My thoughts on 'All Of Us Strangers' *major spoilers*
All Of Us Strangers directed by Andrew Haigh is summarised on Google as poignant, suspenseful, and mysterious. I think whoever wrote that forgot ‘vulgar’, ‘uncomfortable’, and ‘disappointing’.
For the majority of the film, we are led to believe we are watching a gay man deal with his tragic past whilst building a romantic relationship with his neighbor. Despite it seeming as though these two men are the only residents of the building and our protagonist seeing a physical manifestation of his dead parents, everything seems rather normal. I was settling in to witness a tale of healing and acceptance, not only of the past but of yourself, with a side of genuine romance to help you through. I was severely disappointed to find it was all quite literally a facade; the love interest was dead the entire time and our protagonist was merely a severely lonely and mentally ill man.
It’s safe to say this was not the triumph of queer love I thought it was going to be, and sadly my disappointment forced the beautiful, heart-wrenching family scenes into the background.
With Andrew Scott as Adam, our protagonist and Paul Mescal as Harry, his love interest, my first grudge with this film is that we have a straight man playing a gay man. It’s 2024, there are plenty of gay actors: gay actors with a desire to tell authentic queer stories, and in contemporary cinema it feels entirely purposeful, and offensive, to cast a straight man instead. This was most distasteful when Harry is sitting with Adam asking him if he is queer, he then goes on to discuss why he does not label himself gay. My aim is not to speak for all queer people but as somebody who has struggled to understand their sexuality for the majority of their life, I struggled not just to relate to the recounts of his childhood, but to be fully immersed in them because of my awareness that Mescal had never known the struggle he was speaking about.
I wanted to scream THIS IS NOT YOUR STORY TO TELL!
However, even though Scott is gay does not automatically mean he has experienced the struggles he portrays within the film, however, I am way more comfortable with, for the lack of a better term, a ‘spokesperson’ who is actually part of the LGBTQ+ community, knowing that even if he has not been through those struggles he can still fully appreciate, deeply relate to and empathize with them. So I reiterate: as an actor, this was not Mescal’s story to tell, nor his platform to take.
Bringing those aforementioned overshadowed family scenes into the foreground for a second: I have to say they were stunning. In particular, the scene with Adam and his father speaking about when he was a young boy having a hard time in school for being considered different, moved me to tears. The line from his father: “I’m sorry I never came in your room when you were crying” made me a blubbering mess. I think a large majority of people desire an admission of regret and an apology from our parents about the ways in which they could have done better, as we see in the film, it heals your inner child in such a way you are brought back to them at that moment and it feels as though something can finally be let out, nay, a hole has finally been sewed up. As the scene carried on I was uncontrollable, I was crying as much as the character on the screen - not just a few tears you shed at a sad movie, I mean my lip was quivering, my nose was running and I had to take silly little hitched breaths. This scene, for me, was everything I had hoped for from this film: self-acceptance, acceptance from a family member, feeling the love that you lost, getting closure from your past, and moving through old childhood wounds. I wanted to stay there forever.
However, I was not granted the pleasure. These incredible scenes were interrupted by unnecessarily vulgar sex scenes. Now, first things first, I am not one to shy away from the taboo (although I personally would not consider sex on the big screen to be so taboo) I do think there is still a level of avoidance when it comes to gay sex in the media. In general, I have witnessed a steady increase in nudity and sex in mainstream cinema and I do believe some people are doing it right - Poor Things directed by Yorgos Lanthimos for example. Bella’s exploration of her sexuality, libido, and adult body was imperative to the storyline of the character understanding herself, moving into the adult world, and gaining full autonomy. The brazen nature of these sex scenes matched the tone of the entire film as it was highly experimental and bold, both in its content and as a piece of media. Completely dissimilar to All Of Us Strangers the sexual scenes of which at some points I literally could not watch. My experience as a viewer and my engagement with the film was completely ruined as I was so uncomfortable I actually had to close my eyes. As a piece of media, it felt jarring and disjointed as one moment I was completely engulfed in raw emotion, and the next I was being forced to watch something that made me literally squirm in my seat. I was in it with Scott and then taken out of it with Mescal.
At risk of coming across accusatory, I have to mention that I feel as though this whole situation was entirely fanfare. Roll up, roll up, who wants to see 2023's heartthrob ‘play a gay man’ he actually licks cum off Andrew Scott’s chest!!! And you can see his whole arse!!! I feel as though the makers of this film all got together and brainstormed how they could attract a bigger audience for this sad little story of a traumatized gay man and Paul Mescal was their big publicity idea.
Overall I think there was a disturbing theme winding its way throughout the entire film highlighting how the experience of queer people has not changed as much as we believe it has. When Adam comes out to his mother in the kitchen she jumps immediately to concerns about AIDS, and the loneliness and cruelty of life as a gay man. This is an entirely understandable view for a woman of the 80s, and Adam takes the time to explain what his life is actually like now in 2023, claiming he finds it easy to be himself and lives a full life. The plot follows this with the use of one of the most hurtful tropes in my opinion, and buries it’s gays. Not only does Harry die, he was actually dead all along and Adam was only imagining him. The writers successfully take a heartwarming story of a man healing his wounds, saying goodbye to his family in order to have a successful relationship with a man he found solace and companionship with, and turn it into a statement that queer life has not become any less dangerous, depressing, lonely and confusing that it was forty years ago. It completely discredits Adam’s conversation with his mother and turns self-acceptance into denial of reality.
If the makers of this film wanted to comment on the homophobia and hate crimes of this generation and about the safety of queer youth: perhaps that was what they are referencing with this plot twist (although I don't believe this was an opportunity for that) they could have had Harry attacked or murdered instead of him, and by extension their entire relationship, being a figment of Adam’s imagination. Instead they have created a film about two gay men, one mentally ill and borderline psychotic and the other a depressed drunk who kills himself. And to top it off, Adam makes no progress with his family or healing from his past as his parents abandon him a second time before he is ready, leaving him completely and utterly alone, just as he was at the beginning.
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