From writer-director Andrew Haigh (and nominally adapted from the book Strangers by Taichi Yamada), All of Us Strangers centers on a secluded writer named Adam. As the film opens, he meets a drunken neighbor, Harry, whose amorous advances he declines. But he can't get Harry out of his head, nor can he thoughts of his parents -- who died decades earlier, before he came out as gay. When Adam decides to visit his childhood home, he discovers the ghosts of his parents still living there, giving him the opportunity to share with his parents the man he truly is.
Let me first say that I'm not certain I would have put All of Us Strangers in contention for Best Picture. (Not, at least, if you were to just literally list my personal 10 favorite movies as the nominees.) I'll get into why in a moment. But this is certainly the kind of movie that usually catches Oscar's eye, and there are certainly a few categories in which it should have contended.
Most notably, Andrew Scott should have been a nominee for Best Actor. His performance as Adam is simply remarkable, handling a raft of huge emotions with a careful subtlety. (Perhaps too subtle to have courted the notice of Oscar voters?) The character says he's out and proud, but his actions sometimes give the lie to that. He tells his parents he is happy, but his solitary demeanor isn't readily recognizable as such. In scenes with Adam's parents, Andrew Scott adopts a childlike deference that's wholly absent in scenes with Henry. Every moment of the performance has a potent context that shapes the behavior.
At least two supporting performances might well have been nominated too. Paul Mescal plays Henry, exuding a perfectly uneasy charisma with Andrew Scott that makes their relationship believable while simultaneously making you sense that something isn't quite right. Claire Foy plays Adam's Mom. Because her ghostly character appears at the age she died, she's actually younger on screen than her son Adam, but Foy's performance wields every bit of the parental authority that the story needs.
While I loved a lot about All of Us Strangers, I have reservations about the movie as a whole. It's hard to get into exactly why without spoiling key moments in the story, but suffice it to say that I found the script strange. Almost cruel, even. What sets out like an uplifting tale about going back to actually take the "road not taken" winds up heaping sadness on top of sadness by the final act. I felt somewhat similarly about it as I did to last year's critical/award contender Tár.
To save you the click, it boils down to this: I absolutely want stories about LGBT+ characters in entertainment to represent humanity in all its good and bad facets. But right now, I worry that negative portrayals simply feed the persistent toxic views that still get the oxygen they need to be starved of. All of Us Strangers does not depict any predatory monster, so in that sense it's nothing like the destructive character at the center of Tár. (And importantly, where Tár came from a straight writer-director, Andrew Haigh is himself LGBT+.) Still, it would be easy to watch All of Us Strangers and say, "well... if you choose to be gay, of course your life is going to be full of sadness and regret."
Still, if you're reading this blog, that's quite unlikely to be your read of the film. And so I think I can recommend All of Us Strangers to you -- certainly for the performances, if nothing else. Overall, though, I think I'll give the movie a B-. I don't think its shut-out from even any Oscar nominations was necessarily sinister; there were LGBT+ artists nominated for their work. Still, it does seem like a bit of a head-scratcher to me in the case of Andrew Scott, who did probably his career-best work in this movie.
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