“All of Us Strangers” streaming in Hulu

An absolutely wonderful film that ripped my heart to pieces.

I could have written OP's post word for word. If any other films have such tender resonant conversations between gay men and parents, please tell me which ones. Haigh's understated touch with dialogue and direction is masterful. Quite a few of the lines will embed in my mind, because they're painful and true - but uttered without self-pity. Mary me if you will, but AOUS has had a similar effect on many, and will continue so to do.

Just watched it on HULU. HAIGH sure knows how to get me going. He did it before with “Weekend.”

Sounds depressing. Or is it sad yet uplifting?

Over rated and unoriginal.

R4 it’s sad in the way is life is sad, but uplifting if you have a realistic attitude about love

Fantastic performances by all the actors, intelligent and nuanced writing and superlative directing and editing.

R5 commented after leaving Aquaman 2

This film will especially resonate with you, if you have lost either or both of your parents, and if you were of the generation where coming out was traumatic.

R8 - I'm sure that's true, but I would also add, you don't have to have lost your parents or have been exactly of Haigh's generation to appreciate the film. It's really beautifully done. It casts such a spell -- I felt like I was in one long dream -- in fact, it reminded me of the strangely uneasy, yet heartening feeling of seeing people you've lost in your dreams.

I think the film perfectly captures how loss and grief are related yet entirely different at the same time.

Grief catches me and can bring me to the floor. Loss is a continual ache that colors every moment.

Pretty film. Well acted. The ending is anti -life.

I didn’t get it. The parent thing was pretty well realised. The rest of it was a nonsense. Where was everybody rise in the high rise? In a new residential development people don’t move in one at a time. They do it in phases. In real estate you have to close to make money, etc. No developer is going to have two people move in for a month or whatever - there are loans to be paid, and interest, schedules to keep to, etc.

Haigh did the same thing in Weekend. Hot hunky lifeguard who works in a speedo but can’t get a date, etc. Made it seem like he was the only gay in the village except for an old drag queen and there was just a small gay pub. NEWSFLASH: Nottingham is not a small city! It’s so contrived. Now London is deserted except for Casper the friendly ghost or whatever. It’s so put on. And then the end. O-kay.

You know nothing of people or allegory, R12. People who grow-up in foster care often have lots of trouble connecting, and a hot guy who can't connect just seems aloof to others. As for the empty building, it's a metaphor for how isolated they both are. Also, real estate is subject to all kinds of money problems. Beyond that, there are buildings that open only for the developer to go bankrupt or embroiled in civil disputes. You really need to get out more often.

The take @ R12 indeed seems too literal-minded. AOUS is a meditation, poetic and dreamlike, for all the acute realism of its excellent acting writing and direction.

It seems odd to focus on the logistics of real estate but accept as plausible the ghost story. Others might say that the film makes no sense because ghosts don't exist, so what's the point. And in being so tone-deaf, entirely miss the point.

The emblematic isolation of Adam and Harry is in fact echoed when Adam returns to his parents' house. His mother doesn't know the neighbours, and nor do we see any other people in the street. For many reasons, his Mum and Dad yearn to see him too.

It’s fun to imagine R13 screaming his reply at the top of his lungs, Chris Crocker-style, while The Power of Love blares at full volume in the background annoying the neighbours.

Fair points, R14, but I didn’t say the ghost story was plausible. I said the exact opposite. I think the parents bit worked well enough, which I suspect is the core of the original novel, and the other stuff not so much.

It’s also one of those films that achieves a lot of its affect through needle drops but if you turned the sound down, it’s pretty much a lot of people looking longingly out of windows. Feels like bit of a cheat, really.

I found it deeply affecting. It said a lot about unprocessed trauma.

As someone who didn’t have a bad terrible childhood per se and had a father who didn’t fully accept me, the idea of having conversations with my dad now after he’s gone really resonates.

Well done. Then it turns into Childrens Hour 2025 and the queer of course must die.

I torrent downloaded this today and will watch it tonight. There's been so much hype on DL about it. Hope it's good!

I haven't seen it, but want to, so have avoided "spoilers" about the story.

However, if there is a "twist" where we find out that Mescal's character is a figment of Scott's imagination, like the dead parents he keeps seeing, I won't be happy. From the trailers, it's the immediate impression that jumped out at me.

So, would a kind DLer affirm that no such twist exists in this movie?

It’s a multi layered conception r20

Go see it and come back to me this thread and we will discuss it

Youtube content creators are starting to compile scenes from this movie to music not in the film. The videos are like AOUS short form music videos.

Here's a 7 minute video showing scenes from Adam & Harry's relationship. The spoilers this video contains would probably be unclear to anyone who hasn't seen the movie, but you have been warned that there are spoilery things in it.

This is a really good edit that brings back all the feelings in the movie in only 7 minutes. It's not a substitute for the movie, and it actually makes me want to see the film again.

[quote]It’s a multi layered conception [R20]

So, the answer is "yes" - when you boil it all down, the Mescal character is simply another imagined character in Andrew Scott's character's head.

Well, I'm out.

Why does no one who looks like Paul Mescal knock on my door half-happy-drunk, raise a bottle of whiskey, rake me with let's-fuck eyes, and ask if he can come in?

R23 you’re cheating yourself out of a wonderful and cathartic film, but you do you

[quote] the Mescal character is simply another imagined character in Andrew Scott's character's head. Well, I'm out.

For people actually interested in watching the movie, the above is not the only possible explanation as to what is really happening. There are at least three different scenarios that may explain what's going on in the movie, and I personally don't like or subscribe to the one that says it's all in his mind.

For the director's part, he doesn't seem to care how audiences interpret what is actually going on. He says that the most important thing is to feel what's happening, and not to intellectualize it or treat it like a mystery to be solved.

I can buy the ghost story, but I can't buy that someone as hot as Paul Mescal's character would want to sleep with that toad.

R23 - we'll try to pick up the pieces of our broken lives without you. Don't forget us!

It was such a good film, especially for a gay audience.

Both my parents are still alive, my coming out in the 80s was not really a problem, and I don't live an isolated life in an abandoned London high rise, yet that movie resonated with me on so many levels. Deeply affecting and very emotional.

I started watching it and was about half way in, maybe a little less, and I had to stop. I figured out a main plot point and got upset. I could not bear it.

I thought the film was very nice and at times very moving, but hardly worthy of the breathless, naive over-praise it’s receiving.

A similar public sensation happened with the dumb Saltburn a few month back.

*shrugs*

I love how you go straight for the deep stuff r27. Quite admirable.

I wondered if the block of flats is a metaphor for purgatory. I took it that both were dead and by the end both had worked through whatever kept them there at the start of the film. They both moved on together at the end. The director has been deliberately obtuse so anything goes.

R27

I'd take that "toad" in a heartbeat. I know attraction is subjective but I'd love to see a pic of you.

Miffed because no one has ever knocked on your door and been as desperate and lonely and drunk as Mescale was? Or is subtlety not one of your strengths?

Or is the movie lost on you, unfortunately, because you can't get any further into anything that's about more than men's looks?

A drunk Paul Mescal comes to my door?

THE BEDROOM IS THIS WAY.

I'm debating whether to watch this. It's supposed to be a deep, heavy tearjerker but the 2 men are so blessedly hot I'm scared they might distract me from the film's messages.

Watch it r37

You won’t regret it.

After I watched the film, I reconnected with an old friend, because I didn’t want to have and regrets before I died.

[quote]the 2 men are so blessedly hot

Which makes their vulnerability and honesty all the more affecting.

The film title should be "All of us Ghosts" because that's what they all are.

Toad? Andrew Scott is beautiful.

I just lost my dear mom two weeks ago today. I want to see this but I think I will wait a little longer. Still feeling torn up.

Sorry to hear that R42. I'm sure she was a great lady.

R43 Thank you. She was such a great lady. I thought I was prepared as she had been in hospice since December but it has hit me hard. I'll be ok. But damn it sucks.

R42

Unsolicited advice, but I'd wait awhile before I watched the movie.

I'm sorry to hear about your mom. I've gone through that so I understand.

R45 I appreciate it.

R44 My mom is getting there. She's 80, super healthy and fit for that age but I am seeing some signs of decline and for the 1st time I have a little voice telling me to start appreciating and remembering the good moments we have together. I can't imagine how I will deal with her being gone (not to mean her further deteriation). Hang in there, the clouds will part one day.

I started watching it on basic Hulu, but the commercial interruptions really damaged the dream-like quality of the movie, so I found it on a torrent site and watched it that way.

R47 here

deterioration.

Oh dear!

Spoiler alert:

(And) they all went to heaven in a little rowboat. Clap slap.

R42 so sorry for your loss.

R47 You sound like a wonderful son. I know you Mom feels blessed. Wishing your family a beautiful Spring.

What a wonderful sad movie. The parents thing resonated with me in a way i was far from expecting. I cried at times (Mary, i know), specially with the father. The quartet of actors is wonderful. After The Zone of Interest i wasn’t affected by a movie in a long while.

More superficially: i finally got the Mezcal hotness. Andrew Scott doesn’t do anything for me (and i dont particularly like the bronzed look) but he was amazing in this. Hotness wise Jamie Bamber wins.

^meant Jamie Bell

Outside of this film, I don't get Paul Mescal's appeal. If I were Adam I would have let him in that first night drunk stranger or not.

Jamie Bell was wonderful in this.

Jamie Bell is such an underrated actor in this, and in most of his movies.

Jamie Bell was wonderful and hot in this movie

I gotta watch it again because it was so slow I fell asleep.

I absolutely loved it. And I cannot say enough- Claire Foy was OUTSTANDING-- How the fuck that chick from Barbie could get a nomination over her is fucking bananas. I loved Jamie Bell as well... I loved the parents and those scenes most of all.. They truly got me where I live..(I lost my dad when i was 10, so that may be why- I don't know)

"...I tearfully would like to thank the academy...."

Yup r40 that was my take too.

Andrew Scott is not only beautiful but beautifully talented. IMHO.

All four of the actors are amazing r63

If you haven’t checked out RIPLEY on Netflix, Andrew Scott is superb.

I became a Claire Foy fan due to this film.

Again, she was amazing and deserved a nomination as much as any actor in any category.

She really got me.

Rr40 / R62 - Is the waitress a ghost too? He interacts with her. The other three, yes, but not Adam. That would make the whole point of the movie, well, pointless. Also, I'm not even fully convinced the other three are ghosts so much as figments of his imagination. Remember that early on the dad interacts with the grocery store clerk when he buys cigarettes. Seems more like an internal wish fulfillment where he gets to resolve his issues on his own terms.

But your never see the clerk, not even his hands r68

So dad does not interact with anyone except Adam, Mom and he sees Harry

My question is, three milk shakes are delivered by the waitress, because Adam requests the family special but does not specify for how many people. Is the waitress seeing Mom and Dad as well?

But how did he get the cigarettes? Did he clip them?

Good point about the milk shake order. I don't remember the exchange and would need to see it again.

Also, I forgot when Adam also interacted with the bartender at the club and ordered two beers.

Dad offered on a cigarette to Adam, but he didn’t take one

The only people we saw smoking where Mom and Dad

[quote]Is the waitress seeing Mom and Dad as well?

It's been a while since I saw this fine film - but as I recall, the waitress makes a little comment to Adam about his order being a lot of food. Meaning, for just one person. He confirms anyway.

That now cuts me up again. She glimpses his oddity, he needs to create the aura he longs for to imagine that final heartbreaking scene. But he's Alone.

Yes, my point is that Adam wasn't a ghost (at least not literally, perhaps metaphorically). The other characters are are there to help him work through his many unresolved issues, and it's open to interpretation whether they are ghosts or all in his imagination. I viewed it as their being ghosts, but I also think it is awfully convenient that they're all so agreeable and helpful in his surmounting the past that it makes me wonder if it's all really just wish fulfillment conjuring. Regardless, it was a beautiful and moving movie and at times surprisingly raw. While it's universal in theme, it does hold special meaning for gay men around the age of Adam.

Was the little unhappy blond boy on the train with his fat father supposed to be young Harry?

Yes r72, according to the director of the film Andrew Haigh

Thanks R73!