is today.
Exactly. It adds another layer of complexity to the film's exploration of identity.
Right.
It's not just about individual memories.
Yeah.
It's about how those memories intersect with the larger social and historical context.
So it's like our personal stories are always
unfolding against this backdrop of a larger cultural narrative.
We're shaped by our families, our communities and the times in which we live.
All of Us Strangers invites us to consider those intersections to
reflect on how our own memories and identities have been shaped by the world around us.
So we've got this blend of personal and societal influences
all wrapped up in this mystery of the original ghost story.
It's almost like Haig is holding up a mirror to us,
urging us to examine our own pasts and how they've shaped who we are today.
It's not just entertainment. It's a call to self-reflection.
And that brings us to another key aspect of the film.
It's a unique tone and atmosphere.
Right.
It's not your typical horror film, is it?
Definitely not.
I would describe it more as like a melancholic meditation on
lost grief and the enduring power of the past.
It's beautifully shot with this dreamlike quality that really draws you in.
You get the sense that we're being invited to grieve alongside the main character,
to feel the weight of his loss and the bitter nature of his journey back into the past.
And the visual style reinforces that tone with its muted colors, soft lighting,
and those almost ethereal transitions between scenes.
There's that one scene where he's walking through his childhood home,
and it's almost like he's floating detached from the present moment.
It blurs the lines between reality and memory, past and present.
Exactly.
It highlights how our memories aren't just these static images or events.
Right.
They're part of our ongoing experience,
shaping our perceptions and influencing our emotions in these subtle ways.
This deep dive has been incredibly insightful.
We've uncovered so many layers of meaning in All of Us Strangers,
from its literary inspiration to the nuanced way it portrays
memory identity and the complexities of family relationships.
It's been fascinating to unpack all of this with you.
It just goes to show that even a seemingly simple story
can contain a wealth of insights and complexities just waiting to be discovered.
We've covered so much ground already, but I feel like there's still so much more to explore.
We haven't even touched on the ending of the film,
which I know left some viewers with a lot of questions.
I'm intrigued.
What aspects of the ending are you most curious about?
Well, for one, I'm wondering how you interpret that final scene
where we were talking about how All of Us Strangers isn't like a typical horror movie.
It's more of a meditation on loss and the power of the past.
And that ending, oh man, it definitely left me with some questions.
Yeah, the ending is really interesting.
It doesn't tie everything up neatly.
Right.
Which I think adds to the film's impact.
It leaves you thinking about reality, memory, and the possibility of second chances.
Exactly.
So without giving too much away for anyone listening,
I'm curious what you thought about that last scene where it seems like
the main character has a choice to make.
Stay in the past or go back to the present.
That scene is so powerful.
It speaks to that universal desire to go back to certain moments in our lives.
Maybe to do things differently or to see people we've lost again.
But it also makes you wonder, is it really possible to change the past?
And should we even try?
Yeah. Is it a real chance or is it just a trick of the mind?
Escaping from reality for a little bit.
I love that the film doesn't give us a clear answer.
It lets each person decide what they think.
It makes us wrestle with those big questions ourselves.
It's like the director saying, here's something to think about.
Figure it out for yourself.
There's no right or wrong answer.
And that makes it even more powerful, right?
Absolutely.
It stays with you after the movie is over.
You keep thinking about your own life and the choices you've made.
Yeah. It's a film that you can watch again and again and talk about with other people you know.
Yeah.
Every time you see it, you might pick up on new things or see it in a new way.
I know. I want to watch it again after this deep dive.
It's amazing how much we've talked about.
Right.
Just from these few sources, it shows you how deep and complex this film is.
It really shows the director's skill and the power of storytelling
to bring up these big emotions and questions.
Not just entertainment.
It's about engaging with the important parts of life.
Before we finish up, I have to ask,
what was the most interesting thing for you out of all of this?
Was there something that really resonated with you personally?
You know what really stood out to me was this idea that
memories, they aren't stuck in time.
Yeah.
They're always changing as we change.
Right.
That hit home for me because it reminds us that our past doesn't define us.
We can look at those memories differently and use them to help us move forward.
That's such a powerful thought.
You know, it's like we aren't just controlled by our past.
Yeah.
We can learn from it and become who we want to be.
And that message, I think, is really important today
when we're constantly getting so much information, you know?
And it can feel like the past is weighing us down both personally and as a society.
It feels like all of us strangers is offering some hope.
It shows us that even though the past can be hard,
it can also help us grow and understand things.
It's a reminder that we're all always changing and becoming something new.
Yeah.
Very well said.
And I think that's a good place to wrap up this deep dive.
Okay.
But before we go, I have one last thought for everyone listening.
Oh, I like this.
Imagine you could go back to a certain time or place in your own past.
Where would you go and why?
What would you want to learn or experience?
That's a great question.
Yeah.
It really makes you think about the film personally
and what parts of your own past you'd want to go back to or look at again.
Yeah.
Maybe there are feelings you need to deal with,
lessons to learn, or just a desire to reconnect with your younger self.
All of us strangers shows us that the past never really goes away.
It's a part of us and shapes who we are now and who we will be.
So to everyone listening, pay attention to the memories that come up.
Embrace them.
Think about them and let them help you understand yourself better.
Until next time, keep exploring.
Love, Loss and Connection
In this clip the actors and director discuss the film’s distinct concept, which explores familial and romantic love and how past experiences influence current relationships.
The production team also discusses the film’s visual and auditory elements, such as set design, cinematography, and music. These elements are designed to create a dream-like atmosphere that brings forth feelings of memory and nostalgia.
All Of Us Strangers (2023) - Love, Loss and Connection
You're often single.
Am I often single?
Mm-hmm.
I suppose so, aren't you?
Are you?
Yeah.
But not for want of trying.
Hello, I'm Andrew Scott.
And I'm Paul Meskell.
Our new movie is All of Us Strangers.
And mark it.
Camera set, and action!
You all right?
No, yeah, yeah.
Just having a look.
Hi, Paul.
Hi.
So what was your first response to Andrew
Hay's script?
My first feeling was that it was the
most extraordinarily original script.
It is about Adam, who is a screenwriter.
He lives in a new apartment block in
London.
I wouldn't say he's depressed, but he's certainly
kind of locked himself away from the world.
One night, he meets Harry.
Saw you looking at me from the street.
I've seen you a bunch of times.
Come on in, don't let me throw you
down.
Harry lives in the tower block with Adam.
He should be a lot happier than he
is.
I think their kind of loneliness mirrors each
other.
Is your mom and dad?
Yeah.
They died just before I was 12.
I'm trying to write about them at the
moment.
How's it going?
Strangely.
He decides to go back to his childhood
home.
And he comes across his parents, who are
long dead.
And he sees them as they did when
they died.
So they are now younger than he is.
And a relationship starts to develop between him
and his parents.
Everybody can relate to that idea of wanting
to go back and to redefine what your
relationship with your parents was.
That sort of starts the story for him,
where he starts to open himself up to
find love.
So it's about his two different forms of
love, sort of familial love that we all
experience when we're children, and then kind of
romantic adult love, those two things affect each
other, and how you maybe can't give yourself
over to full adult love if you haven't
reconciled some stuff in your childhood.
I'm assuming you're not with anyone.
I never see you with anyone.
Andrew Scott was choice number one.
So he was the sort of perfect Adam.
So that was pretty much a dream that
we got him.
There's very few people that could carry off
a lot of the sort of internal emotions
he has to play in this movie.
I liked the idea that Adam's life was
going in a good direction in the 90s
and the noughties and was feeling good.
And then it started to get more and
more complicated as he's got older.
So he has stopped living within the world
in any kind of productive way.
I'd always felt lonely.
This is a new feeling, like terror, that
I'd always be alone now.
I feel like all of Andrew Scott's choices
and everything that I've ever seen have been
nothing but interesting.
It's so satisfying to work with somebody that
you've admired kind of from afar for so
long.
And you realize, oh, there's nothing.
He is just, I think, perfect in this
film.
Drink.
It's Japanese.
I think that's a good idea.
How about we come in anyway?
If not for a drink, then for whatever
else you might want.
Harry, who's in his mid-twenties, kind of
hides behind being sex-positive and sex-forward
and kind of fun.
Do I scare you?
No.
You don't have to do anything if I'm
not your type.
Paul's just a great actor.
I think he has a really interesting mix
of sensitivity and strength.
You don't need to be shy around me.
Yes, that's easier said than done.
Would you like me to close my eyes?
Yes, please.
There was a spark to Harry and an
openness to Harry that Adam doesn't have.
And I think you're always drawn to someone
that offers something different than what you have.
I think they're both very vulnerable people.
They talk a lot about their experiences as
children.
And I think it's one of those things
where they immediately love each other.
Thinking about you all each today.
I was thinking about watching crappy TV with
you on a Friday night.
Watching old episodes of Top of the Pops
from before I was born.
One of the challenges for me and Paul
to play was how do you play chemistry
without giving away too much biography?
I think both of us really like the
idea of playing love.
That's a very beautiful thing to get to
play.
So when you were thinking about Adam and
Harry, how did you first consider approaching that?
It's funny even talking about it now.
I have such an enormous affection for them.
They feel like friends.
Yeah, exactly.
That we don't see anymore.
Yeah, because they're not real.
They're fictional characters.
They're fictional characters.
You know, chemistry exists on screen when the
actors are good.
And they're both very, very good actors.
So I was never afraid that there wouldn't
be that chemistry.
They were funny because they became thick as
thieves very quickly.
You're like, wow, they're just hanging out all
the time.
They bonded incredibly quickly and found exactly where
they could sit with their characters.
And therefore how their characters might sit with
each other in the film.
I suppose we take it for granted about
how easy we found it.
Because we were sitting on that bed laughing
for a lot of it.
Also, it didn't feel like it felt organic.
And it's only when we're talking about the
film now that it's a takeaway that many
people have.
But it felt like the building of a
major relationship that I'm going to have for
the rest of my life.
I'm scared.
I know.
But I'm here with you.
Shall we go?
Go where?
Home.
The project was originally based on a book
called Strangers by a Japanese author, Tachi Yamada.
I've always wanted to work with Andrew.
So it was simpatico that Andrew really responded
to the material as well.
And then really made it his own, I
have to say.
Because it's a big departure from the book.
What I loved about it was this central
conceit about someone, an adult, meeting their parents
again when essentially they are the same age
as him.
So I love that idea of basically meeting
your parents, reparenting again.
Guess who I found loitering in the park?
Is it him?
Oh yeah, it's definitely him.
Yes, it is you.
Hi.
Hi.
What I made sense of it as is
that they are real for him and they
are real in their own way.
And also in the way that dreams make
sense.
If you dream of someone who was a
loved one who's deceased, it doesn't make it
any less real or important to you when
you wake up.
The way that me and Claire, specifically as
his mum and dad, who are technically apparitions,
is that we are just living in the
moment.
We are not considering that this has a
finite time on it.
That's what I loved about it when Andrew
came to me, is that it's just when
your son comes home, you're just so happy
that he's there, that you just you sink
right back into the normalcy.
It's so bloody lovely to see you again.
Why should we ever would?
Adam's character misses his parents.
It's as simple as that.
And he has memories of his childhood, obviously.
He has memories with them, but they are
fading as time goes on.
So there was a certain kind of mixture
of memory and nostalgia and desperate need and
all of those things within this relationship.
So we essentially get to live Adam's teenage
life again with him as he's reimagining or
re-experiencing his past.
God, look at you.
You were just a boy.
But now you're not.
You're totally different, but it's still you.
The big question that people ask is, was
it weird to have people who are younger
than you playing people that are older than
you?
And not at all.
It wasn't in any way strange.
They both just embraced those characters so brilliantly.
I think all four of us really, I
don't know, it sounds ridiculous to say, but
really enjoy acting.
It's not all actors do, aren't you?
A little bit like, oh, well.
Oh, I agree, yeah.
I just felt like my job in it
was to try and access the sort of
boyish part of me, the childish part of
me.
They just made it so easy for me.
The age thing kind of never felt odd.
We just treated him like he was our
kid.
A kid that has all this life experience
now, all this perspective.
I'm not sure I have much wisdom to
share.
I don't know, maybe Adam being older should
be sharing some with us.
It's so funny, Andrew kind of came back
behind the cameras a couple of times to
talk to me and Claire, and he, I
think it was on the first day, and
he was just kind of like, it just
feels so weird.
It just kind of feels like you're his
parents.
He made everyone feel so safe and assured.
And after our first sort of rehearsal, very
brief rehearsal, I just never really questioned it
after that.
We felt like a family, really, really.
We felt like a family, yeah.
Really bizarre.
Yeah, are you ready?
I'm going to press it.
Merry Christmas.
Merry Christmas.
Here we go.
Merry Christmas.
Merry Christmas.
Cut.
Cut, good.
Very nice.
Have you got a girlfriend?
I'm gay.
As in homosexual?
As in that, yeah.
Really?
Yeah.
Since when?
Oh, since a long time.
How long?
Forever.
It gets complicated as the film goes on
because his parents never really knew the real
Adam.
And so he has to try and become
known by his parents.
And that can be a troubling and difficult
thing.
Aren't people nasty to you?
No, no.
Things are different now.
Well, so they aren't nasty?
Not allowed, anyway.
I really connect to a lot of it
personally.
Being a gay person myself, those experiences of
hoping that your family will stay with you
when you tell them who you are.
I think everybody wants to feel connected to
their family.
They weren't angels.
They were real people who, if they were
living now, would be much older and have
certain values and sort of beliefs.
So they have to sort of evolve as
the film evolves.
They say it's a very lonely kind of
life.
They don't actually say that anymore.
Kids, to a certain degree, are a reflection
of what you manage to provide for them.
You know, I think as a parent, you
don't want to make mistakes, but you will.
You tell me not to cross my legs
like a woman over and over and over
again.
Do they?
Yeah, I still think about it every time
I cross my legs.
And what I like about what Adam has
to deal with is that we come to
listen to him and come to respect him.
And in a way, kind of come to
set him free.
I'm sorry I never came in your room
when you were crying.
It's OK, Dad, I get it.
It was so long.
It was so long ago.
I felt very physically comfortable with them because
I think a child would.
Yeah.
As he gets to know them better, he
actually becomes much more tactile with them.
And as he's learning a new kind of
physicality with Harry, it becomes more physical as
the movie moves on.
And I think that's a really important part
of the storytelling.
I love them and I'll think of them
as my sexy mum and dad as usual.
Can I hug you now?
Yeah, please.
Hello, I'm Andrew.
Sorry.
Hello, I'm Andrew Scott.
Hello, I'm Andrew Scott.
And I'm Paul Meskell.
Oh, no, you say that.
Sweetheart, you came back.
Of course I came back.
When I was writing the script, I was
imagining a house.
And it just happened to be that the
house I was imagining was my own childhood
house.
And we got a location manager on.
So that process is one where you go,
fantastic.
It says in the script, suburban house, Saunders
dead.
Can you find one?
And the starting point was Andrew Hague's original
house he actually grew up in.
And who knew that we were going to
end up filming in exactly the house where
he grew up, exactly where he was the
age of the story.
Initially, I wasn't going to film in it.
And then I thought, OK, but I want
to set it in the area where I
used to live, which is just outside of
Croydon.
It was a really odd experience being in
there.
But I do think it helped the film.
I think it helped the actors.
I think it was fascinating for them to
think that they were within the place that
I used to be a kid in.
Typically of Andrew, he didn't really make too
much of a big deal out of that.
I kept thinking, is this extraordinary for you?
And he was like, no, no, it's, you
know, just turning into a film set.
But it's an incredibly brave thing to do.
It feels that we're given an opportunity to
kind of fully immerse into Andrew's old life
and get to play these parts that he's
written so beautifully for us.
It was a really unusual experience, not one
I'd actually repeat ever again.
I don't ever want to go back there.
The one thing that was really strange was
sitting in my old bedroom and then hearing
the film crew all around, setting up things,
talking about the scenes, all that kind of
thing.
And it was such a strange feeling to
think that this is where I was when
I was, like, six, seven years old.
And the idea that you'd be back here
all that time later filming in this house
is so insane, completely insane.
This is real.
Does it feel real?
Yeah.
There you go then.
The house was like a sort of capsule
to the 80s.
I mean, it really was like going back
in time.
The design team, the costume team were sort
of painstaking in their research.
When I went into Adam's childhood bedroom, there
were so many things in there that I
had in my own childhood bedroom.
I was taking pictures of them and sending
them to my siblings, going, oh my God,
you remember this?
And they just did that really beautifully.
It was easy for us all to recapture
the 80s.
Basically, we've all got photos.
So we just looked at old photos from
that time and saw how we used to
look and what our houses were like and
where we used to live.
You know, obviously things from Andrew's childhood that
he should have, the very specific albums that
he wanted, you know, certain books of his
dressing, just bits and bobs and, you know,
all certain games that he'd reference.
For the hairstyles and the makeup, Andrew Haig
didn't want to go overt the 80s.
So when I initially did a mood board
for him, I did lots of very 80s
style, big perms, big hair.
And he was like, no, no, no, let's
not go the typical cliched 80s.
Let's just rein it back in.
I think everyone really enjoyed it because, you
know, quite a few of the crew were
around in the 80s growing up.
So we were all able to sort of
put our own little stamp on it in
there.
I would say it was a really fun
one in terms of that.
And the rest of it was pretty much
all shot down in Sandestead, which is just
outside Croydon.
We shot in the park that's always been
there.
We're going to have some wind blowing and
these that will suddenly just like stop.
Then you feel like someone's looking behind you
and you turn around and he's kind of
standing here.
There's a shopping centre in Croydon that I
remember going to as a kid a lot.
Croydon, there's a slightly strange out of time
feeling about it.
It's like a vision of the future that
was made in the 60s.
In London itself, we did a little bit
of shooting.
68 Charlie, take two.
Action.
We're basically the only ones here.
Can you believe that?
I mean, they haven't got security guards yet.
The modern side of the film is in
this giant tower block, which is in Stratford
in East London.
It's such a key part of the story
because it really symbolises the characters feeling very
disconnected from the world.
So we all had a real vision in
mind and then it was very tricky to
find the right thing.
So we did have to build it as
a set.
Having scouted about 800 tower blocks.
I like shooting on location as well as
my preference.
I much, much prefer it, but it's very
hard to shoot in a high rise apartment
because they're a nightmare to light and you
need to have lights outside and it's very,
very difficult.
So I knew we were going to have
to probably build a set for that.
The question you always have is what's going
to be outside that apartment.
And in the olden days, one might've put
what's called green screen there, which means you
can drop in an outside environment.
We had a new technique on this, which
was just a myriad of extraordinary TV screens,
all locked together.
We shot plates from the apartment block that
we were basing our apartment block on.
And then they became the backdrop that was
on this LED wall that surrounded the apartment
that we built on the set.
You're giving the actors context on what they
can be experiencing outside.
They can use that to plant their performance,
just to be able to take a completely
black studio and then you're creating the most
intimate of scenes where anybody who watches it
would never question what's beyond the walls of
the set.
There's such a beauty and an honour to
that.
I think that when you live in some
of those apartments, it's very easy to feel
very isolated from everybody else and feel like
there is nobody else.
For both of the characters, they feel like
they've been pushed away from home for various
reasons.
And that leads, I think, to a kind
of sense of isolation in your life.
I don't go home much.
That makes sense.
I've always felt like a stranger in my
own family.
I suppose I never did know what was
going on in that odd little head of
yours.
You were always running away.
Do you remember?
Yeah.
I took a pretty naturalistic approach to how
the film is shot.
We shot on 35.
Nobody ever wants to shoot on film because
it's expensive.
But for me, it was really important.
It has, film inherently has a texture and
a feeling and this is a film about
the past.
You know, they listen to records and they
are looking at photographs and it sort of
is a way to access the past, I
think, if you shoot it in a certain
way.
It doesn't feel like pastiche or anything, but
just allows you to feel like this is
closer to memory.
It's funny, it doesn't take much to make
you feel the way you felt back there
again, skin all raw.
I felt it was important to be able
to represent this idea of memory and nostalgia
because that's such a big part of the
idea that there's this sort of gilding that
one puts on a memory that I thought
this is also something I wanted to represent
in the cinematography.
You're dealing with the real world and a
very surreal layer on top of this world.
And that was another element that I really,
I felt that I needed to represent in
some manner and I thought perhaps that could
be more the way the image felt in
terms of lighting and perhaps the lens choice
and things like that.
It's definitely got a kind of tone to
it that, you know, we've worked on in
terms of how we do the sound design.
Wait, you promised me you're not going to
go out now.
I promise.
You have to be a filmmaker when you're
making film scores.
You have to think about what the film
is saying and what's the best way to
serve that.
Coming from the conversation with Andrew about the
nature of memory, when you remember something, it's
never fully clear.
It's often also a small element of one
day that you're going to remember, a specific
element and the rest is a little bit
blurry, a little bit harder to define.
And it felt right that the film was
going to be a little bit more like
that.
I think the music had this sense of
not being fully real, not being fully anchored
with our reality, but really helping the audience
to drift off in a sense of like
a dream-like quality.
What was super important editorially was to have
this feeling of dislocation.
Adam goes down to the park, he sees
his father and it's this kind of odd
sense of, is this happening in real time?
Is this, who is this person?
You're asking questions about who this person is,
but also where you are in time.
For an audience, if you can get them
to be part of that journey, that makes
for a very successful film.
You're active with the main character, you're feeling
their feelings in a sense and you're discovering
all the things that are new in front
of them with them.
Will you come with me?
Where to?
I think that the journey of a man
who is essentially isolated and has built a
world of isolation due to bereavement at a
young age, his journey to love feels incredibly
positive.
The truth of the film to me is
I spent a lot of this film incredibly
happy.
Yeah.
Like the sadness of the film is in
the tone and the style of direction, but
a lot of our stuff together...
Absolutely.
I think we had to consciously play against
the sadness of it, but ultimately they're beginning
an incredibly healthy relationship.
The love story is beautiful and great and
how we should embrace love and take that
risk and gamble on it because you never
know where it can send you and that's
what's so exciting and thrilling about it.
Are you in love with him?
I don't know, I've never been in love
before, so I don't know if this is
it.
You think you'd like to be in love
with him?
Andrew's film is very specific and it's very
personal to him, the journey.
I think that it has really universal themes.
I think we've all had people in our
lives that perhaps we'd like another chance with
and that's what I think is beautiful about
the film.
It is telling a wider story about relationships
and parental relationships and being a kid and
also romantic relationships and it is about love
and in all its forms and how they're
interconnected.
There's no doubt in my mind that I
think queer audiences will respond to it because
of the subject matter, the isolation of being
a gay person in a family, but it's
also just about families as well.
Absolutely.
It's a film about human experience, probably rooted
in the queer experience to me.
Yes, exactly, and that's not as...
We're much more similar to each other than
we allow ourselves to believe so I hope
films like this just really just blow that
up.
I think it would be incredibly disappointing to
me if this was a film that simply
existed and I don't think it will exist
in the lexicon of queer cinema.
It's dealing with way more than just that.
It's human condition.
Yeah, it's about life and death.
It's about life and love and grief.
I think there's a very beautiful, extraordinary film
here that is unlike anything else and I'm
excited for audiences to see that.
The films that I like and the films
that I want to make lead to more
questions when the film is over.
I want people to leave the cinema and
think about their own relationships, both as a
parent, as a child, as a partner, you
know, as a friend, whatever that might be,
and how this film might reflect on their
lives like that.
That's the kind of thing I love when
you, you know, four days later suddenly remember
something in the film and go, you know
what, maybe I should call my mum or
maybe I should be nicer to my boyfriend
or maybe I should do this or whatever
that might be.
I want to go out, you and me,
together into the world.
Am I often single?
Mm-hmm.
I suppose so, aren't you?
Are you?
Yeah.
But not for want of trying.
Hello, I'm Andrew Scott.
And I'm Paul Meskell.
Our new movie is All of Us Strangers.
And mark it.
Camera set, and action!
You all right?
No, yeah, yeah.
Just having a look.
Hi, Paul.
Hi.
So what was your first response to Andrew
Hay's script?
My first feeling was that it was the
most extraordinarily original script.
It is about Adam, who is a screenwriter.
He lives in a new apartment block in
London.
I wouldn't say he's depressed, but he's certainly
kind of locked himself away from the world.
One night, he meets Harry.
Saw you looking at me from the street.
I've seen you a bunch of times.
Come on in, don't let me throw you
down.
Harry lives in the tower block with Adam.
He should be a lot happier than he
is.
I think their kind of loneliness mirrors each
other.
Is your mom and dad?
Yeah.
They died just before I was 12.
I'm trying to write about them at the
moment.
How's it going?
Strangely.
He decides to go back to his childhood
home.
And he comes across his parents, who are
long dead.
And he sees them as they did when
they died.
So they are now younger than he is.
And a relationship starts to develop between him
and his parents.
Everybody can relate to that idea of wanting
to go back and to redefine what your
relationship with your parents was.
That sort of starts the story for him,
where he starts to open himself up to
find love.
So it's about his two different forms of
love, sort of familial love that we all
experience when we're children, and then kind of
romantic adult love, those two things affect each
other, and how you maybe can't give yourself
over to full adult love if you haven't
reconciled some stuff in your childhood.
I'm assuming you're not with anyone.
I never see you with anyone.
Andrew Scott was choice number one.
So he was the sort of perfect Adam.
So that was pretty much a dream that
we got him.
There's very few people that could carry off
a lot of the sort of internal emotions
he has to play in this movie.
I liked the idea that Adam's life was
going in a good direction in the 90s
and the noughties and was feeling good.
And then it started to get more and
more complicated as he's got older.
So he has stopped living within the world
in any kind of productive way.
I'd always felt lonely.
This is a new feeling, like terror, that
I'd always be alone now.
I feel like all of Andrew Scott's choices
and everything that I've ever seen have been
nothing but interesting.
It's so satisfying to work with somebody that
you've admired kind of from afar for so
long.
And you realize, oh, there's nothing.
He is just, I think, perfect in this
film.
Drink.
It's Japanese.
I think that's a good idea.
How about we come in anyway?
If not for a drink, then for whatever
else you might want.
Harry, who's in his mid-twenties, kind of
hides behind being sex-positive and sex-forward
and kind of fun.
Do I scare you?
No.
You don't have to do anything if I'm
not your type.
Paul's just a great actor.
I think he has a really interesting mix
of sensitivity and strength.
You don't need to be shy around me.
Yes, that's easier said than done.
Would you like me to close my eyes?
Yes, please.
There was a spark to Harry and an
openness to Harry that Adam doesn't have.
And I think you're always drawn to someone
that offers something different than what you have.
I think they're both very vulnerable people.
They talk a lot about their experiences as
children.
And I think it's one of those things
where they immediately love each other.
Thinking about you all each today.
I was thinking about watching crappy TV with
you on a Friday night.
Watching old episodes of Top of the Pops
from before I was born.
One of the challenges for me and Paul
to play was how do you play chemistry
without giving away too much biography?
I think both of us really like the
idea of playing love.
That's a very beautiful thing to get to
play.
So when you were thinking about Adam and
Harry, how did you first consider approaching that?
It's funny even talking about it now.
I have such an enormous affection for them.
They feel like friends.
Yeah, exactly.
That we don't see anymore.
Yeah, because they're not real.
They're fictional characters.
They're fictional characters.
You know, chemistry exists on screen when the
actors are good.
And they're both very, very good actors.
So I was never afraid that there wouldn't
be that chemistry.
They were funny because they became thick as
thieves very quickly.
You're like, wow, they're just hanging out all
the time.
They bonded incredibly quickly and found exactly where
they could sit with their characters.
And therefore how their characters might sit with
each other in the film.
I suppose we take it for granted about
how easy we found it.
Because we were sitting on that bed laughing
for a lot of it.
Also, it didn't feel like it felt organic.
And it's only when we're talking about the
film now that it's a takeaway that many
people have.
But it felt like the building of a
major relationship that I'm going to have for
the rest of my life.
I'm scared.
I know.
But I'm here with you.
Shall we go?
Go where?
Home.
The project was originally based on a book
called Strangers by a Japanese author, Tachi Yamada.
I've always wanted to work with Andrew.
So it was simpatico that Andrew really responded
to the material as well.
And then really made it his own, I
have to say.
Because it's a big departure from the book.
What I loved about it was this central
conceit about someone, an adult, meeting their parents
again when essentially they are the same age
as him.
So I love that idea of basically meeting
your parents, reparenting again.
Guess who I found loitering in the park?
Is it him?
Oh yeah, it's definitely him.
Yes, it is you.
Hi.
Hi.
What I made sense of it as is
that they are real for him and they
are real in their own way.
And also in the way that dreams make
sense.
If you dream of someone who was a
loved one who's deceased, it doesn't make it
any less real or important to you when
you wake up.
The way that me and Claire, specifically as
his mum and dad, who are technically apparitions,
is that we are just living in the
moment.
We are not considering that this has a
finite time on it.
That's what I loved about it when Andrew
came to me, is that it's just when
your son comes home, you're just so happy
that he's there, that you just you sink
right back into the normalcy.
It's so bloody lovely to see you again.
Why should we ever would?
Adam's character misses his parents.
It's as simple as that.
And he has memories of his childhood, obviously.
He has memories with them, but they are
fading as time goes on.
So there was a certain kind of mixture
of memory and nostalgia and desperate need and
all of those things within this relationship.
So we essentially get to live Adam's teenage
life again with him as he's reimagining or
re-experiencing his past.
God, look at you.
You were just a boy.
But now you're not.
You're totally different, but it's still you.
The big question that people ask is, was
it weird to have people who are younger
than you playing people that are older than
you?
And not at all.
It wasn't in any way strange.
They both just embraced those characters so brilliantly.
I think all four of us really, I
don't know, it sounds ridiculous to say, but
really enjoy acting.
It's not all actors do, aren't you?
A little bit like, oh, well.
Oh, I agree, yeah.
I just felt like my job in it
was to try and access the sort of
boyish part of me, the childish part of
me.
They just made it so easy for me.
The age thing kind of never felt odd.
We just treated him like he was our
kid.
A kid that has all this life experience
now, all this perspective.
I'm not sure I have much wisdom to
share.
I don't know, maybe Adam being older should
be sharing some with us.
It's so funny, Andrew kind of came back
behind the cameras a couple of times to
talk to me and Claire, and he, I
think it was on the first day, and
he was just kind of like, it just
feels so weird.
It just kind of feels like you're his
parents.
He made everyone feel so safe and assured.
And after our first sort of rehearsal, very
brief rehearsal, I just never really questioned it
after that.
We felt like a family, really, really.
We felt like a family, yeah.
Really bizarre.
Yeah, are you ready?
I'm going to press it.
Merry Christmas.
Merry Christmas.
Here we go.
Merry Christmas.
Merry Christmas.
Cut.
Cut, good.
Very nice.
Have you got a girlfriend?
I'm gay.
As in homosexual?
As in that, yeah.
Really?
Yeah.
Since when?
Oh, since a long time.
How long?
Forever.
It gets complicated as the film goes on
because his parents never really knew the real
Adam.
And so he has to try and become
known by his parents.
And that can be a troubling and difficult
thing.
Aren't people nasty to you?
No, no.
Things are different now.
Well, so they aren't nasty?
Not allowed, anyway.
I really connect to a lot of it
personally.
Being a gay person myself, those experiences of
hoping that your family will stay with you
when you tell them who you are.
I think everybody wants to feel connected to
their family.
They weren't angels.
They were real people who, if they were
living now, would be much older and have
certain values and sort of beliefs.
So they have to sort of evolve as
the film evolves.
They say it's a very lonely kind of
life.
They don't actually say that anymore.
Kids, to a certain degree, are a reflection
of what you manage to provide for them.
You know, I think as a parent, you
don't want to make mistakes, but you will.
You tell me not to cross my legs
like a woman over and over and over
again.
Do they?
Yeah, I still think about it every time
I cross my legs.
And what I like about what Adam has
to deal with is that we come to
listen to him and come to respect him.
And in a way, kind of come to
set him free.
I'm sorry I never came in your room
when you were crying.
It's OK, Dad, I get it.
It was so long.
It was so long ago.
I felt very physically comfortable with them because
I think a child would.
Yeah.
As he gets to know them better, he
actually becomes much more tactile with them.
And as he's learning a new kind of
physicality with Harry, it becomes more physical as
the movie moves on.
And I think that's a really important part
of the storytelling.
I love them and I'll think of them
as my sexy mum and dad as usual.
Can I hug you now?
Yeah, please.
Hello, I'm Andrew.
Sorry.
Hello, I'm Andrew Scott.
Hello, I'm Andrew Scott.
And I'm Paul Meskell.
Oh, no, you say that.
Sweetheart, you came back.
Of course I came back.
When I was writing the script, I was
imagining a house.
And it just happened to be that the
house I was imagining was my own childhood
house.
And we got a location manager on.
So that process is one where you go,
fantastic.
It says in the script, suburban house, Saunders
dead.
Can you find one?
And the starting point was Andrew Hague's original
house he actually grew up in.
And who knew that we were going to
end up filming in exactly the house where
he grew up, exactly where he was the
age of the story.
Initially, I wasn't going to film in it.
And then I thought, OK, but I want
to set it in the area where I
used to live, which is just outside of
Croydon.
It was a really odd experience being in
there.
But I do think it helped the film.
I think it helped the actors.
I think it was fascinating for them to
think that they were within the place that
I used to be a kid in.
Typically of Andrew, he didn't really make too
much of a big deal out of that.
I kept thinking, is this extraordinary for you?
And he was like, no, no, it's, you
know, just turning into a film set.
But it's an incredibly brave thing to do.
It feels that we're given an opportunity to
kind of fully immerse into Andrew's old life
and get to play these parts that he's
written so beautifully for us.
It was a really unusual experience, not one
I'd actually repeat ever again.
I don't ever want to go back there.
The one thing that was really strange was
sitting in my old bedroom and then hearing
the film crew all around, setting up things,
talking about the scenes, all that kind of
thing.
And it was such a strange feeling to
think that this is where I was when
I was, like, six, seven years old.
And the idea that you'd be back here
all that time later filming in this house
is so insane, completely insane.
This is real.
Does it feel real?
Yeah.
There you go then.
The house was like a sort of capsule
to the 80s.
I mean, it really was like going back
in time.
The design team, the costume team were sort
of painstaking in their research.
When I went into Adam's childhood bedroom, there
were so many things in there that I
had in my own childhood bedroom.
I was taking pictures of them and sending
them to my siblings, going, oh my God,
you remember this?
And they just did that really beautifully.
It was easy for us all to recapture
the 80s.
Basically, we've all got photos.
So we just looked at old photos from
that time and saw how we used to
look and what our houses were like and
where we used to live.
You know, obviously things from Andrew's childhood that
he should have, the very specific albums that
he wanted, you know, certain books of his
dressing, just bits and bobs and, you know,
all certain games that he'd reference.
For the hairstyles and the makeup, Andrew Haig
didn't want to go overt the 80s.
So when I initially did a mood board
for him, I did lots of very 80s
style, big perms, big hair.
And he was like, no, no, no, let's
not go the typical cliched 80s.
Let's just rein it back in.
I think everyone really enjoyed it because, you
know, quite a few of the crew were
around in the 80s growing up.
So we were all able to sort of
put our own little stamp on it in
there.
I would say it was a really fun
one in terms of that.
And the rest of it was pretty much
all shot down in Sandestead, which is just
outside Croydon.
We shot in the park that's always been
there.
We're going to have some wind blowing and
these that will suddenly just like stop.
Then you feel like someone's looking behind you
and you turn around and he's kind of
standing here.
There's a shopping centre in Croydon that I
remember going to as a kid a lot.
Croydon, there's a slightly strange out of time
feeling about it.
It's like a vision of the future that
was made in the 60s.
In London itself, we did a little bit
of shooting.
68 Charlie, take two.
Action.
We're basically the only ones here.
Can you believe that?
I mean, they haven't got security guards yet.
The modern side of the film is in
this giant tower block, which is in Stratford
in East London.
It's such a key part of the story
because it really symbolises the characters feeling very
disconnected from the world.
So we all had a real vision in
mind and then it was very tricky to
find the right thing.
So we did have to build it as
a set.
Having scouted about 800 tower blocks.
I like shooting on location as well as
my preference.
I much, much prefer it, but it's very
hard to shoot in a high rise apartment
because they're a nightmare to light and you
need to have lights outside and it's very,
very difficult.
So I knew we were going to have
to probably build a set for that.
The question you always have is what's going
to be outside that apartment.
And in the olden days, one might've put
what's called green screen there, which means you
can drop in an outside environment.
We had a new technique on this, which
was just a myriad of extraordinary TV screens,
all locked together.
We shot plates from the apartment block that
we were basing our apartment block on.
And then they became the backdrop that was
on this LED wall that surrounded the apartment
that we built on the set.
You're giving the actors context on what they
can be experiencing outside.
They can use that to plant their performance,
just to be able to take a completely
black studio and then you're creating the most
intimate of scenes where anybody who watches it
would never question what's beyond the walls of
the set.
There's such a beauty and an honour to
that.
I think that when you live in some
of those apartments, it's very easy to feel
very isolated from everybody else and feel like
there is nobody else.
For both of the characters, they feel like
they've been pushed away from home for various
reasons.
And that leads, I think, to a kind
of sense of isolation in your life.
I don't go home much.
That makes sense.
I've always felt like a stranger in my
own family.
I suppose I never did know what was
going on in that odd little head of
yours.
You were always running away.
Do you remember?
Yeah.
I took a pretty naturalistic approach to how
the film is shot.
We shot on 35.
Nobody ever wants to shoot on film because
it's expensive.
But for me, it was really important.
It has, film inherently has a texture and
a feeling and this is a film about
the past.
You know, they listen to records and they
are looking at photographs and it sort of
is a way to access the past, I
think, if you shoot it in a certain
way.
It doesn't feel like pastiche or anything, but
just allows you to feel like this is
closer to memory.
It's funny, it doesn't take much to make
you feel the way you felt back there
again, skin all raw.
I felt it was important to be able
to represent this idea of memory and nostalgia
because that's such a big part of the
idea that there's this sort of gilding that
one puts on a memory that I thought
this is also something I wanted to represent
in the cinematography.
You're dealing with the real world and a
very surreal layer on top of this world.
And that was another element that I really,
I felt that I needed to represent in
some manner and I thought perhaps that could
be more the way the image felt in
terms of lighting and perhaps the lens choice
and things like that.
It's definitely got a kind of tone to
it that, you know, we've worked on in
terms of how we do the sound design.
Wait, you promised me you're not going to
go out now.
I promise.
You have to be a filmmaker when you're
making film scores.
You have to think about what the film
is saying and what's the best way to
serve that.
Coming from the conversation with Andrew about the
nature of memory, when you remember something, it's
never fully clear.
It's often also a small element of one
day that you're going to remember, a specific
element and the rest is a little bit
blurry, a little bit harder to define.
And it felt right that the film was
going to be a little bit more like
that.
I think the music had this sense of
not being fully real, not being fully anchored
with our reality, but really helping the audience
to drift off in a sense of like
a dream-like quality.
What was super important editorially was to have
this feeling of dislocation.
Adam goes down to the park, he sees
his father and it's this kind of odd
sense of, is this happening in real time?
Is this, who is this person?
You're asking questions about who this person is,
but also where you are in time.
For an audience, if you can get them
to be part of that journey, that makes
for a very successful film.
You're active with the main character, you're feeling
their feelings in a sense and you're discovering
all the things that are new in front
of them with them.
Will you come with me?
Where to?
I think that the journey of a man
who is essentially isolated and has built a
world of isolation due to bereavement at a
young age, his journey to love feels incredibly
positive.
The truth of the film to me is
I spent a lot of this film incredibly
happy.
Yeah.
Like the sadness of the film is in
the tone and the style of direction, but
a lot of our stuff together...
Absolutely.
I think we had to consciously play against
the sadness of it, but ultimately they're beginning
an incredibly healthy relationship.
The love story is beautiful and great and
how we should embrace love and take that
risk and gamble on it because you never
know where it can send you and that's
what's so exciting and thrilling about it.
Are you in love with him?
I don't know, I've never been in love
before, so I don't know if this is
it.
You think you'd like to be in love
with him?
Andrew's film is very specific and it's very
personal to him, the journey.
I think that it has really universal themes.
I think we've all had people in our
lives that perhaps we'd like another chance with
and that's what I think is beautiful about
the film.
It is telling a wider story about relationships
and parental relationships and being a kid and
also romantic relationships and it is about love
and in all its forms and how they're
interconnected.
There's no doubt in my mind that I
think queer audiences will respond to it because
of the subject matter, the isolation of being
a gay person in a family, but it's
also just about families as well.
Absolutely.
It's a film about human experience, probably rooted
in the queer experience to me.
Yes, exactly, and that's not as...
We're much more similar to each other than
we allow ourselves to believe so I hope
films like this just really just blow that
up.
I think it would be incredibly disappointing to
me if this was a film that simply
existed and I don't think it will exist
in the lexicon of queer cinema.
It's dealing with way more than just that.
It's human condition.
Yeah, it's about life and death.
It's about life and love and grief.
I think there's a very beautiful, extraordinary film
here that is unlike anything else and I'm
excited for audiences to see that.
The films that I like and the films
that I want to make lead to more
questions when the film is over.
I want people to leave the cinema and
think about their own relationships, both as a
parent, as a child, as a partner, you
know, as a friend, whatever that might be,
and how this film might reflect on their
lives like that.
That's the kind of thing I love when
you, you know, four days later suddenly remember
something in the film and go, you know
what, maybe I should call my mum or
maybe I should be nicer to my boyfriend
or maybe I should do this or whatever
that might be.
I want to go out, you and me,
together into the world.
Isolation, Memory, and Filmmaking
The Director discusses their approach to filmmaking in the clip below, focusing on character development, setting, and visual techniques. He describe’s working closely with actor Andrew to shape his character, Adam, who experiences loneliness and isolation in London.
The film balances realism with a slightly altered reality, using costume choices and set design to reflect Adam’s past and present.
Filming challenges included recreating a high-rise apartment and using LED screens for realistic city views.
All Of Us Strangers (2023) - Isolation, Memory, and Filmmaking
And, cut!
I do spend time with the actors prior
to shooting.
My major conversations were obviously with Andrew, and,
you know, we're of similar age, and we've
had not the same experiences, but similar experiences
in our lives.
So that kind of fed into the way
his performance was and how the film feels.
It is about me understanding him as a
person, and then also understanding what the character
needs to be.
So it's not Andrew on screen, it is
Andrew playing Adam on screen.
I've seen you a bunch of times coming
along.
I'm assuming you're not with anyone.
Never see you with anyone.
Adam lives quite a lonely life in the
centre of London, in a tower block, and
just feeling very disconnected from the world.
I liked the idea that Adam's life was
going in a good direction in the 90s
and the noughties, and was feeling good.
And then it started to get more and
more complicated as he's got older.
So the clothes he's wearing, you know, he's
wearing a jacket that he used to wear,
like, in the 90s.
So it's just finding subtle ways with costume
to sort of reflect the time that he
was at least happier.
He's like many people in London, you know.
You can get lost in London, you can
lose friends in London, you can become quite
isolated.
I think we all get stuck in a
look.
You know, we don't keep changing the way
we look, we get stuck in the look.
So I wanted him to look like that.
And then how he feels much more modern
and contemporary.
He feels like, I don't know what the
kids wear now, but he looks like he's
closer to what the kids wear now.
How about we come in anyway?
I think that's a good idea.
Do I scare you?
Harry, we talked about him looking really greasy
and broken down, his hair looking distressed.
We let his hair grow out, we let
his facial grow out.
For both of the characters, they feel like
they've been pushed away from home for various
reasons.
And that leads, I think, to a kind
of sense of isolation in your life.
Action.
So you're looking at me from the street.
We're basically the only ones here.
Can you fucking believe that?
I mean, they haven't got security guards yet.
There is a strangeness to where he lives.
I did want it to feel like the
real world, but not completely the real world,
cos I feel like, you know, we're doing
some quite odd things with the film, so
it can't be grounded in complete reality.
I want it to be reality just shifted
to one side.
If you're not inclined to go out and
mix with the world, you can very easily
find a place that isolates you, and I
think that's what the tower represents.
It kind of feels cold and soulless.
It was hard to find the tower block.
That was one thing that we found quite
tricky, even though there are hundreds of tower
blocks in London, and so we did have
to build it as a set, having scouted
about 800 tower blocks.
I like shooting on location as well as
my preference.
I much, much prefer it, but it's very
hard to shoot in a high-rise apartment
because they're a nightmare to light, and you
need to have lights outside, and it's very,
very difficult.
So I knew we were going to have
to probably build a set for that.
The question you always have is what's going
to be outside that apartment, and in the
olden days, one might have put what's called
green screen there, which means you can drop
in an outside environment.
We had a new technique on this, which
was just a myriad of extraordinary TV screens
all locked together.
We shot plates from the apartment block that
we were basing our apartment block on, and
then they became the backdrop that was on
this LED wall that surrounded the apartment that
we built on the set.
That outside view was rolling footage because it
had to move.
It couldn't be static.
The cars had to move, the trains had
to move and that sort of thing.
That allowed us to create a very real
environment from a stage.
Stages sometimes can be a little bit dead,
but I think probably for the actors and
for us who were around the film quite
closely, it felt entirely plausible that you were
right up there, floor 27, watching London.
The rest of it was pretty much all
shot down in Sandestead, which is just outside
Croydon.
We shot in the park that's always been
there.
We're going to have some wind blowing, and
these will suddenly just stop, and you feel
like someone's looking behind you, and you turn
around, he's kind of standing here.
In London itself, we did a little bit
of shooting.
68, Charlie.
Take two.
There's a shopping centre in Croydon that I
remember going to as a kid a lot.
Croydon, there's a slightly strange out-of-time
feeling about it.
It's like a vision of the future that
was made in the 60s.
Shall we go?
Go where?
Home.
In the script, he was writing locations he
knew as a child, houses he might have
known as a child.
Someone came up with the idea of, well,
where do we start?
And the starting point was Andrew Haig's original
house he actually grew up in.
And who knew that we were going to
end up filming in exactly the house where
he grew up, exactly where he was at
the age of the story.
I think even Andrew, because he had an
old picture of that home, and looking at
that, and when he went to the house,
he was thinking it wasn't the same place.
Your memory does funny things, doesn't it?
Which then, I think, fed into the script
as well.
It's our bloody lovely sea again.
One show we ever would.
I took a pretty naturalistic approach to how
the film is shot.
Shot on 35, nobody ever wants to shoot
on film cos it's expensive, but for me
it was really important.
The film inherently has a texture and a
feeling, and this is a film about the
past, and it sort of is a way
to access the past, I think, if you
shoot it in a certain way.
It doesn't feel like pastiche or anything, but
just allows you to feel like this is
closer to memory, I guess.
I think everyone really enjoyed it as well,
because quite a few of the crew were
around in the 80s growing up, so we
were all able to sort of put our
own little stamp on it in there.
I would say it was a really fun
one in terms of that.
She got to say what she wanted to
say.
I don't know, I got to be with
her.
I kind of make films in a way
that just sort of feel right at the
time, and I think afterwards you're asked to
sort of describe how you created that tone,
when in reality I don't really have the
answer.
It's just that's how the film comes out.
It's from a choice of angles.
It's from a choice of how you cut.
Every technique that you use is subtly building
a certain type of tone, and all of
those things that you just feel as you're
going along and question whether they're right or
wrong for the tone of the piece.
Don't let this get tangled up again.
I do spend time with the actors prior
to shooting.
My major conversations were obviously with Andrew, and,
you know, we're of similar age, and we've
had not the same experiences, but similar experiences
in our lives.
So that kind of fed into the way
his performance was and how the film feels.
It is about me understanding him as a
person, and then also understanding what the character
needs to be.
So it's not Andrew on screen, it is
Andrew playing Adam on screen.
I've seen you a bunch of times coming
along.
I'm assuming you're not with anyone.
Never see you with anyone.
Adam lives quite a lonely life in the
centre of London, in a tower block, and
just feeling very disconnected from the world.
I liked the idea that Adam's life was
going in a good direction in the 90s
and the noughties, and was feeling good.
And then it started to get more and
more complicated as he's got older.
So the clothes he's wearing, you know, he's
wearing a jacket that he used to wear,
like, in the 90s.
So it's just finding subtle ways with costume
to sort of reflect the time that he
was at least happier.
He's like many people in London, you know.
You can get lost in London, you can
lose friends in London, you can become quite
isolated.
I think we all get stuck in a
look.
You know, we don't keep changing the way
we look, we get stuck in the look.
So I wanted him to look like that.
And then how he feels much more modern
and contemporary.
He feels like, I don't know what the
kids wear now, but he looks like he's
closer to what the kids wear now.
How about we come in anyway?
I think that's a good idea.
Do I scare you?
Harry, we talked about him looking really greasy
and broken down, his hair looking distressed.
We let his hair grow out, we let
his facial grow out.
For both of the characters, they feel like
they've been pushed away from home for various
reasons.
And that leads, I think, to a kind
of sense of isolation in your life.
Action.
So you're looking at me from the street.
We're basically the only ones here.
Can you fucking believe that?
I mean, they haven't got security guards yet.
There is a strangeness to where he lives.
I did want it to feel like the
real world, but not completely the real world,
cos I feel like, you know, we're doing
some quite odd things with the film, so
it can't be grounded in complete reality.
I want it to be reality just shifted
to one side.
If you're not inclined to go out and
mix with the world, you can very easily
find a place that isolates you, and I
think that's what the tower represents.
It kind of feels cold and soulless.
It was hard to find the tower block.
That was one thing that we found quite
tricky, even though there are hundreds of tower
blocks in London, and so we did have
to build it as a set, having scouted
about 800 tower blocks.
I like shooting on location as well as
my preference.
I much, much prefer it, but it's very
hard to shoot in a high-rise apartment
because they're a nightmare to light, and you
need to have lights outside, and it's very,
very difficult.
So I knew we were going to have
to probably build a set for that.
The question you always have is what's going
to be outside that apartment, and in the
olden days, one might have put what's called
green screen there, which means you can drop
in an outside environment.
We had a new technique on this, which
was just a myriad of extraordinary TV screens
all locked together.
We shot plates from the apartment block that
we were basing our apartment block on, and
then they became the backdrop that was on
this LED wall that surrounded the apartment that
we built on the set.
That outside view was rolling footage because it
had to move.
It couldn't be static.
The cars had to move, the trains had
to move and that sort of thing.
That allowed us to create a very real
environment from a stage.
Stages sometimes can be a little bit dead,
but I think probably for the actors and
for us who were around the film quite
closely, it felt entirely plausible that you were
right up there, floor 27, watching London.
The rest of it was pretty much all
shot down in Sandestead, which is just outside
Croydon.
We shot in the park that's always been
there.
We're going to have some wind blowing, and
these will suddenly just stop, and you feel
like someone's looking behind you, and you turn
around, he's kind of standing here.
In London itself, we did a little bit
of shooting.
68, Charlie.
Take two.
There's a shopping centre in Croydon that I
remember going to as a kid a lot.
Croydon, there's a slightly strange out-of-time
feeling about it.
It's like a vision of the future that
was made in the 60s.
Shall we go?
Go where?
Home.
In the script, he was writing locations he
knew as a child, houses he might have
known as a child.
Someone came up with the idea of, well,
where do we start?
And the starting point was Andrew Haig's original
house he actually grew up in.
And who knew that we were going to
end up filming in exactly the house where
he grew up, exactly where he was at
the age of the story.
I think even Andrew, because he had an
old picture of that home, and looking at
that, and when he went to the house,
he was thinking it wasn't the same place.
Your memory does funny things, doesn't it?
Which then, I think, fed into the script
as well.
It's our bloody lovely sea again.
One show we ever would.
I took a pretty naturalistic approach to how
the film is shot.
Shot on 35, nobody ever wants to shoot
on film cos it's expensive, but for me
it was really important.
The film inherently has a texture and a
feeling, and this is a film about the
past, and it sort of is a way
to access the past, I think, if you
shoot it in a certain way.
It doesn't feel like pastiche or anything, but
just allows you to feel like this is
closer to memory, I guess.
I think everyone really enjoyed it as well,
because quite a few of the crew were
around in the 80s growing up, so we
were all able to sort of put our
own little stamp on it in there.
I would say it was a really fun
one in terms of that.
She got to say what she wanted to
say.
I don't know, I got to be with
her.
I kind of make films in a way
that just sort of feel right at the
time, and I think afterwards you're asked to
sort of describe how you created that tone,
when in reality I don't really have the
answer.
It's just that's how the film comes out.
It's from a choice of angles.
It's from a choice of how you cut.
Every technique that you use is subtly building
a certain type of tone, and all of
those things that you just feel as you're
going along and question whether they're right or
wrong for the tone of the piece.
Don't let this get tangled up again.
Isolation, Queerness, and the Haunting Past
This interview explores the adaptation of the novel Strangers into a queer film, focusing on themes of isolation, loneliness, and the impact of the past.
The director discusses the challenges and choices made in translating the story to the screen, particularly regarding the representation of queerness and family dynamics.
Casting and working with the actors, especially Andrew Scott, are highlighted as crucial to creating authentic performances by drawing from personal histories.
The conversation goes into how the director explored the complicated coming out narratives and the use of time within the film to reflect queer experiences.
All Of Us Strangers (2023) - Isolation, Queerness, and the Haunting Past
Wonderful to be here.
I'm so happy to be talking to you
about this movie and your career.
It's really a pleasure.
I would love to talk a lot about
adaptation, because Yamada's book is so temperamentally different
from the film, but of course it has
a general structure that's kind of the same.
So what was appealing about Yamada's book, Strangers,
and why did you think this was an
interesting adaptation for a film that's so much
about queerness?
I think when I first read it, I
wasn't sure, to be honest, if it was
going to work for me as a story
I wanted to tell.
I liked the book in itself.
I thought it was an interesting story.
And it worked as a way to explore
isolation, I think, and loneliness and how the
past affects us.
But I wasn't entirely sure how I would
make my version of that or the queer
version of it.
And it took me probably about two years
for it to really sink in.
I was living in LA.
It was during the pandemic, actually.
And I was a long way away from
home, from family, from friends.
And it was then I started thinking a
lot more about my past and about all
of our pasts and how it affects us
and how it sort of lives within us
constantly.
And then I re-approached the book again.
I was like, OK, now I sort of
understand what this is.
The main character, Adam, versus the character Hideo
in the book and their responses to this
supernatural world that opens up around them.
In the book, Hideo sees these people who
look like his parents at the age that
they were when they died, which means that
they're younger than him now.
And it takes a long time for him
to accept this.
This is you.
Whereas in the movie, it feels like Adam's
character acquiesces rather quickly.
He enters this world and he sort of
accepts that this fantasy is happening, which makes
me think that it has something to do
with what he thinks he needs.
That's interesting.
It's been such a long time since I
read the novel that it's quite hard to
remember what it was.
But it's true.
I feel like that Adam had reached a
stage in his life when he needed things
to change.
So I think when his parents reappear, he's
wanting them to reappear.
He understands, even if it's on a very,
very deep subconscious level, that he needs to
readdress his past.
He needs to sort of have a reunion
with not only his parents, but also himself
and who he was back then in order
to move forward.
Everything I've done starts from a place of
loneliness and someone feeling isolation and aloneness.
But they're also trying to work through it.
They're not wallowing in their aloneness.
They're trying to get out of it.
And so I feel like his desire to
meet his parents again is so deep within
him that, of course, he accepts it.
And also in the book, you're very clear
these are ghosts.
And for me, that was a little bit
less interesting.
Throughout the adaptation, there was a lot of
trying to work out, like, how much do
I need this to make sense?
How much does it need to feel that
they are ghosts?
Or does it matter?
Is it just a manifestation of his unconscious
that we are seeing?
Is it a manifestation of my unconscious as
a filmmaker telling this story?
And I started to love the idea that
it can live within all of the elements
and all these genres.
And also that he's an imaginative person because
he's a creator.
He's a writer.
So there's always the thought that he's building
something.
It feels like a metaphor of its own
creation.
When I'm writing, it is a way for
me to explore and express ideas and themes
that I don't even fully understand.
And then I'm trying to uncover and explore
within myself.
And I find that really quite fascinating that
you are creating a new world as you're
writing.
And to me, this story is that world
for Adam, a creation of his need and
his want.
And how much, working with Andrew, how did
you prepare with him to create this character?
And what was the process like of casting
him for this role?
I cast him pretty easily, actually.
I just, you know, I thought about who
I wanted.
There's a lot of things I knew I
wanted that person to be gay in real
life.
I knew that I needed them to be
in their mid-40s.
Automatically, that limits your pool of people.
And Andrew was the first person, to be
honest, I thought of and went to.
And we just talked a lot about the
script in our very first meeting.
And he took it on board as it
was a version of himself, almost.
We didn't rehearse.
We didn't talk too much after that about
each and every scene.
But we shared a lot of our own
personal histories.
And I think that, for me, is always
the most important thing.
Whether that was with Andrew or with Claire
and Jamie and Paul as well.
I love to be able to share what
is personal to me about the story.
In the hope that they will come with
their own sense of what is personal.
And then you just create this sort of
quite amazing space.
Sounds a bit of a cliche.
Where you're all feeling very open and honest
about talking about things.
And I think that feeds then into the
performances.
One of my favorite things that happens in
the movie is how it feels like Adam's
character is engaging in a pickup in the
park.
He sees this handsome man in a leather
jacket who offers him drinks and cigarettes.
And he says, come back home.
And, of course, it turns out to be
his father.
Why did you introduce the fantasy world in
this way?
It's so weird knowing.
I have no idea.
I mean, there's part of me that just
felt like I knew that's how I wanted
it to be.
And I wanted to feel like he could
be cruising his dad.
And it's not that he wants to sleep
with his dad.
But it was for me about connecting these
two things together.
Familiar love and romantic love.
And how these things are so deeply entwined.
And we learn how to love a partner
through our relationships with our parents.
It's no coincidence that Harry, played by Paul,
also has a mustache and looks a little
bit like the dad looks.
Even with what they're wearing, there's similarities.
And throughout the film, I wanted to sort
of bring these things together.
So it didn't feel like it was two
separate forms of love.
It was something slightly more, you know, linked
together.
There's a lot of little things that are
in the book.
The main character, Hideo, does talk about the
oddness of being in the same room with
his mother as a younger woman.
And how normally, if he were in the
room with a 30-something woman, he would
find her sexually attractive.
And it felt like your scene was an
extrapolation of that.
A queer extrapolation of that.
And also, there's a sequence in which Hideo
goes out and plays catch with his father.
That's how they bond.
But in the movie, he has a conversation
with his father about the inability to throw
a ball.
Which I can relate to, growing up.
Things that are gay cliches, maybe.
But that actually are often very true.
We can't throw balls.
I don't understand what it is.
I literally can't throw a ball at all.
Did this just naturally flow out?
Or were you doing this kind of queer
version of these events that were in the
book?
It was a very loose adaptation, obviously, because
it's so different.
Having to go back to the 80s and
meet your parents again as a queer person
is not the same as a straight person.
And so that completely changes the whole of
the story.
And at the same time, highlights what I'm
trying to say about the difference of being
queer.
Especially in relationship to family.
And especially with a certain generation.
It's a very, very complicated part of our
lives.
And always will be.
There's a thread running through a lot of
your work about coming out narratives.
And complicated coming out narratives.
Or thwarted coming outs.
Or the inability to come out to one's
parents.
In Weekend, this is a main idea where
the Russell character is an orphan.
So he never had parents to come out
to.
Why is this a recurring theme in your
work?
It's not just that you have coming out
stories.
But stories in which coming out is either
curtailed or severely complicated.
I think it's because it's so hard.
Or it was so hard.
It was so hard for me to come
out.
I didn't come out until I was in
my mid-20s.
Maybe 25, 26.
And it was so difficult and drawn out.
And even though my parents were very accepting
of it in the end.
That doesn't mean that I wasn't terrified of
doing it for 10, 15 years.
It was something that preyed on me and
was so heavy on my shoulders.
You grow up thinking, I'm just part of
a family.
And then suddenly it gets thwarted and gets
complicated.
Are they going to love me?
It's a very strange situation to be in.
Because you are fundamentally different from your parents.
And I think it's probably like being deaf
maybe.
And your parents can hear.
It's such a difference.
And so you're so scared of saying, I'm
not like you.
And you're not like me.
You don't look gay.
I'm not sure what that means.
It means what it means.
You know what it means.
When he comes back and he has to
come out to his mum.
I was less interested about that.
But more interested about how the reaction of
her.
Spoke to all of the things that he
still feels as a person in his late
40s.
He's suddenly thrown back into being in the
80s and into the early 90s.
About how he felt.
How everybody thought about queer people back then.
And it's very easy to think everything is
fine now.
And everything is a lot better.
It was rough back then.
So many people were disgusted by you.
And I think as a queer adult.
But you still feel all that.
That's still all within you.
And I love what that did to the
story.
He's like, oh, I'm fine with my sexuality.
And then he comes back.
He reignites kind of all that shame that
he used to feel.
The conversation with his mother, really for me,
is the greatest scene in the film.
And it's a film of many great scenes.
But this negotiation that's constantly happening between them.
She asks if he's lonely.
And he says, if I am, it's not
because I'm gay.
Not really.
And then she echoes, not really.
I don't think I felt loneliness because I
am a gay person.
But I do feel like the world makes
you feel separate.
Has made you feel separate.
It has pushed you to the edges.
It's made you feel different.
And I know that for some people it's
like, why is he lonely because of that?
But I think most queer people understand what
that's about.
Another thing I found really interesting about that
scene, which me and Andrew talked a lot
about.
Is that he's so accommodating to his mom
as well.
And I think that's a really common experience
for a lot of queer people when they
come out.
Aren't people nasty to you?
No.
Things are different now.
They want to make it all okay for
their parents.
It's like, oh, don't worry.
It's okay.
I'm fine.
I'm not that kind of queer person.
Or I'm this or I'm that.
Don't worry.
I'm fine.
Rather than being like, I've been really fucking
sad.
Please just hug me.
Or whatever it might be.
And that again speaks to this constant desire
we have to not be thrown out of
the family.
To be in the center of it.
It's why I always sort of bristle a
little bit.
Even though I totally understand it.
When it's like, oh, you can find your
own new family as a queer person.
Find your found family.
And I get it.
And I have found my own family too.
But it's sometimes because you're forced out of
your other family.
And the truth is you want to be
part of that family too.
Your own family and another family.
So it's very, very complicated.
And it's also the internalization of all these
things that you feel as a young person.
That shame has been so internalized.
And it's so related to the way you
feel about your own sexuality.
Your own identity.
That it's impossible to separate these things.
The shame of it is so interesting.
Because I remember hearing somebody talking about this
film actually.
And saying, oh, he's just so full of
shame in a really negative way.
And it sort of made me quite annoyed.
Because what are you telling stories about?
You can't be telling constantly happy stories about
queer lives.
That's, you know.
Happy stories in general are not that interesting.
Whether they're about queer people or not queer
people.
Sorry I never came in your room when
you were crying.
No, really, it's okay.
Let's not get there, Elise.
It's not that.
Dad, I get it.
It was so long.
It was so long.
I think Andrew did it beautifully in this.
Like he's so open when he needs to
be open.
And he allows like this pain to come
to the surface.
To bleed out and then get sucked back
in again.
There's a lot of crying in this movie.
Which I don't like seeing crying in movies,
to be honest.
It's not my favorite.
I'm like, oh, Jesus.
Okay, you can cry.
And there's a lot of it in this.
And we were worried when we were filming.
Oh, you're crying again?
Jesus, enough crying.
But it works when it feels truly real.
Another thing related to queerness I wanted to
talk about.
Is the use of time in the film.
And how time is perceived by characters.
People who read about queer theory know that
queer time itself is so central.
This idea that queer lives are not part
of the forward march of time.
Traditionally, we've always sort of existed, like you're
saying, in the margins.
Outside of the normal way of moving forward.
At what point did you decide to sort
of, you know, make the boundaries a little
blurry?
The first draft of the script, it felt
like, okay, we're going back into the childhood
home.
And now we're in the present.
And it didn't feel truthful to me at
all.
And so, so much of my work, even
in those early days of writing, was trying
to compress all of that together.
So it didn't feel like the past and
the present in any real sense.
And I think it is, from a queer
perspective, that idea of time.
But also, it's just in a way that
time feels to me.
Because it doesn't feel linear as I go
through my every day.
The past is so in my present all
of the time.
It takes just one line of a song,
or a smell, or a sound of the
wind in the trees, and I am back
in the past.
And not just as a memory of the
past, I can feel it.
And to me, that's so powerful.
Because you can just flit between time so
much.
And so, telling a very linear story made
absolutely no sense.
But Adam also has that amazing line where
he says that since he was very young,
after his parents died, he felt like the
future doesn't matter.
Which also ties very closely into a lot
of writing that's been done on queer experience.
The sense that nothing out there is set.
Nothing's settled.
Nothing is held for me.
And there's a great episode of Looking.
I think the most acclaimed episode of Looking
is called Looking for the Future.
And there's a lot of threads in your
career.
In 45 years, this is about this aging
couple that never had children.
And they're reassessing their lives.
And there's a big question mark about what
the future holds at any age.
It feels like you're constantly writing characters who
see a big void in front of them.
I mean, that's how I felt growing up,
absolutely.
Realizing that I was queer in, you know,
early 80s, mid-80s, as AIDS was devastating
communities.
Not with anyone I knew, but it was
out there in the world.
I felt like, first of all, if I
was going to grow up and be a
gay person, I would die.
You were never going to find love with
another person and be able to, what, walk
down the street with your partner of the
same sex.
It felt absolutely impossible.
And in a weird way for me, that's
been quite liberating as I've grown up.
Because I've thought, well, I can sort of
make my own path.
I think a lot of younger gay people
now, queer people, they're like, I don't want
to go and get married and have kids.
But I do think all of my characters
are afraid of what that future might be.
Even in something like Lean on Pete, there's
a young kid whose, again, parents aren't around.
There's a lot of absent parents in my
films.
And he's trying to find a way through
his life to imagine a different future.
I'd also like to talk about cinematic influences
for this particular film and generally for your
cinema.
I find it really hard to talk about
my influences because I'm not really sure about
them.
There was certainly a sense of some of
those, especially 50s and 60s, kitchen sink British
realism films that I love and adore.
But I came to them quite late in
my life.
I worked in a cinema for a while
in my early 20s, like a rep cinema
in London.
So I had this amazing experience of watching
world cinema, interesting British cinema, American cinema.
And that's all kind of fed in, I
think, to my aesthetic.
And so it's strange going forward now, because
I think when you start out as a
career, you're like, I want my film to
be like this or look like this.
And then as you've made a couple of
films, you're like, I don't need to look
at other references now.
It's whatever is in me is in me.
But I do think there is a sense
of that British realism.
I also loved for a long time Antonioni.
I still do love Antonioni.
I like to oscillate between different styles, I
think, in how my films feel.
You've talked about Don't Look Now as a
favorite film of yours.
And the way that this movie deals with
loneliness and loss and the supernatural and the
fragmentation of time, it feels like maybe there's
a little bit of Nicolas Roeg in there.
Definitely.
I love that film.
It's definitely one of my favorite films.
And I watched it when I was probably
16 and watched it so many times and
adore it.
And I think my love of a zoom
lens has come from Roeg.
I think I'm convinced that's where it's come
from.
You know, he loved zoom lenses.
They're in all of his work.
And it is that sense of chopping time
up and it feeling like a representation of
our unconscious or subconscious rather than it being
the reality.
You know, Don't Look Now is a supernatural
story about grief and about loneliness and about
pain.
And when I approached this film, there was
more of a genre element than I'd ever
dealt with before, ever.
But I knew I didn't want that to
overtake what the film was.
And it needed to be about those emotions
under the surface.
And that is what had to carry the
film, that emotional strength, not the genre elements
of the story.
And the book is more explicitly horror in
a lot of ways.
The Hideo character, the more that he interacts
with his parents, the more his life force
is being sucked out of him.
But you do move away from the horror.
There was a conscious choice to make it
less horror.
The early drafts of the script were definitely
leaning towards that horror more, I think.
And I found it quite complicated in terms
of if you're turning it into a queer
story, too.
If his life is being drained from him
and he is looking worse and worse and
worse and worse, it felt so much like
I would be making a very clear statement
about the terror of AIDS.
But I wanted to be careful with that.
And also, in the original story, the Harry
character, who is a woman in the story,
is definitely an antagonist.
And she is there to destroy him at
the end, and he has to destroy her.
Again, telling this from a queer perspective, I
wasn't very interested in having, essentially, an evil
queer character trying to kill the other queer
character.
It did feel like that was not going
down the road I wanted to go down.
And I think it's probably one of the
profound changes, actually, between the two versions of
the story, is that this is not that.
This is two lost souls trying to find
each other, not someone trying to destroy the
other one.
You mentioned Antonioni, and I definitely can feel
evocations of the urban architecture and the loneliness
of urban architecture that he so often made
films about.
And the building itself is so central to
the way that this movie feels.
I knew I wanted, from the very beginning
of the film, for it not to feel
like complete reality.
So, for example, no one's got a phone.
Nobody's ever talking on the phone, ever, in
the film.
There's no cell phones, there's nothing.
Now, the apartment, it was an apartment in
Stratford in East London, and we built a
set in the end to shoot in.
But it's definitely got this idea of being
isolated from the city.
Everything is a little bit out of reach.
He looks out of the window, and it's
there, the city.
There's possibility there, there's a future there, but
he can't quite reach it.
He's, like, trapped behind glass, I suppose.
A lot of people have said to me,
is Adam dead all along?
Is he in purgatory at the beginning?
There is a sense of that building, because
he's stuck within this, you know, state of
being that he can't escape from.
So that building is a representation of his
sense of aloneness.
So, in reality, there could be other people
living there, but to him, it feels like
there's nobody else there.
And I think that strangeness had to be
there from the beginning for the film to
work.
And there had to be such a contradiction
between that location and the location of home
back in the past, if it is the
past.
There's a sense of time travel between those
two spaces.
It really does feel like he's going back
in time to a place that's been untouched.
Definitely.
I knew I wanted it to feel like
you were transitioning, not necessarily to the past,
but to a memory of how it used
to feel back then.
He's digging through old photos, he's listening to
music, he's on that train going back to
the suburbs.
To me, it's like he's falling asleep or
drifting off into this past world.
So I've said it lots of places before,
but that house was my own childhood home
when I grew up until about the age
of eight.
And we shot all on location, so inside
and out.
It's that house, there's no studio build.
What was so peculiar is down that street,
every other house has been renovated from the
outside apart from that house.
It was like it was waiting for me
to tell this story.
It's been like waiting for me to come
back and tell it.
And do Claire Foy and Jamie Bell's characters,
do they explicitly evoke memories of your parents,
or are they their own separate entities?
They definitely evoke memories of my parents.
I mean, my parents are still alive.
They're not my mum and dad, and there's
definitely a sense of personality that is similar,
but they aren't the same.
But I think when you're writing about parents,
how can you not put your own experience
of your parents in there?
You just can't help it.
I can't help it.
Can we talk a little bit about Paul
Neskog?
Because I feel you reconceived him as less
of an antagonist than the book has, or
less of a destructive force, rather.
Such a loving, beautiful spirit, in a way,
but also so ambiguous.
Because he is really ambiguous, that's the thing
of it.
And I think when you get to the
end, you realise, slightly differently about his character,
you have Adam as this central character who
has brought into existence, let's say, these other
people that he needs in his life.
Not the most original of deaths.
I'm really sorry.
No, thanks, it was a long time ago.
I don't think that matters.
And I wanted Harry's character to sort of
speak to this loving, caring, open, confident person
who is also still damaged and lonely and
scared at the same time.
And to me, from my experience of talking
to younger queer people, that can be their
experience too.
They live in a world where there is
so much more ease with who you are
in the world.
But that doesn't mean that suddenly everything is
full of happiness and joy.
What Harry's character becomes to Adam is this
sort of expression of the importance of being
there for somebody else.
He allows Adam to be honest about how
he feels.
Adam is then there for Harry when he
needs him the most.
And to me, if the film is saying
anything about love, it is that.
It's that love is really about what you
can do for somebody else.
How you can be there for them.
I think we're quite selfish about love so
much of the time.
It's about what do I feel?
How am I feeling?
When really, just like parental love is about
being there for your children, that's what it
should be in a relationship too for me.
It's not always easy.
How can I be there for somebody else?
Also that what the ending communicates is that
we all have our traumas and you can't
always outrun them.
And I think that's what's been really fascinating
about making this film and then putting it
out into the world is realising that it
has affected more people than I thought it
would do.
And it's quite powerful, actually, to think that
you can do something that has a little
bit of an effect on people and helps
people realise that, oh, fuck, we're all a
bit fucked up, aren't we?
We are all a bit damaged and lost
and sometimes we just need to be able
to express that and not cover it up
with, you know, a smile.
That's a perfect way to end that conversation,
but I also did want to ask about
that ending and the very bold choice to
go very maximalist at the end.
It was always, when I first started thinking
about it, that was the shot I wanted
it to be.
And I know it's a big choice and
I know it's not a choice that works
for everybody and I'm OK with that.
Sometimes I don't even know if it works
for me.
But I knew that I wanted it to
be something huge, saying that these two people
who love each other are as important in
the universe as everything else.
And I'm not a particularly spiritual person, I'm
not a religious person, but there was something
that I wanted in this film to almost
feel like it was transcendent, I suppose.
The tippy just ended with the two of
them lying in bed.
That's not an ending I want to see.
I want it to be like, what the
fuck is happening now?
And that you leave that cinema, and whether
you like the ending or not, you are
having to think about what that might mean
or what I'm trying to say it's meaning.
And I feel like in the past I've
been quite reserved with my endings.
And I was like, fuck it.
Do you know what I mean?
I don't want to end small and domestic.
I want to end, you know, in the
biggest way I could possibly imagine it ending.
I appreciate that.
I'm glad that you did.
I'm so happy to be talking to you
about this movie and your career.
It's really a pleasure.
I would love to talk a lot about
adaptation, because Yamada's book is so temperamentally different
from the film, but of course it has
a general structure that's kind of the same.
So what was appealing about Yamada's book, Strangers,
and why did you think this was an
interesting adaptation for a film that's so much
about queerness?
I think when I first read it, I
wasn't sure, to be honest, if it was
going to work for me as a story
I wanted to tell.
I liked the book in itself.
I thought it was an interesting story.
And it worked as a way to explore
isolation, I think, and loneliness and how the
past affects us.
But I wasn't entirely sure how I would
make my version of that or the queer
version of it.
And it took me probably about two years
for it to really sink in.
I was living in LA.
It was during the pandemic, actually.
And I was a long way away from
home, from family, from friends.
And it was then I started thinking a
lot more about my past and about all
of our pasts and how it affects us
and how it sort of lives within us
constantly.
And then I re-approached the book again.
I was like, OK, now I sort of
understand what this is.
The main character, Adam, versus the character Hideo
in the book and their responses to this
supernatural world that opens up around them.
In the book, Hideo sees these people who
look like his parents at the age that
they were when they died, which means that
they're younger than him now.
And it takes a long time for him
to accept this.
This is you.
Whereas in the movie, it feels like Adam's
character acquiesces rather quickly.
He enters this world and he sort of
accepts that this fantasy is happening, which makes
me think that it has something to do
with what he thinks he needs.
That's interesting.
It's been such a long time since I
read the novel that it's quite hard to
remember what it was.
But it's true.
I feel like that Adam had reached a
stage in his life when he needed things
to change.
So I think when his parents reappear, he's
wanting them to reappear.
He understands, even if it's on a very,
very deep subconscious level, that he needs to
readdress his past.
He needs to sort of have a reunion
with not only his parents, but also himself
and who he was back then in order
to move forward.
Everything I've done starts from a place of
loneliness and someone feeling isolation and aloneness.
But they're also trying to work through it.
They're not wallowing in their aloneness.
They're trying to get out of it.
And so I feel like his desire to
meet his parents again is so deep within
him that, of course, he accepts it.
And also in the book, you're very clear
these are ghosts.
And for me, that was a little bit
less interesting.
Throughout the adaptation, there was a lot of
trying to work out, like, how much do
I need this to make sense?
How much does it need to feel that
they are ghosts?
Or does it matter?
Is it just a manifestation of his unconscious
that we are seeing?
Is it a manifestation of my unconscious as
a filmmaker telling this story?
And I started to love the idea that
it can live within all of the elements
and all these genres.
And also that he's an imaginative person because
he's a creator.
He's a writer.
So there's always the thought that he's building
something.
It feels like a metaphor of its own
creation.
When I'm writing, it is a way for
me to explore and express ideas and themes
that I don't even fully understand.
And then I'm trying to uncover and explore
within myself.
And I find that really quite fascinating that
you are creating a new world as you're
writing.
And to me, this story is that world
for Adam, a creation of his need and
his want.
And how much, working with Andrew, how did
you prepare with him to create this character?
And what was the process like of casting
him for this role?
I cast him pretty easily, actually.
I just, you know, I thought about who
I wanted.
There's a lot of things I knew I
wanted that person to be gay in real
life.
I knew that I needed them to be
in their mid-40s.
Automatically, that limits your pool of people.
And Andrew was the first person, to be
honest, I thought of and went to.
And we just talked a lot about the
script in our very first meeting.
And he took it on board as it
was a version of himself, almost.
We didn't rehearse.
We didn't talk too much after that about
each and every scene.
But we shared a lot of our own
personal histories.
And I think that, for me, is always
the most important thing.
Whether that was with Andrew or with Claire
and Jamie and Paul as well.
I love to be able to share what
is personal to me about the story.
In the hope that they will come with
their own sense of what is personal.
And then you just create this sort of
quite amazing space.
Sounds a bit of a cliche.
Where you're all feeling very open and honest
about talking about things.
And I think that feeds then into the
performances.
One of my favorite things that happens in
the movie is how it feels like Adam's
character is engaging in a pickup in the
park.
He sees this handsome man in a leather
jacket who offers him drinks and cigarettes.
And he says, come back home.
And, of course, it turns out to be
his father.
Why did you introduce the fantasy world in
this way?
It's so weird knowing.
I have no idea.
I mean, there's part of me that just
felt like I knew that's how I wanted
it to be.
And I wanted to feel like he could
be cruising his dad.
And it's not that he wants to sleep
with his dad.
But it was for me about connecting these
two things together.
Familiar love and romantic love.
And how these things are so deeply entwined.
And we learn how to love a partner
through our relationships with our parents.
It's no coincidence that Harry, played by Paul,
also has a mustache and looks a little
bit like the dad looks.
Even with what they're wearing, there's similarities.
And throughout the film, I wanted to sort
of bring these things together.
So it didn't feel like it was two
separate forms of love.
It was something slightly more, you know, linked
together.
There's a lot of little things that are
in the book.
The main character, Hideo, does talk about the
oddness of being in the same room with
his mother as a younger woman.
And how normally, if he were in the
room with a 30-something woman, he would
find her sexually attractive.
And it felt like your scene was an
extrapolation of that.
A queer extrapolation of that.
And also, there's a sequence in which Hideo
goes out and plays catch with his father.
That's how they bond.
But in the movie, he has a conversation
with his father about the inability to throw
a ball.
Which I can relate to, growing up.
Things that are gay cliches, maybe.
But that actually are often very true.
We can't throw balls.
I don't understand what it is.
I literally can't throw a ball at all.
Did this just naturally flow out?
Or were you doing this kind of queer
version of these events that were in the
book?
It was a very loose adaptation, obviously, because
it's so different.
Having to go back to the 80s and
meet your parents again as a queer person
is not the same as a straight person.
And so that completely changes the whole of
the story.
And at the same time, highlights what I'm
trying to say about the difference of being
queer.
Especially in relationship to family.
And especially with a certain generation.
It's a very, very complicated part of our
lives.
And always will be.
There's a thread running through a lot of
your work about coming out narratives.
And complicated coming out narratives.
Or thwarted coming outs.
Or the inability to come out to one's
parents.
In Weekend, this is a main idea where
the Russell character is an orphan.
So he never had parents to come out
to.
Why is this a recurring theme in your
work?
It's not just that you have coming out
stories.
But stories in which coming out is either
curtailed or severely complicated.
I think it's because it's so hard.
Or it was so hard.
It was so hard for me to come
out.
I didn't come out until I was in
my mid-20s.
Maybe 25, 26.
And it was so difficult and drawn out.
And even though my parents were very accepting
of it in the end.
That doesn't mean that I wasn't terrified of
doing it for 10, 15 years.
It was something that preyed on me and
was so heavy on my shoulders.
You grow up thinking, I'm just part of
a family.
And then suddenly it gets thwarted and gets
complicated.
Are they going to love me?
It's a very strange situation to be in.
Because you are fundamentally different from your parents.
And I think it's probably like being deaf
maybe.
And your parents can hear.
It's such a difference.
And so you're so scared of saying, I'm
not like you.
And you're not like me.
You don't look gay.
I'm not sure what that means.
It means what it means.
You know what it means.
When he comes back and he has to
come out to his mum.
I was less interested about that.
But more interested about how the reaction of
her.
Spoke to all of the things that he
still feels as a person in his late
40s.
He's suddenly thrown back into being in the
80s and into the early 90s.
About how he felt.
How everybody thought about queer people back then.
And it's very easy to think everything is
fine now.
And everything is a lot better.
It was rough back then.
So many people were disgusted by you.
And I think as a queer adult.
But you still feel all that.
That's still all within you.
And I love what that did to the
story.
He's like, oh, I'm fine with my sexuality.
And then he comes back.
He reignites kind of all that shame that
he used to feel.
The conversation with his mother, really for me,
is the greatest scene in the film.
And it's a film of many great scenes.
But this negotiation that's constantly happening between them.
She asks if he's lonely.
And he says, if I am, it's not
because I'm gay.
Not really.
And then she echoes, not really.
I don't think I felt loneliness because I
am a gay person.
But I do feel like the world makes
you feel separate.
Has made you feel separate.
It has pushed you to the edges.
It's made you feel different.
And I know that for some people it's
like, why is he lonely because of that?
But I think most queer people understand what
that's about.
Another thing I found really interesting about that
scene, which me and Andrew talked a lot
about.
Is that he's so accommodating to his mom
as well.
And I think that's a really common experience
for a lot of queer people when they
come out.
Aren't people nasty to you?
No.
Things are different now.
They want to make it all okay for
their parents.
It's like, oh, don't worry.
It's okay.
I'm fine.
I'm not that kind of queer person.
Or I'm this or I'm that.
Don't worry.
I'm fine.
Rather than being like, I've been really fucking
sad.
Please just hug me.
Or whatever it might be.
And that again speaks to this constant desire
we have to not be thrown out of
the family.
To be in the center of it.
It's why I always sort of bristle a
little bit.
Even though I totally understand it.
When it's like, oh, you can find your
own new family as a queer person.
Find your found family.
And I get it.
And I have found my own family too.
But it's sometimes because you're forced out of
your other family.
And the truth is you want to be
part of that family too.
Your own family and another family.
So it's very, very complicated.
And it's also the internalization of all these
things that you feel as a young person.
That shame has been so internalized.
And it's so related to the way you
feel about your own sexuality.
Your own identity.
That it's impossible to separate these things.
The shame of it is so interesting.
Because I remember hearing somebody talking about this
film actually.
And saying, oh, he's just so full of
shame in a really negative way.
And it sort of made me quite annoyed.
Because what are you telling stories about?
You can't be telling constantly happy stories about
queer lives.
That's, you know.
Happy stories in general are not that interesting.
Whether they're about queer people or not queer
people.
Sorry I never came in your room when
you were crying.
No, really, it's okay.
Let's not get there, Elise.
It's not that.
Dad, I get it.
It was so long.
It was so long.
I think Andrew did it beautifully in this.
Like he's so open when he needs to
be open.
And he allows like this pain to come
to the surface.
To bleed out and then get sucked back
in again.
There's a lot of crying in this movie.
Which I don't like seeing crying in movies,
to be honest.
It's not my favorite.
I'm like, oh, Jesus.
Okay, you can cry.
And there's a lot of it in this.
And we were worried when we were filming.
Oh, you're crying again?
Jesus, enough crying.
But it works when it feels truly real.
Another thing related to queerness I wanted to
talk about.
Is the use of time in the film.
And how time is perceived by characters.
People who read about queer theory know that
queer time itself is so central.
This idea that queer lives are not part
of the forward march of time.
Traditionally, we've always sort of existed, like you're
saying, in the margins.
Outside of the normal way of moving forward.
At what point did you decide to sort
of, you know, make the boundaries a little
blurry?
The first draft of the script, it felt
like, okay, we're going back into the childhood
home.
And now we're in the present.
And it didn't feel truthful to me at
all.
And so, so much of my work, even
in those early days of writing, was trying
to compress all of that together.
So it didn't feel like the past and
the present in any real sense.
And I think it is, from a queer
perspective, that idea of time.
But also, it's just in a way that
time feels to me.
Because it doesn't feel linear as I go
through my every day.
The past is so in my present all
of the time.
It takes just one line of a song,
or a smell, or a sound of the
wind in the trees, and I am back
in the past.
And not just as a memory of the
past, I can feel it.
And to me, that's so powerful.
Because you can just flit between time so
much.
And so, telling a very linear story made
absolutely no sense.
But Adam also has that amazing line where
he says that since he was very young,
after his parents died, he felt like the
future doesn't matter.
Which also ties very closely into a lot
of writing that's been done on queer experience.
The sense that nothing out there is set.
Nothing's settled.
Nothing is held for me.
And there's a great episode of Looking.
I think the most acclaimed episode of Looking
is called Looking for the Future.
And there's a lot of threads in your
career.
In 45 years, this is about this aging
couple that never had children.
And they're reassessing their lives.
And there's a big question mark about what
the future holds at any age.
It feels like you're constantly writing characters who
see a big void in front of them.
I mean, that's how I felt growing up,
absolutely.
Realizing that I was queer in, you know,
early 80s, mid-80s, as AIDS was devastating
communities.
Not with anyone I knew, but it was
out there in the world.
I felt like, first of all, if I
was going to grow up and be a
gay person, I would die.
You were never going to find love with
another person and be able to, what, walk
down the street with your partner of the
same sex.
It felt absolutely impossible.
And in a weird way for me, that's
been quite liberating as I've grown up.
Because I've thought, well, I can sort of
make my own path.
I think a lot of younger gay people
now, queer people, they're like, I don't want
to go and get married and have kids.
But I do think all of my characters
are afraid of what that future might be.
Even in something like Lean on Pete, there's
a young kid whose, again, parents aren't around.
There's a lot of absent parents in my
films.
And he's trying to find a way through
his life to imagine a different future.
I'd also like to talk about cinematic influences
for this particular film and generally for your
cinema.
I find it really hard to talk about
my influences because I'm not really sure about
them.
There was certainly a sense of some of
those, especially 50s and 60s, kitchen sink British
realism films that I love and adore.
But I came to them quite late in
my life.
I worked in a cinema for a while
in my early 20s, like a rep cinema
in London.
So I had this amazing experience of watching
world cinema, interesting British cinema, American cinema.
And that's all kind of fed in, I
think, to my aesthetic.
And so it's strange going forward now, because
I think when you start out as a
career, you're like, I want my film to
be like this or look like this.
And then as you've made a couple of
films, you're like, I don't need to look
at other references now.
It's whatever is in me is in me.
But I do think there is a sense
of that British realism.
I also loved for a long time Antonioni.
I still do love Antonioni.
I like to oscillate between different styles, I
think, in how my films feel.
You've talked about Don't Look Now as a
favorite film of yours.
And the way that this movie deals with
loneliness and loss and the supernatural and the
fragmentation of time, it feels like maybe there's
a little bit of Nicolas Roeg in there.
Definitely.
I love that film.
It's definitely one of my favorite films.
And I watched it when I was probably
16 and watched it so many times and
adore it.
And I think my love of a zoom
lens has come from Roeg.
I think I'm convinced that's where it's come
from.
You know, he loved zoom lenses.
They're in all of his work.
And it is that sense of chopping time
up and it feeling like a representation of
our unconscious or subconscious rather than it being
the reality.
You know, Don't Look Now is a supernatural
story about grief and about loneliness and about
pain.
And when I approached this film, there was
more of a genre element than I'd ever
dealt with before, ever.
But I knew I didn't want that to
overtake what the film was.
And it needed to be about those emotions
under the surface.
And that is what had to carry the
film, that emotional strength, not the genre elements
of the story.
And the book is more explicitly horror in
a lot of ways.
The Hideo character, the more that he interacts
with his parents, the more his life force
is being sucked out of him.
But you do move away from the horror.
There was a conscious choice to make it
less horror.
The early drafts of the script were definitely
leaning towards that horror more, I think.
And I found it quite complicated in terms
of if you're turning it into a queer
story, too.
If his life is being drained from him
and he is looking worse and worse and
worse and worse, it felt so much like
I would be making a very clear statement
about the terror of AIDS.
But I wanted to be careful with that.
And also, in the original story, the Harry
character, who is a woman in the story,
is definitely an antagonist.
And she is there to destroy him at
the end, and he has to destroy her.
Again, telling this from a queer perspective, I
wasn't very interested in having, essentially, an evil
queer character trying to kill the other queer
character.
It did feel like that was not going
down the road I wanted to go down.
And I think it's probably one of the
profound changes, actually, between the two versions of
the story, is that this is not that.
This is two lost souls trying to find
each other, not someone trying to destroy the
other one.
You mentioned Antonioni, and I definitely can feel
evocations of the urban architecture and the loneliness
of urban architecture that he so often made
films about.
And the building itself is so central to
the way that this movie feels.
I knew I wanted, from the very beginning
of the film, for it not to feel
like complete reality.
So, for example, no one's got a phone.
Nobody's ever talking on the phone, ever, in
the film.
There's no cell phones, there's nothing.
Now, the apartment, it was an apartment in
Stratford in East London, and we built a
set in the end to shoot in.
But it's definitely got this idea of being
isolated from the city.
Everything is a little bit out of reach.
He looks out of the window, and it's
there, the city.
There's possibility there, there's a future there, but
he can't quite reach it.
He's, like, trapped behind glass, I suppose.
A lot of people have said to me,
is Adam dead all along?
Is he in purgatory at the beginning?
There is a sense of that building, because
he's stuck within this, you know, state of
being that he can't escape from.
So that building is a representation of his
sense of aloneness.
So, in reality, there could be other people
living there, but to him, it feels like
there's nobody else there.
And I think that strangeness had to be
there from the beginning for the film to
work.
And there had to be such a contradiction
between that location and the location of home
back in the past, if it is the
past.
There's a sense of time travel between those
two spaces.
It really does feel like he's going back
in time to a place that's been untouched.
Definitely.
I knew I wanted it to feel like
you were transitioning, not necessarily to the past,
but to a memory of how it used
to feel back then.
He's digging through old photos, he's listening to
music, he's on that train going back to
the suburbs.
To me, it's like he's falling asleep or
drifting off into this past world.
So I've said it lots of places before,
but that house was my own childhood home
when I grew up until about the age
of eight.
And we shot all on location, so inside
and out.
It's that house, there's no studio build.
What was so peculiar is down that street,
every other house has been renovated from the
outside apart from that house.
It was like it was waiting for me
to tell this story.
It's been like waiting for me to come
back and tell it.
And do Claire Foy and Jamie Bell's characters,
do they explicitly evoke memories of your parents,
or are they their own separate entities?
They definitely evoke memories of my parents.
I mean, my parents are still alive.
They're not my mum and dad, and there's
definitely a sense of personality that is similar,
but they aren't the same.
But I think when you're writing about parents,
how can you not put your own experience
of your parents in there?
You just can't help it.
I can't help it.
Can we talk a little bit about Paul
Neskog?
Because I feel you reconceived him as less
of an antagonist than the book has, or
less of a destructive force, rather.
Such a loving, beautiful spirit, in a way,
but also so ambiguous.
Because he is really ambiguous, that's the thing
of it.
And I think when you get to the
end, you realise, slightly differently about his character,
you have Adam as this central character who
has brought into existence, let's say, these other
people that he needs in his life.
Not the most original of deaths.
I'm really sorry.
No, thanks, it was a long time ago.
I don't think that matters.
And I wanted Harry's character to sort of
speak to this loving, caring, open, confident person
who is also still damaged and lonely and
scared at the same time.
And to me, from my experience of talking
to younger queer people, that can be their
experience too.
They live in a world where there is
so much more ease with who you are
in the world.
But that doesn't mean that suddenly everything is
full of happiness and joy.
What Harry's character becomes to Adam is this
sort of expression of the importance of being
there for somebody else.
He allows Adam to be honest about how
he feels.
Adam is then there for Harry when he
needs him the most.
And to me, if the film is saying
anything about love, it is that.
It's that love is really about what you
can do for somebody else.
How you can be there for them.
I think we're quite selfish about love so
much of the time.
It's about what do I feel?
How am I feeling?
When really, just like parental love is about
being there for your children, that's what it
should be in a relationship too for me.
It's not always easy.
How can I be there for somebody else?
Also that what the ending communicates is that
we all have our traumas and you can't
always outrun them.
And I think that's what's been really fascinating
about making this film and then putting it
out into the world is realising that it
has affected more people than I thought it
would do.
And it's quite powerful, actually, to think that
you can do something that has a little
bit of an effect on people and helps
people realise that, oh, fuck, we're all a
bit fucked up, aren't we?
We are all a bit damaged and lost
and sometimes we just need to be able
to express that and not cover it up
with, you know, a smile.
That's a perfect way to end that conversation,
but I also did want to ask about
that ending and the very bold choice to
go very maximalist at the end.
It was always, when I first started thinking
about it, that was the shot I wanted
it to be.
And I know it's a big choice and
I know it's not a choice that works
for everybody and I'm OK with that.
Sometimes I don't even know if it works
for me.
But I knew that I wanted it to
be something huge, saying that these two people
who love each other are as important in
the universe as everything else.
And I'm not a particularly spiritual person, I'm
not a religious person, but there was something
that I wanted in this film to almost
feel like it was transcendent, I suppose.
The tippy just ended with the two of
them lying in bed.
That's not an ending I want to see.
I want it to be like, what the
fuck is happening now?
And that you leave that cinema, and whether
you like the ending or not, you are
having to think about what that might mean
or what I'm trying to say it's meaning.
And I feel like in the past I've
been quite reserved with my endings.
And I was like, fuck it.
Do you know what I mean?
I don't want to end small and domestic.
I want to end, you know, in the
biggest way I could possibly imagine it ending.
I appreciate that.
I'm glad that you did.
Loneliness, Memory, and Filmmaking
This interview explores the cinematographic approach to “All of Us Strangers,” focusing on the portrayal of loneliness and memory.
The cinematographer, Jamie D. Ramsay, talks about the use of film, specific lighting, and techniques like LED walls and analog equipment to convey the characters’ internal experiences and merge past with present, achieving a nostalgic and surreal atmosphere.
The director aimed to depict isolation in a unique way, avoiding typical visual representations.
All Of Us Strangers (2023) Loneliness, Memory, and Filmmaking
Coming out of the period of COVID, a
global sense of isolation had hit.
Everybody was forced to deal with loneliness and
forced to deal with themselves.
I was sort of waiting COVID out on
the beaches of Cape Town in South Africa.
And I got a message from my agent
saying, look, there's something that's come and hit
our desk.
They've seen some of your work and they're
really interested in you reading the script.
But it really just felt so personal to
me and it hit parts of me where
I felt like I could pull from some
of the darkest moments of my life and
pull from where the real creativity exists.
I felt the journey just being taken.
Knowing Andrew's work for many years, to get
a script from him, I felt a huge
privilege.
We did similar types of films at similar
types of times.
I had done a movie called Squirnhate, which
means beauty.
And I believe he had done Weekend at
that point.
There just had been this kind of intrinsic
similarity between a taste in content and a
taste in storytelling.
You know, I'd seen 45 years, fairly close
to when I had heard about the script
coming my way.
The delicate nature of the story, the depth
of the character arc, and just the light
touch of it really caught my attention.
Andrew and I spent a lot of time
getting to know each other and talking about
life and talking about opinions on things.
And, you know, ideas of art and photography
and film.
And, you know, so we built a personal
relationship before we had even ventured into the
discussions on the film.
Yeah, I said to Andrew, you know, when
I first moved to the UK after spending
my whole life in South Africa, it was
the first time in my adult years that
I'd ever felt this sense of loneliness.
I said to him, you know, what really
makes sense for me with this movie is
this concept of showing loneliness in a certain
way that isn't necessarily the obvious way to
do it, you know?
Loneliness is often shown in a tiny person
in a huge frame, lost in space.
You know, loneliness for me is something that's
experienced from the inside out.
That idea of subjectivity in terms of the
visual experience for me was a driving force
in terms of how I wanted to show
this film.
I said to him, you know, perhaps this
feeling of isolation is not about a tiny
character in a big old wide, it's about
almost swimming in an empty fish tank.
A lot of open frame with no foreground
element.
It's just the character in the frame with
the background.
This idea of having almost a strange amount
of space around you with nothing to hold
onto and nothing to block you off created
for me a sense of unnecessary freedom and
unneeded freedom.
And there's no coziness in that sort of
frame.
Hello.
Hello.
And the only thing that started to warm
it up was when the other characters were
brought into it.
And then we started bringing character foreground and
group composition and closed eye line.
I'm Harry.
Andrew and my conversation with regards to the
overarching handling of the film from a creative
perspective was first and foremost about just the
delicacy of doing it.
Being gentle, your touch being as light as
possible.
One of the examples of that is the
idea of how to represent the ghost, the
apparition.
You know, I wouldn't call it the horror
of the movie but it is the darkness
of the film.
In real life, it's the imagination that's the
darkest thing.
The darkest conjuring of things exist in the
shadows in our own mind.
You know, being alone in a hotel room
and how the diegetic sound of a hotel
room can be so frightening at times.
When a sound appears that shouldn't be there
or something in the distance moves.
Your mind plays tricks on you and you
create the terror in your own mind.
How would you apply that visually to the
film?
And the truth was that the real terror
is right in front of you.
And it looks exactly like how you look
or how you see the day.
So our representation of that, we wanted to
keep as close to real life as possible
with a very slight gilding of something supernatural
on top of it.
When Andrew and I were discussing the core
feeling of the movie, this idea of memory
and a gentle nostalgia was always something that
almost at the core of it.
That feeling when you're cooped up in isolation
on the 47th floor of a half occupied
building and you're looking out at the world
but you can never touch the world, it's
too far away yet your response to it
is so immediate and visceral.
It's just out of arm's length, that feeling
of inaccessibility to life.
Right in the beginning of our discussions, the
idea of how to gently represent that in
our film as an overarching feel, the idea
of shooting it on analog came up.
Obviously, when I speak about analog, I'm talking
about shooting it on 35 mil film.
The clash of the old and the new,
that beautiful point where the wave hits the
beaches by embracing this incredible digital technology that
we've got with lights these days.
These LED lights that are, they're automatically connected
to your desk and you can control them
from an iPad.
The meeting of those two worlds felt like
a wonderful way to express this modern man's
experience of his body being rooted in the
present but his soul being rooted back in
the 80s when his parents passed away.
You know, it's Peter Pan syndrome, he never
grew past that.
His heart was trapped the day he lost
his parents.
Time is an interesting concept on this film
because even in the time that the movie
was based in, we wanted to be slightly
ambiguous.
You know, we never wanted technology to be
a thing that rooted us in a certain
time period.
You know, we didn't want tablets or touch
phones or iPhones and things like that to
be a thing that, you know, oh, it's
2023.
Andrew wanted time to be ambiguous and the
idea of us moving between the two worlds,
we wanted it to feel as if you
were sort of in a lucid state of
dreaming where you kind of drift off onto
a cloud and you're not sure if you're
awake or asleep.
We had a discussion one day about this
concept of the train system, you know, the
tube system being almost like the metaphor for
the porthole between the two worlds.
And that was quite useful because, you know,
he goes through very specific different states of
his character whilst traveling on this tube.
We thought, you know, just by the simple
fact of choosing an analog format as image
acquisition on the movie, it would be rooted
in something that was organic.
And in that organic base would exist a
touch, a ghost, a feeling, this kind of
surreal experience that's happening.
The lighting choice for the present day being
based in an LED lighting package, whereas whenever
he goes back to his parents, everything is
done in an incandescent sort of old school
lighting sort of way.
Do you want your own place?
Yeah.
So it was just choices like that that
were gentle enough not to be seen, but
rather just to be felt, you know.
Can't be cheap, blowing up there in the
smoke.
And what is it that you do?
I'm a writer.
A good 35 minutes of the film occurs
in his apartment.
So this was definitely a location that we
needed to control.
So Andrew and I went on this journey
of trying to find the apartment block in
London, wherever that would be.
Where would it feel right?
And eventually we found this very dystopian new
build area out in Far East London that
was barely occupied, that had this strange sense
of ghostliness to it.
And it just felt right.
I said, you know, look, why don't we
build the environment of what his view is?
And we're using an LED wall as a
backdrop so that there was this kind of
eerie sense of something not quite right, but
feeling like you can't put your finger on
it.
Can control the weather.
We can control the time of day.
We can control the feeling of everything.
Why don't we treat it like a rear
projection?
You know, we shoot the plates.
We get a variation of plates that work
for the scenes.
And then those can be in a high
-res manner can be projected onto the LED
wall.
So I'm tracking the weather apps on my
phone day after day after day, looking for
some sort of weather pattern to move through
London.
And eventually, I think the last weekend before
I cut off time for shooting the plates,
I saw this weather system coming in.
It turned out that we got the most
incredible gift from the universe.
We got things from absolute golden sunsets to
crazy storms to beautiful blue sunrises.
Weather that really matched the poignancy of the
different beats where the character was in his
journey in his apartment.
What was most incredible about doing this is
we could pick a mood that felt right
for the blocking that Andrew had designed.
We could say, okay, this scene is actually
a little bit lighter than we had originally
felt.
How about this choice for the backdrop?
But with the feeling of that backdrop and
the feeling of the plate used, we could
design the lighting for the scene around that.
You know, the pink hues in some of
the scenes that were chosen off the sunset,
color matched off the sunset, representing that initial
nuanced physical interaction between the boys that was
so delicate and so gentle and so tentative
between the two of them.
And that color palette that we chose in
the background for me felt like it was
a big part of how the scene felt.
Just checking you are queer, right?
Yeah.
That's good.
In the studio build of the apartment, we
obviously had a blanket pre-light, you know,
which was basically LED lights, every possible position
that one might need for all the eventualities
of the backdrop.
We also had the analog presence that we
always wanted to have some feeling of.
We had big old 20K tungsten lights that
were hung off girders that we would motor
down into the window line just to bring
in the strong sense of sunlight, you know?
The representation of spirit for the movie was
represented in this actinic backlight that came in
through the window.
It was always present in the parents' house
and an ebb and flow of it was
present in the apartment.
In Andrew and my discussion about how to
represent the parents' house, I said to Andrew,
it's important for us to give this part
of the film its own feel.
Sweetheart, you came back.
You know, I pitched to him the concept
of us only using sort of older lights
and stuff that's perhaps lit the movies of
yesteryear, but just steering away from anything too
clean and too digital, you know?
He was very happy with that.
So the majority of the parents' house would
be using practicals, which would be incandescent bulbs,
and then also using an array of tungsten
lights.
More importantly, from a field perspective for the
parents was we always wanted to sprinkle a
bit of gilding on that experience.
We wanted to feel that there was always
this sort of actinic presence that was part
of the scene.
We never embraced the idea of using SFX
haze or anything like that.
In the parents' house, we wanted there to
be sort of an amniotic presence in the
air, a palpable feeling of something there.
There was always a little bit of haze.
Obviously, the parents smoked.
That didn't hurt.
But there was always just this sort of
ghostly presence.
We wanted a very strong window light as
much as we could have it blowing out
the window, the bit of mist on the
window from the temperature difference.
And then for the night scenes, it was
based in just this glowing presence of practical
light.
So there's always a sense of Christmas, a
feeling of warmth, the hearth and home.
The moment that that all changed was when
he goes back and he takes his boyfriend
to go meet them.
And it's the first time that we see
the house completely bathed in moonlight.
And it's a complete opposite in color temperature.
It's the first time that it's completely cold.
There's no warmth left.
And in that moment, that's when this panic
ensues and the idea of an ever-present
warmth that you really felt it when it
was gone.
For me, when designing sort of my look
and feel Bible for the film, there's a
lot of stuff that inspires me.
And I do try to stay away from
sort of contemporary cinema just to try and
avoid as much as possible to become too
referential.
Keeping my reference palette to photography and art,
poetry and music.
For this movie, I leaned into a lot
of Saul Leiter's work.
You know, he's got this incredible way of
being voyeuristic yet personal.
He does create a lonely sense of separation
with the way he uses reflection and the
distortion within reflection for me, which is such
a wonderful way to suggest, you know, a
distorted sense of oneself, you know, which was
an important part of the film.
Also lent into a lot of Bacon's work,
you know, because there's obviously a very strong
psychological distortion in that work.
Andrew's character in the film goes sort of
downhill in terms of the sort of psychological
representation of reality versus the sort of rabbit
hole he's falling down into.
And his self-perception is a big part
of that.
The club sequence was one of the big
parts of it, you know.
You know, the club sequence has almost two
timelines.
It's got the timeline of the night and
then it's got the timeline of the representation
of him and Paul's relationship growing.
The way it's intercut with one another, it's
ambiguous to whether or not it's a dream,
if it happened, if the ketamine that was
taken in the bathroom created another porthole into
something else.
There's a lot of ambiguity too.
There was three very obvious shifts in mood
in that club scene.
The last of it was after they visited
the bathroom and had the ketamine in the
toilet and Andrew sort of goes into a
K-hole and everything sort of becomes very,
very subjective to the point where it's breaking
the fourth wall and the boys are looking
straight into the lens.
There's a lot of blended frame where they're
looking into each other and you frame match
their faces.
Everything becomes very, very surreal and very subjective.
This was also a big throwback to the
80s feeling of the club.
He didn't want a modern feeling environment.
He wanted something that still had the echoes
of the parties of yesteryear.
You know, I said to my gaffer, look,
obviously I'd love to pre-light a club
lighting design in here and you know, there's
gonna be a strong digital presence in there,
but I'd love for us to get hold
of as much old sort of disco lighting
as possible, you know.
As the night goes on, it goes from
an LED digital presence and then it transcends
into a much more analog, old school disco
light presence.
And obviously the hype of the night and
the whirlwind of getting caught up in a
wild night is represented by the chaos of
how the lighting sort of evolves to really
make it feel kind of like you've lost
your legs in that scene.
As a cinematographer, it was so important to
operate on this film was because I felt
that I could represent so much in the
way that I moved the camera.
We opted to shoot a number of the
scenes on zoom lenses because I wanted there
to be a three dimensionality to the movement.
If you're on a prime lens and you're
on a dolly or a slider, you have
a linear sense of movement, which is very
direct and it's very poignant and it's very
punctuated.
But then by adding this other dimension of
having the zoom within that space, you float
around and your reactivity becomes a lot more
organic.
I wanted to use that reactivity to feed
off the actors.
To always be present for every beat of
the rehearsal and the blocking with Andrew and
the actors.
I felt almost the camera was another character
in the room within the bubble of these
boys.
With a movie that has a very small
cast and each cast member has a significant
impact on the trajectory of the character narrative.
I think it's so much easier to get
belief out of each of those people because
nobody feels like they're superfluous to the experience.
Andrew's directing style feeds into that because he
is not an autonomous leader.
He's got a strong point of view but
he embraces everybody's ideas and thoughts.
Smart discussion is always a big process with
him and there's always a lot of it
too.
Communication is such a strong factor.
One of the big topics of discussion was
obviously the dealing with the intimacy.
The scenes that were physically intimate, emotionally intimate.
This is obviously very, very sensitive material.
The environment he creates makes it a safe
space for creatives to be as nuanced and
as vulnerable as possible.
Paul and Andrew were dynamite together.
There was a very obvious camaraderie that formed
between the two.
There was a very beautiful platonic love that
was evident between the lads.
A great amount of respect.
Jamie Bell and Claire Foy didn't necessarily take
up a hell of a lot of screen
time but their presence and what was said
through them were some of my favorite stuff
in the movie.
So why didn't you come into my room
if you heard me crying?
Why didn't you tell me what was happening
at school?
You know, you answer me first.
Be honest.
I just didn't want to think of you
as the kind of boy that the other
lads would pick on.
And I knew that if I was at
your school I'd probably pick on you too.
That scene for me when I shot it
was heartbreaking.
You know, absolutely heartbreaking.
When I shot it, I remember looking, there
was a couple of takes I remember looking
over to my focus puller and we're both
looking at each other choked up and we're
like, this is going to be a tough
one, you know?
You all right, son?
And then obviously when they hug in the
end and you cut out to the little
boy, just brutal.
When I was doing the early tests and
whatnot and I looked at Claire's shots that
I had done and I said to Andrew,
I said, God, you know, Claire's is actually
incredible in profile.
Because of how her eyes are and her
bone structure, there's so much that comes across
from a performance perspective and a profile.
That's not a common thing from my experience
anyway.
They're in the lounge and they're putting together
the Christmas tree.
He looks up at his mummy and he's
like in a little boy pose.
And just to feel the subtext to that
look, how much pain and catharsis and sadness,
but love and happiness is behind that look.
And to be able to read it just
like that for me was incredible to see.
What is it, sweetheart?
I can't sleep.
One of my favorite scenes in the film
is the moment where he gets out of
his bed and he sneaks into his parents'
bedroom.
Do you want to get in?
Andrew and I were talking about how to
do this scene and I forget whether it
was him or I that mentioned the idea
of doing it in an unbroken take.
You know, uncut.
Like a nightmare.
You know, the only way you stop a
nightmare is if you wake up from it.
I said, it would be great if we
could do it in one go and kind
of move the camera around and sort of
develop a ballet with the cast in such
a way that we do it live.
Still smells the same in here.
We do the replacing and the losing of
characters live.
You had creeping hair night after night saying
you couldn't sleep.
And, you know, my group kind of tucked
in a foot of space above the ribcage
to move the camera around on the slider.
But we figured out a way to do
it.
Then the next stage was convincing the actors
to, in one of the most delicate performance
scenes, to be okay with other actors sneaking
out of bed and climbing back into bed
whilst they're trying to deliver this performance.
What are you doing here?
You're not supposed to be here.
And Paul was like, cool.
Jamie Bell was like, cool.
Andrew was like, okay.
And then Claire was like.
But eventually she got behind us.
She loved what was going on.
And it was them who made it work
because it was their ballet that allowed us
to develop this seamless cut.
And it was the intensity between Claire and
Andrew that really held us there.
And I hate you even more that I
wasn't there before that.
Not really.
No, that's not true.
Oh, come on.
I was hardly mother of the year, was
I?
Just that ultimate reveal of him alone on
the bed and then the police lights arriving,
just like the night he lost his parents.
It's just like all of it just disappeared
again for him in that moment.
Everything that he had gotten back and that
he'd been wishing for ever since he lost
them, all that love, that warmth, the presence
of that warm light, again, gone in a
second.
And it's just heartbreaking, that, you know?
So the end scene of the film was
obviously something that we had spoken about a
lot.
Andrew wanted a top shot that would leave
the guys in the bed.
And then obviously VFX would take over once
you got wide enough.
The how to do it kind of showed
itself.
You know, the technicals kind of worked themselves
out.
But the why was important because by understanding
the why, one can really affect that a
lot, you know, with the choice of the
lights and things like that.
But for me, what I took from it
was that, you know, you come into this
world alone in the womb of your mother.
You're born into this crazy thing called life
and you go through what you go through.
And when you die, you die alone.
When you die, you go back to start
us, you know?
And what I loved about the concept of
that last shot was that it was almost
him returning to the stars, in a way.
We left them both in a position of
safety, in that fetal position of holding one
another.
It was almost like a moment where he
was not alone to die.
He wasn't left alone in that most loneliest
of moments.
Whether or not Paul was a figment of
his imagination or was a spirit that was
left trying to find his way to move
on, you know, he wasn't left alone.
For me, there was a sad beauty in
that.
In that, I found the license to shift
the lighting during the scene.
So it went from, you know, the practical
lighting of them being up on the 47th
or 50th floor, the glow of the city.
And then as the shot's evolving, you know,
that lighting gets pulled away and a white
spotlight comes in.
For me, that's the representation of the ghost
or the spirit in the film.
The presence of that white light, which for
me was a bookend to the beginning of
the film because in the beginning of the
film, it's the ping on the building is
the entering of that light and the entering
of that signifier.
And I wanted this presence of this strong
pop of light to be the bookend of
that.
And this strong sort of God-like pool
of light lands on the boys and they're
just pulled away from consciousness and taken away
from us and left back to the stars
they go.
global sense of isolation had hit.
Everybody was forced to deal with loneliness and
forced to deal with themselves.
I was sort of waiting COVID out on
the beaches of Cape Town in South Africa.
And I got a message from my agent
saying, look, there's something that's come and hit
our desk.
They've seen some of your work and they're
really interested in you reading the script.
But it really just felt so personal to
me and it hit parts of me where
I felt like I could pull from some
of the darkest moments of my life and
pull from where the real creativity exists.
I felt the journey just being taken.
Knowing Andrew's work for many years, to get
a script from him, I felt a huge
privilege.
We did similar types of films at similar
types of times.
I had done a movie called Squirnhate, which
means beauty.
And I believe he had done Weekend at
that point.
There just had been this kind of intrinsic
similarity between a taste in content and a
taste in storytelling.
You know, I'd seen 45 years, fairly close
to when I had heard about the script
coming my way.
The delicate nature of the story, the depth
of the character arc, and just the light
touch of it really caught my attention.
Andrew and I spent a lot of time
getting to know each other and talking about
life and talking about opinions on things.
And, you know, ideas of art and photography
and film.
And, you know, so we built a personal
relationship before we had even ventured into the
discussions on the film.
Yeah, I said to Andrew, you know, when
I first moved to the UK after spending
my whole life in South Africa, it was
the first time in my adult years that
I'd ever felt this sense of loneliness.
I said to him, you know, what really
makes sense for me with this movie is
this concept of showing loneliness in a certain
way that isn't necessarily the obvious way to
do it, you know?
Loneliness is often shown in a tiny person
in a huge frame, lost in space.
You know, loneliness for me is something that's
experienced from the inside out.
That idea of subjectivity in terms of the
visual experience for me was a driving force
in terms of how I wanted to show
this film.
I said to him, you know, perhaps this
feeling of isolation is not about a tiny
character in a big old wide, it's about
almost swimming in an empty fish tank.
A lot of open frame with no foreground
element.
It's just the character in the frame with
the background.
This idea of having almost a strange amount
of space around you with nothing to hold
onto and nothing to block you off created
for me a sense of unnecessary freedom and
unneeded freedom.
And there's no coziness in that sort of
frame.
Hello.
Hello.
And the only thing that started to warm
it up was when the other characters were
brought into it.
And then we started bringing character foreground and
group composition and closed eye line.
I'm Harry.
Andrew and my conversation with regards to the
overarching handling of the film from a creative
perspective was first and foremost about just the
delicacy of doing it.
Being gentle, your touch being as light as
possible.
One of the examples of that is the
idea of how to represent the ghost, the
apparition.
You know, I wouldn't call it the horror
of the movie but it is the darkness
of the film.
In real life, it's the imagination that's the
darkest thing.
The darkest conjuring of things exist in the
shadows in our own mind.
You know, being alone in a hotel room
and how the diegetic sound of a hotel
room can be so frightening at times.
When a sound appears that shouldn't be there
or something in the distance moves.
Your mind plays tricks on you and you
create the terror in your own mind.
How would you apply that visually to the
film?
And the truth was that the real terror
is right in front of you.
And it looks exactly like how you look
or how you see the day.
So our representation of that, we wanted to
keep as close to real life as possible
with a very slight gilding of something supernatural
on top of it.
When Andrew and I were discussing the core
feeling of the movie, this idea of memory
and a gentle nostalgia was always something that
almost at the core of it.
That feeling when you're cooped up in isolation
on the 47th floor of a half occupied
building and you're looking out at the world
but you can never touch the world, it's
too far away yet your response to it
is so immediate and visceral.
It's just out of arm's length, that feeling
of inaccessibility to life.
Right in the beginning of our discussions, the
idea of how to gently represent that in
our film as an overarching feel, the idea
of shooting it on analog came up.
Obviously, when I speak about analog, I'm talking
about shooting it on 35 mil film.
The clash of the old and the new,
that beautiful point where the wave hits the
beaches by embracing this incredible digital technology that
we've got with lights these days.
These LED lights that are, they're automatically connected
to your desk and you can control them
from an iPad.
The meeting of those two worlds felt like
a wonderful way to express this modern man's
experience of his body being rooted in the
present but his soul being rooted back in
the 80s when his parents passed away.
You know, it's Peter Pan syndrome, he never
grew past that.
His heart was trapped the day he lost
his parents.
Time is an interesting concept on this film
because even in the time that the movie
was based in, we wanted to be slightly
ambiguous.
You know, we never wanted technology to be
a thing that rooted us in a certain
time period.
You know, we didn't want tablets or touch
phones or iPhones and things like that to
be a thing that, you know, oh, it's
2023.
Andrew wanted time to be ambiguous and the
idea of us moving between the two worlds,
we wanted it to feel as if you
were sort of in a lucid state of
dreaming where you kind of drift off onto
a cloud and you're not sure if you're
awake or asleep.
We had a discussion one day about this
concept of the train system, you know, the
tube system being almost like the metaphor for
the porthole between the two worlds.
And that was quite useful because, you know,
he goes through very specific different states of
his character whilst traveling on this tube.
We thought, you know, just by the simple
fact of choosing an analog format as image
acquisition on the movie, it would be rooted
in something that was organic.
And in that organic base would exist a
touch, a ghost, a feeling, this kind of
surreal experience that's happening.
The lighting choice for the present day being
based in an LED lighting package, whereas whenever
he goes back to his parents, everything is
done in an incandescent sort of old school
lighting sort of way.
Do you want your own place?
Yeah.
So it was just choices like that that
were gentle enough not to be seen, but
rather just to be felt, you know.
Can't be cheap, blowing up there in the
smoke.
And what is it that you do?
I'm a writer.
A good 35 minutes of the film occurs
in his apartment.
So this was definitely a location that we
needed to control.
So Andrew and I went on this journey
of trying to find the apartment block in
London, wherever that would be.
Where would it feel right?
And eventually we found this very dystopian new
build area out in Far East London that
was barely occupied, that had this strange sense
of ghostliness to it.
And it just felt right.
I said, you know, look, why don't we
build the environment of what his view is?
And we're using an LED wall as a
backdrop so that there was this kind of
eerie sense of something not quite right, but
feeling like you can't put your finger on
it.
Can control the weather.
We can control the time of day.
We can control the feeling of everything.
Why don't we treat it like a rear
projection?
You know, we shoot the plates.
We get a variation of plates that work
for the scenes.
And then those can be in a high
-res manner can be projected onto the LED
wall.
So I'm tracking the weather apps on my
phone day after day after day, looking for
some sort of weather pattern to move through
London.
And eventually, I think the last weekend before
I cut off time for shooting the plates,
I saw this weather system coming in.
It turned out that we got the most
incredible gift from the universe.
We got things from absolute golden sunsets to
crazy storms to beautiful blue sunrises.
Weather that really matched the poignancy of the
different beats where the character was in his
journey in his apartment.
What was most incredible about doing this is
we could pick a mood that felt right
for the blocking that Andrew had designed.
We could say, okay, this scene is actually
a little bit lighter than we had originally
felt.
How about this choice for the backdrop?
But with the feeling of that backdrop and
the feeling of the plate used, we could
design the lighting for the scene around that.
You know, the pink hues in some of
the scenes that were chosen off the sunset,
color matched off the sunset, representing that initial
nuanced physical interaction between the boys that was
so delicate and so gentle and so tentative
between the two of them.
And that color palette that we chose in
the background for me felt like it was
a big part of how the scene felt.
Just checking you are queer, right?
Yeah.
That's good.
In the studio build of the apartment, we
obviously had a blanket pre-light, you know,
which was basically LED lights, every possible position
that one might need for all the eventualities
of the backdrop.
We also had the analog presence that we
always wanted to have some feeling of.
We had big old 20K tungsten lights that
were hung off girders that we would motor
down into the window line just to bring
in the strong sense of sunlight, you know?
The representation of spirit for the movie was
represented in this actinic backlight that came in
through the window.
It was always present in the parents' house
and an ebb and flow of it was
present in the apartment.
In Andrew and my discussion about how to
represent the parents' house, I said to Andrew,
it's important for us to give this part
of the film its own feel.
Sweetheart, you came back.
You know, I pitched to him the concept
of us only using sort of older lights
and stuff that's perhaps lit the movies of
yesteryear, but just steering away from anything too
clean and too digital, you know?
He was very happy with that.
So the majority of the parents' house would
be using practicals, which would be incandescent bulbs,
and then also using an array of tungsten
lights.
More importantly, from a field perspective for the
parents was we always wanted to sprinkle a
bit of gilding on that experience.
We wanted to feel that there was always
this sort of actinic presence that was part
of the scene.
We never embraced the idea of using SFX
haze or anything like that.
In the parents' house, we wanted there to
be sort of an amniotic presence in the
air, a palpable feeling of something there.
There was always a little bit of haze.
Obviously, the parents smoked.
That didn't hurt.
But there was always just this sort of
ghostly presence.
We wanted a very strong window light as
much as we could have it blowing out
the window, the bit of mist on the
window from the temperature difference.
And then for the night scenes, it was
based in just this glowing presence of practical
light.
So there's always a sense of Christmas, a
feeling of warmth, the hearth and home.
The moment that that all changed was when
he goes back and he takes his boyfriend
to go meet them.
And it's the first time that we see
the house completely bathed in moonlight.
And it's a complete opposite in color temperature.
It's the first time that it's completely cold.
There's no warmth left.
And in that moment, that's when this panic
ensues and the idea of an ever-present
warmth that you really felt it when it
was gone.
For me, when designing sort of my look
and feel Bible for the film, there's a
lot of stuff that inspires me.
And I do try to stay away from
sort of contemporary cinema just to try and
avoid as much as possible to become too
referential.
Keeping my reference palette to photography and art,
poetry and music.
For this movie, I leaned into a lot
of Saul Leiter's work.
You know, he's got this incredible way of
being voyeuristic yet personal.
He does create a lonely sense of separation
with the way he uses reflection and the
distortion within reflection for me, which is such
a wonderful way to suggest, you know, a
distorted sense of oneself, you know, which was
an important part of the film.
Also lent into a lot of Bacon's work,
you know, because there's obviously a very strong
psychological distortion in that work.
Andrew's character in the film goes sort of
downhill in terms of the sort of psychological
representation of reality versus the sort of rabbit
hole he's falling down into.
And his self-perception is a big part
of that.
The club sequence was one of the big
parts of it, you know.
You know, the club sequence has almost two
timelines.
It's got the timeline of the night and
then it's got the timeline of the representation
of him and Paul's relationship growing.
The way it's intercut with one another, it's
ambiguous to whether or not it's a dream,
if it happened, if the ketamine that was
taken in the bathroom created another porthole into
something else.
There's a lot of ambiguity too.
There was three very obvious shifts in mood
in that club scene.
The last of it was after they visited
the bathroom and had the ketamine in the
toilet and Andrew sort of goes into a
K-hole and everything sort of becomes very,
very subjective to the point where it's breaking
the fourth wall and the boys are looking
straight into the lens.
There's a lot of blended frame where they're
looking into each other and you frame match
their faces.
Everything becomes very, very surreal and very subjective.
This was also a big throwback to the
80s feeling of the club.
He didn't want a modern feeling environment.
He wanted something that still had the echoes
of the parties of yesteryear.
You know, I said to my gaffer, look,
obviously I'd love to pre-light a club
lighting design in here and you know, there's
gonna be a strong digital presence in there,
but I'd love for us to get hold
of as much old sort of disco lighting
as possible, you know.
As the night goes on, it goes from
an LED digital presence and then it transcends
into a much more analog, old school disco
light presence.
And obviously the hype of the night and
the whirlwind of getting caught up in a
wild night is represented by the chaos of
how the lighting sort of evolves to really
make it feel kind of like you've lost
your legs in that scene.
As a cinematographer, it was so important to
operate on this film was because I felt
that I could represent so much in the
way that I moved the camera.
We opted to shoot a number of the
scenes on zoom lenses because I wanted there
to be a three dimensionality to the movement.
If you're on a prime lens and you're
on a dolly or a slider, you have
a linear sense of movement, which is very
direct and it's very poignant and it's very
punctuated.
But then by adding this other dimension of
having the zoom within that space, you float
around and your reactivity becomes a lot more
organic.
I wanted to use that reactivity to feed
off the actors.
To always be present for every beat of
the rehearsal and the blocking with Andrew and
the actors.
I felt almost the camera was another character
in the room within the bubble of these
boys.
With a movie that has a very small
cast and each cast member has a significant
impact on the trajectory of the character narrative.
I think it's so much easier to get
belief out of each of those people because
nobody feels like they're superfluous to the experience.
Andrew's directing style feeds into that because he
is not an autonomous leader.
He's got a strong point of view but
he embraces everybody's ideas and thoughts.
Smart discussion is always a big process with
him and there's always a lot of it
too.
Communication is such a strong factor.
One of the big topics of discussion was
obviously the dealing with the intimacy.
The scenes that were physically intimate, emotionally intimate.
This is obviously very, very sensitive material.
The environment he creates makes it a safe
space for creatives to be as nuanced and
as vulnerable as possible.
Paul and Andrew were dynamite together.
There was a very obvious camaraderie that formed
between the two.
There was a very beautiful platonic love that
was evident between the lads.
A great amount of respect.
Jamie Bell and Claire Foy didn't necessarily take
up a hell of a lot of screen
time but their presence and what was said
through them were some of my favorite stuff
in the movie.
So why didn't you come into my room
if you heard me crying?
Why didn't you tell me what was happening
at school?
You know, you answer me first.
Be honest.
I just didn't want to think of you
as the kind of boy that the other
lads would pick on.
And I knew that if I was at
your school I'd probably pick on you too.
That scene for me when I shot it
was heartbreaking.
You know, absolutely heartbreaking.
When I shot it, I remember looking, there
was a couple of takes I remember looking
over to my focus puller and we're both
looking at each other choked up and we're
like, this is going to be a tough
one, you know?
You all right, son?
And then obviously when they hug in the
end and you cut out to the little
boy, just brutal.
When I was doing the early tests and
whatnot and I looked at Claire's shots that
I had done and I said to Andrew,
I said, God, you know, Claire's is actually
incredible in profile.
Because of how her eyes are and her
bone structure, there's so much that comes across
from a performance perspective and a profile.
That's not a common thing from my experience
anyway.
They're in the lounge and they're putting together
the Christmas tree.
He looks up at his mummy and he's
like in a little boy pose.
And just to feel the subtext to that
look, how much pain and catharsis and sadness,
but love and happiness is behind that look.
And to be able to read it just
like that for me was incredible to see.
What is it, sweetheart?
I can't sleep.
One of my favorite scenes in the film
is the moment where he gets out of
his bed and he sneaks into his parents'
bedroom.
Do you want to get in?
Andrew and I were talking about how to
do this scene and I forget whether it
was him or I that mentioned the idea
of doing it in an unbroken take.
You know, uncut.
Like a nightmare.
You know, the only way you stop a
nightmare is if you wake up from it.
I said, it would be great if we
could do it in one go and kind
of move the camera around and sort of
develop a ballet with the cast in such
a way that we do it live.
Still smells the same in here.
We do the replacing and the losing of
characters live.
You had creeping hair night after night saying
you couldn't sleep.
And, you know, my group kind of tucked
in a foot of space above the ribcage
to move the camera around on the slider.
But we figured out a way to do
it.
Then the next stage was convincing the actors
to, in one of the most delicate performance
scenes, to be okay with other actors sneaking
out of bed and climbing back into bed
whilst they're trying to deliver this performance.
What are you doing here?
You're not supposed to be here.
And Paul was like, cool.
Jamie Bell was like, cool.
Andrew was like, okay.
And then Claire was like.
But eventually she got behind us.
She loved what was going on.
And it was them who made it work
because it was their ballet that allowed us
to develop this seamless cut.
And it was the intensity between Claire and
Andrew that really held us there.
And I hate you even more that I
wasn't there before that.
Not really.
No, that's not true.
Oh, come on.
I was hardly mother of the year, was
I?
Just that ultimate reveal of him alone on
the bed and then the police lights arriving,
just like the night he lost his parents.
It's just like all of it just disappeared
again for him in that moment.
Everything that he had gotten back and that
he'd been wishing for ever since he lost
them, all that love, that warmth, the presence
of that warm light, again, gone in a
second.
And it's just heartbreaking, that, you know?
So the end scene of the film was
obviously something that we had spoken about a
lot.
Andrew wanted a top shot that would leave
the guys in the bed.
And then obviously VFX would take over once
you got wide enough.
The how to do it kind of showed
itself.
You know, the technicals kind of worked themselves
out.
But the why was important because by understanding
the why, one can really affect that a
lot, you know, with the choice of the
lights and things like that.
But for me, what I took from it
was that, you know, you come into this
world alone in the womb of your mother.
You're born into this crazy thing called life
and you go through what you go through.
And when you die, you die alone.
When you die, you go back to start
us, you know?
And what I loved about the concept of
that last shot was that it was almost
him returning to the stars, in a way.
We left them both in a position of
safety, in that fetal position of holding one
another.
It was almost like a moment where he
was not alone to die.
He wasn't left alone in that most loneliest
of moments.
Whether or not Paul was a figment of
his imagination or was a spirit that was
left trying to find his way to move
on, you know, he wasn't left alone.
For me, there was a sad beauty in
that.
In that, I found the license to shift
the lighting during the scene.
So it went from, you know, the practical
lighting of them being up on the 47th
or 50th floor, the glow of the city.
And then as the shot's evolving, you know,
that lighting gets pulled away and a white
spotlight comes in.
For me, that's the representation of the ghost
or the spirit in the film.
The presence of that white light, which for
me was a bookend to the beginning of
the film because in the beginning of the
film, it's the ping on the building is
the entering of that light and the entering
of that signifier.
And I wanted this presence of this strong
pop of light to be the bookend of
that.
And this strong sort of God-like pool
of light lands on the boys and they're
just pulled away from consciousness and taken away
from us and left back to the stars
they go.
All Of Us Strangers (2023) Screenplay
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- Andrew Scott as Adam (Actor)
- Paul Mescal as Harry (Actor)
- Carter John Grout as Young Adam (Actor)
- Jamie Bell as Dad (Actor)
- Claire Foy as Mum (Actor)
- Ami Tredrea as Waitress (Actor)
Check the censor’s rating in your region.
Andrew Haigh|Taichi Yamada
- Film4 Productions
- Blueprint Pictures
- Searchlight Pictures
- TSG Entertainment
IMDB Information
All of Us Strangers (2023)
Director:
Andrew Haigh
Actors:
Adam
Harry
Young Adam
Dad
Mum
Waitress
Teen
Gay Bar Goer
Teen
Shopper
Lover
Taxi Driver
Club goer
Dancer
Shopper
Passerby
Teen
Dad on train
Lover
Keywords:gay acceptance, gay romance, gay son, gay writer, homosexuality, coming out to parents, gay protagonist, unresolved grief, gay interest, gay neighbor
Trivias:
uncategorized: Andrew Haigh's childhood home served as the filming location for the house in which Adam finds his parents.
uncategorized: [Jamie Bell, recalling a scene in the film that reminded him of his own parenthood as a father of three]: "When I tell Adam it's time to go now, Andrew reaches out and puts his hand on my mouth to stop me from speaking. My four-year-old does that. She thinks, if you don't speak it, it won't happen. It's a moment that wasn't in the script. That was just Andrew being brilliant. And you immediately go, 'OK, I'm going to hold his hand now, because that hand is precious to me.' It fuels you, and that's what's wonderful about working with great actors."
uncategorized: [Director Andrew Haigh on using the song "The Power of Love" by Frankie Goes To Hollywood]: "The idea that I used to love that song as an 11-year-old queer kid living in suburban England and that I could put it in a film years and years later, now being very open about my sexuality, is something I never thought would actually be a possibility," Haigh says. "And I can make a film with queer content -- again, something I never thought would be a possibility. And I'm in a relationship, which is, again, something I never thought would be a possibility. I was like, Fuck it, that's going at the end of the film. There was no way I was not doing that. I wouldn't even care if nobody liked it."
uncategorized: Andrew Haigh's childhood home served as the filming location for the house in which Adam finds his parents.
uncategorized: [Jamie Bell, recalling a scene in the film that reminded him of his own parenthood as a father of three]: "When I tell Adam it's time to go now, Andrew reaches out and puts his hand on my mouth to stop me from speaking. My four-year-old does that. She thinks, if you don't speak it, it won't happen. It's a moment that wasn't in the script. That was just Andrew being brilliant. And you immediately go, 'OK, I'm going to hold his hand now, because that hand is precious to me.' It fuels you, and that's what's wonderful about working with great actors."
uncategorized: [Director Andrew Haigh on using the song "The Power of Love" by Frankie Goes To Hollywood]: "The idea that I used to love that song as an 11-year-old queer kid living in suburban England and that I could put it in a film years and years later, now being very open about my sexuality, is something I never thought would actually be a possibility," Haigh says. "And I can make a film with queer content -- again, something I never thought would be a possibility. And I'm in a relationship, which is, again, something I never thought would be a possibility. I was like, Fuck it, that's going at the end of the film. There was no way I was not doing that. I wouldn't even care if nobody liked it."
Goofs:
factual error: When Adam is describing the hospital in Croydon that his parents were taken to following the accident he mentions it was called St Mary's Hospital. This is incorrect - St Mary's Hospital in Croydon was a maternity hospital and did not have an Emergency Department, and it closed in 1985 - two years before the accident he described. The hospital that would have been factually correct would have been Mayday Hospital.
anachronism: The stereo system in the parents living room contains a Dual CS505 turntable that was available in the mid 80s but the amplifier beneath it is a model from the 90s.
factual error: When Adam is describing the hospital in Croydon that his parents were taken to following the accident he mentions it was called St Mary's Hospital. This is incorrect - St Mary's Hospital in Croydon was a maternity hospital and did not have an Emergency Department, and it closed in 1985 - two years before the accident he described. The hospital that would have been factually correct would have been Mayday Hospital.
anachronism: The stereo system in the parents living room contains a Dual CS505 turntable that was available in the mid 80s but the amplifier beneath it is a model from the 90s.
Cinematographer
Jamie Ramsay
Composer:
Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch
Producers:
executive producer
executive producer
producer
co-producer
producer
producer
associate producer
executive producer
executive producer
co-producer
