Saying goodbye is never easy, but what is even more difficult is losing someone before you get the opportunity to tell them how you feel. This is an experience that many would be lucky never to encounter since there’s nothing quite as harrowing as living with the regrets of never telling someone you love how you truly feel, even if the sentiment is simply an expression of love. For the protagonist in All of Us Strangers, he finds a way to circumvent this problem by visiting his parents, making sure to spend every moment he can with them, and ensuring that nothing is left unsaid in their conversations – the only caveat being that both of his parents have been dead for thirty years, and these visits occur only in his mind, a part of the continued trauma he has had to endure since they perished when he was a young boy, and these conversations are his efforts to alleviate the burden with which he has been living his life. This film, which is based on the novel Strangers by Taichi Yamada, is an extraordinary achievement, a delicate and complex drama that is handcrafted by Andrew Haigh, one of our greatest living filmmakers, and a major voice in contemporary queer cinema. Returning to the screen after a five-year sojourn, he is welcomed back with this extraordinary and complex film that showcases all of his greatest skills in vibrant detail. A unique and enthralling depiction of one man’s journey as he attempts to come to terms with the past, All of Us Strangers is a film with many layers, and it is our fortune to be able to spend some time with these characters, uncovering the various elements and looking to see what emerges once each new layer is revealed. Filled with complex emotions and even more daring subject matter that makes it far deeper than we may have anticipated, Haigh’s incredible and poignant adaptation of this novel is astonishing, and instantly proves how fortunate we are to have such a brilliant filmmaker currently working in contemporary cinema.

Family is precious, and losing anyone can be a harrowing experience, especially if it is a parent. These are the people who have raised us and essentially made us into the people we are today – and while this sentiment doesn’t account for the concept of chosen families, there is still some validity in the idea of the Normal Rockwell-inspired nuclear familial unit, perhaps not as the ideal, but rather as something that many of us grew up experiencing, and which exists at the heart of All of Us Strangers as the main entry-point into the story. Haigh is not so much in support of the traditional family itself as much as he is interested in exploring the impact it has on the lives of many people, particularly those who go on to choose paths that are quite different from the placid domestic existence with which they had grown up. This is not a film about feeling resentful for one’s upbringing or any sense of despair, but rather the process of reflecting on the past and realizing the impact these moments had on us in our formative years, and how important even the most challenging experiences were for far too many young people, many of which found the most joyful moments in their lives emerging as a result of overcoming these challenges. Memory plays a very important role in All of Us Strangers, which is a complex and quietly intense examination of the impact family has on forming our identity, and how the realization that these small moments that seem inconsequential at the time are bound to become the most cherished, either for what they represented to our future selves, or because they strengthened our bonds, whether with those around us or ourselves, an important detail that this film beautifully explores and uses as the starting point for many of the incredibly engaging and insightful conversations we see scattered throughout the narrative, and which Haigh beautifully harnesses as he makes his way through this fascinating text and its underlying message, which he repurposes into his unique vision.

There are many gifts which Haigh has used to build his career and become such a respected name amongst filmmakers of his generation, and one of the most essential is that he doesn’t waste time with exposition or attempt to conceal information in his films for longer than necessary. Both thematically and in terms of the narrative structure, he is known to get to the point almost immediately, which is vital for a film such as All of Us Strangers, which is constructed around the main character as he undergoes a range of internal conversations, each one being used as the foundation for the film’s continuous efforts to give us a glimpse into his psychological state. This is the primary aspect that the film is so intent on exploring, and we discover that what fascinates Haigh about this story is not the fantastical elements, but rather the deeper conversations that emerge as a result, which are far more captivating and important to the narrative thrust of the story. All of Us Strangers is a film about a man trying to understand why his life has reached this point, and we see him constantly in a state of trying to negotiate his way out of this psychological trench that seems to only be getting deeper and far more difficult to escape as he refuses to move on, despite all the signs that he is going in the wrong direction. Ultimately, we find that this film is about realizing that dwelling on the past may be the easy choice for those of us who tend to hold onto the guilt and remorse, as if constantly revisiting this trauma will help us process these emotions, but that sometimes taking the first steps away from the past is the braver and far more important action in terms of moving forward. These ideas are incredibly impactful, and we find this film makes some genuinely moving statements on the nature of regret, and the experience of working through the past in a way that allows us to get closure, while also not becoming too intent on atoning for whatever misdeeds, or reliving previous moments over which we had very little control.

For several years, Andrew Scott has been orbiting around getting that singular role that would bring him not only acclaim but allow him to be viewed as one of his generation’s greatest actors. For over a decade, he has been working laboriously across genres in every conceivable medium, making an impression on just about anyone who saw him act. Yet, he remained severely underpraised and perhaps even overlooked, especially when lesser talents were getting far more attention. This immediately changes with All of Us Strangers, which may be the finest work he has done to date, and proof that he is an incredible leading man who can command the screen without needing to resort to hysterics or excess and that his quieter, more subdued style of acting could be the foundation for a genuinely moving, complex performance. His work here is simply extraordinary – he captivates our attention with the simplest of movements and most subtle of actions, his line deliveries quiet but impactful, and his face telling more than any spoken word could ever hope to achieve. This is a masterful performance that feels not only realistic but entirely lived-in, almost as if Scott was drawing on some experiences from his past as the inspiration for how he developed this character, which Haigh clearly had full confidence in entrusting into his beyond-capable hands. I am not entirely sure I will see a better performance this year, which is quite extraordinary considering how the past few months have yielded some of the most incredible work from several brilliant actors. However, All of Us Strangers doesn’t only rely on Scott, and we find that Paul Mescal, Jamie Bell and Claire Foy are not only very good in their own right, but they work to match Scott on a very personal level, creating an atmosphere in which every emotion is not only obvious but felt with the deep authenticity that propels the entire film and makes it such a poignant, deeply human story about identity, desire and self-reflection.

What does become excessively clear throughout All of Us Strangers is that this is a film that has many narrative strands, but they all come together to form something far more simple, which is that this is a story about identity. We may tend to get caught up in trying to rationalize the central conceit of the film – and Haigh does very well to never even attempt to explain the logic behind Adam’s visits with his parents – but there comes a point where we set aside the desire to understand the reasoning behind the film, and instead we begin to focus on the intricate details that drive it forward as more than just a piece of cinema. The original novel is only used as a rough guideline, with Haigh taking the story in a different direction, both tonally (removing the element of horror that defined the text, as well as the original film adaptation) and in terms of the ideas being explored. This is a good opportunity for Haigh to return to his roots of queer filmmaking, since many of the most moving, complex moments in the film come when the protagonist reflects on his sexual identity, particularly in relation to other characters. Adam has conversations about his sexuality with all three of the supporting characters that play a part in this metaphysical journey, and each one of them is different – whether it be the simple act of coming out to his mother, whose reaction is one that is all too familiar to many people, or the experience of having their father explain how he could tell they were “a bit fruity” from childhood, or the moment where one surrender to their desire and opens up to a prospective partner, especially someone who has earned their trust. The film may be a beautiful ode to family, but the real impact is made in how all of these conversations are redirected to the character of Adam himself, who sought the closure not only so that he could say goodbye to his parents, but also so that he could hear the validation that he needed, the encouragement to know that not only do they approve of his lifestyle, but that they are proud of the person he has become. It would be genuinely surprising for anyone to see these moments and not feel some sense of overwhelming emotion, which Haigh studiously avoids overplaying, instead allowing the truth beneath these moments to speak for themselves, which is ultimately the key to what makes All of Us Strangers such an incredible piece of filmmaking.

There are many extraordinary elements that make All of Us Strangers such a powerful film, and in terms of both its narrative development and its style of storytelling, it proves to be quite a formidable film that carries meaning in every recess, being a fully-formed, complex celebration of life, albeit one that is not afraid to establish a feeling of genuine melancholy with the subject. It’s a daring and provocative piece of cinema that is fearless in how it interrogates human emotions, and it is certainly not against placing the viewer in a position where we are absolutely devastated by the direction the story takes, and how it plumbs the emotional depths of the human condition, emerging with a profoundly moving understanding of what it means to exist, a challenging concept that not even the most dense philosophical texts have been able to convey. Haigh has made a truly beautiful, poignant work of art that touches on issues that exist far beyond the realm of cinema – this is humanity condensed into a single story, but where we clearly feel as if we are observing only one story out of countless others. For most of the film, we find ourselves looking at the character of Adam as a profoundly lonely man, someone who watches the world pass him by as he exists in his own self-inflicted isolation, based on his inability to open up to those around him. Yet, as the film progresses, we see him begin to bloom, and this is where the most powerful moments are found since they don’t only speak to this character’s journey, but to the lives of many people, particularly those of us who have felt that crippling sense of alienation from reality, and where it seems far easier to retreat into our own minds than it is to comprehend the scope of reality, coming to terms with some harsh but important facts that many choose to avoid. All of Us Strangers is a compassionate, earnest and deeply moving account of identity and the role every moment plays in forming us into the person into which we are evolving – there isn’t any terminal identity, and we are constantly changing based on our experiences and the people who define it, which makes this film such a powerful work, since it shows the importance of realizing the cumulative power of each and every experience, and how it is integral to our emotional and psychological composition, and only through coming to terms with the past and actively working towards the future can we find the beauty in the present moment.