What a really good film can do — All Of Strangers (spoilers)
Film can create characters that are evil, unreadable, or just nothing like you — and you relate to them.
I’ll confess that sometimes life can teach you that you really do know fuck-all.
Watching a film can feel like a virtual reality headset into living a few different lives. That would sound a bit of a reach with most films, but some of the very best do achieve that feat.
Now I’ll throw you a bone. The loudest experience of this I’ve had was with “All Of Us Strangers”.
You follow a man (played by Andrew Scott) who’s clearly not that chuffed to be existing, he’s secluded, dead behind the eyes, and rough shaven.
Very quickly it unveils some of the reasons he got to this point. His parents died when he was young, he is also gay and never told them.
So he visits them a lot. Their ghosts, that is. And he tells them, and brings to life that moment he tells them who he is.
Being naturally cynical and perhaps realistic (with the era his parents grew up in), he assumed they’d be disappointed. It’s worse than that though. They still clearly love him but that news is like a dagger to them, they blink between looking at him like a stranger - and then like a concerned parent.
Author’s note: I cannot relate to a single detail. Both my parents are alive and I am straight, but my belief is that this should never hold back a filmmaker from achieving the effect they want.
Gradually throughout the film, he keeps returning to his parents’ house. They don’t age a day.
Each time he unpacks some of the things he never got to talk to them about. The father, the mother and the stubbled “child” all look the same age as they sit at a table or share a bed, yet you can see the maternal body language of the mother, you can feel the father son dynamic, and Andrew Scott looks delighted to return to his innocent childhood.
Once these foundations were built, the pain just grew. Sometimes the reality would set in and you’d ache for him. You see the glimmers of denial, and again, it’s like a hole in your stomach.
Some films pull on heartstrings with music, or extreme close-ups. This one achieved it by making the audience feel like they were intruding on someone’s vivid and most personal fantasy.
P.s. I’ve spoiled the early premise but I still absolutely implore you to look out for it.
