When writer/director Andrew Haigh was working on the screenplay for βAll of Us Strangers,β he thought back on his own childhood, the people he had lost and the experiences he had had.
βWhile the film is not autobiographical, itβs certainly very, very personal to me,β he says. βPeople who know me can see myself on that screen like Iβm there.β
Even more surreal: The film was shot in Haighβs childhood home, one that brought its own memories.
βItβs so important to feel intimately connected to the materialβ¦I wanted my collaborators to feel intimately connected, too. If I can put myself in a vulnerable position, I kind of hope that everyone else can come to that.β
Andrew Scott, who plays the leading role, was on board. βItβs so much about loving and being loved,β he says. Adam, his character, is in a purgatory of sorts, unable to move on from a relationship. βSome part of his growth as a person has been curtailedβ¦and in order for him to live or love himself, you need to be seen by your parents.β
Jamie Bell and Claire Foy play Adam's parents in "All of Us Strangers."
That introduces another βdream-likeβ section of the film: Adam βvisitsβ his parents. Flashbacks to when they were younger put him back in their home, letting him talk about those issues that worry him. The parents (played by Jamie Bell and Claire Foy) died in a car accident when he was 12. That means he didnβt get a chance to talk with them about issues later in his life. Those conversations help him face realities in his 40s.
βIt definitely goes in a very different direction than what the original novel (βStrangersβ) was,β Haigh says. βThereβs the essence of the novel, but thatβs what I love about adaptation. You can take an idea and make it your own and, somehow, youβre connecting with that original novel.β
The conversations Adam has are much like situations in a dream. βThereβs a real potency to waking up our emotions,β Scott says. βSometimes you can wake up incredibly upset, grief stricken, very angry. Thereβs something very childlike about the character for me to go, βIt doesnβt take much to bring you back to childhood.β He conjures up these people himself. Itβs really about the wonder of love.β
For Haigh, it was often a matter of reconciling what the story was saying. βI knew that this could be a traditional ghost story. But that didnβt feel totally right. I guess what I always tried to concentrate on was, βWhat is the emotional truth of what Adam is needing or wanting in this moment?β I just kept focusing in on, βWhy have these people appeared in his life? What is he needing?β Itβs like existing in a sort of dreamscape.β
Director Andrew Haigh, left, and Andrew Scott on the set of "All of Us Strangers."Β
Scott, best known for his work in βFleabagβ (as the βhotβ priest) and β1917,β says βStrangersβ delves into that part of the mind that enables people to have conversations with people they havenβt seen in 10 years or creating scenarios that havenβt happened.
βItβs something that we all think about,β he says. βWe donβt know whatβs going to happen to us after we die. Thereβs something thatβs very human about trying to go beyond humanity and go beyond logic β even the idea of bringing people back in our imaginations is foolhardy, but we do. We imagine falling in love with people. We imagine people coming back to see us.β
For Adam, itβs also an opportunity talk to his parents about being gay, a conversation he never had.
βIβve wanted, for a long time, to tell a story about family and its relationship to gayness or to queerness and how it can be very different for a queer kid to grow up within an essentially heterosexual family,β Haigh says.
Director Andrew Haigh.
Scott related to the concept and saw the role as a collaboration of their experiences. βOur initial conversations werenβt about acting,β he says. βIt would have felt a little perverse to create a character that was too far away from what Andrewβs experience growing up might have been or what my experience might have been. I wanted it to be sort of unadorned.β
As a result, when Adam has those conversations with his parents, theyβre entirely natural.
βThereβs an authenticity of what is coming out of Andrew in those moments,β Haigh says. βThe emotion that comes out of Andrew is so genuine it makes me cry now, and Iβve literally seen it 2,000 times.β
"All of Us Strangers" is now in theaters.Β