Andrew Haigh has described All of Us Strangers, a haunting meditation on love and loneliness, as a deeply personal film, infused with his own feelings about parents and relationships. That’s not unique – there’s a reason they say write what you know. But “All of Us Strangers” may be one of the few major films to be shot in its creator’s childhood home. Shortly before production began, Haigh knocked on the door of the house where he lived until he was 7 or 8 years old and discovered that little had changed in the intervening decades.
“The owner agreed to let us film there,” says Haigh. “He hadn’t really decorated it for 30 years, so all these memories came flooding back. And then we used my old photographs to make it look almost exactly as it had been. It was so emotional for me, but it was also cathartic. It was a chance to reconnect with my past.
That’s exactly what Adam (Andrew Scott), a forty-something gay man living a life of quiet desperation in an ultra-modern London block of flats, undergoes in “All of Us Strangers”. But his catharsis has a supernatural element. One night he returns to his old neighbourhood to find his parents (Claire Foy and Jamie Bell) alive and well – even though they died in their 30s when Adam was a child. He keeps coming back, hoping to better understand how their loss has shaped the person he has become.
“I can relate to what he’s feeling,” says Haigh. “The child in us is basically always there, and the things you carry around as a child. You think you’ve grown out of it, but it can bubble up and affect the way you live.”
There were important differences between Haigh’s story and that of his protagonist. Most notably, the writer-director’s father and mother are still alive. But even if he didn’t experience the same kind of tragedy as Adam, his parents’ divorce when he was a preteen shattered his sense of security.
“When my family broke up, it created this loss at the centre of things that was difficult to deal with, so in a strange way I went through a grieving process,” he says.
At the same time as Adam finds himself drawn back into his past, a chance encounter with a 20-something neighbour (Paul Mescal) offers the prospect of a romantic future. And one of the things that makes “All of Us Strangers” so compelling is that its four main characters come from three different generations. It’s shaped the way they see their world, and allowed Haigh to reflect on his experiences growing up queer in the 1980s and ’90s. AIDS cast a mushroom cloud over everything and homophobia was rampant. There’s a moment in ‘All of Us Strangers’ when Adam comes out to his mother, and her reaction is not one of disgust or unyielding support, but of deep concern.
“I wanted to remind myself and the people watching what it was like at the time,” says Haigh. “It was a very different experience to come out, so the way the mother reacts in the film is exactly what everyone was thinking at the time. It was what we were thinking about ourselves. We were afraid we were going to be lonely and we weren’t going to find love.
Haigh feared that a younger generation of queer viewers, raised in an era of greater cultural and political acceptance, wouldn’t be able to relate. “All of Us Strangers” won’t be released until December 22, but the response from audiences at Telluride and the New York Film Festival reassured him that the film’s themes of buried pain and isolation resonate.
“It’s interesting to talk to younger gay people because we’re always told things are better now, but that doesn’t mean they’re not still struggling and feeling disconnected from their family,” says Haigh. “And lots of people who aren’t queer take something from it. It hits people in different ways, but I think everyone feels alone at some point.”
Critics have embraced “All of Us Strangers”, as they have Haigh’s previous works such as “Weekend”, “45 Years” and “Lean on Pete”. But the filmmaker, who has built up a solid fan base, admits he’s terrified every time he embarks on a new project. But he’s learnt to embrace the anxiety that comes with it.
“What you soon realise is that everyone is terrified,” says Haigh. “Actors are just as nervous as directors. It was a comforting realisation. I remember talking to Tom Courtenay on the first day of shooting ’45 Years’ and he was petrified. This is a legend and he’s still scared. As a director, you just want to create a space where people can use that vulnerability to make work that they feel good about.
