Before going to see All of Us Strangers, directed by Andrew Haigh and starring Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal, I had pretty much decided that it wasn't going to be for me. I'm a big action/adventure fan. I also love fantasy and sci-fi and horror and crime thrillers and all that juicy genre stuff. But I go to the cinema a lot and when it comes to the kinds of movies I see, I generally don't discriminate. That said, I've had enough intimate character study films fall completely flat for me at this stage that I wasn't expecting anything different from this movie. So you can imagine my surprise when All of Us Strangers moved me to tears multiple times!
There's no plot in All of Us Strangers. Normally, this bothers me. I get frustrated by the lack of stuff happening and the slow pacing makes me feel like everything is being dragged out, but this movie did something else to keep me engaged--it kept me asking questions. This, combined with the very real emotions Andrew Scott's Adam was going through, was powerful enough to draw me into a movie I had otherwise dismissed.
Now, some might criticise the kinds of questions I was asking myself as stupid, genre-junkie interrogations looking to pick apart a movie that was meant to be felt rather than understood, but I am who I am, and when Adam's parents first showed up on screen--both of them 10 years younger than him--my mind jumped to "Are these ghosts?!"
The movie is about Adam forcing himself to deal with losing both of his parents in a car crash as a child. It does this by having Adam speak and interact with and visit them at the house where he grew up, and what precisely is going on here is entirely up to the viewer. That gap between what's possible and what's happening on-screen is where my mind was engaged. I looked for clues as to what's really going on and what was real and what wasn't. Figuring the movie out was my way into enjoying it, and I guess that writing-wise I can point to this as an example of how mysteries and questions can keep someone invested in your story.
Really, though, it was the acting that blew me away. The subject matter is intimate, sensitive, and specific on a level I had never seen before, and watching Andrew Scott wrestle with some of the deepest, most painful emotions someone can ever go through was a wonder to watch. Really, he should've been nominated for an Oscar for this, if the Oscars were a measure of talent instead of a glorified marketing event. I should point out that although there's no plot to speak of, Adam's emotional journey is done to a rough three-act structure. It might be indie art-house cinema, but it's not rambling nonsense. Adam's character journey was deliberately structured to bring an immense amount of catharsis by the end.
So I guess my last piece of writing advice is cast Andrew Scott in everything you can because he'll make your movie better for being in it. Hey, who said my advice had to be practical?
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