Adam, a screenwriter lacking inspiration, wanders around his apartment. Suddenly, the building’s fire alarm forces him to evacuate. In the corridors, then outside, he doesn’t meet anyone. The atmosphere is almost supernatural. And yet, all this is very real: the building is new, and Adam is one of the first two occupants, period. The sequel, on the other hand, will take place on the edge of fantasy. Indeed, shortly after, Adam will return to his childhood home where his deceased parents will welcome him as they were at the time of their tragic death, thirty years previously. This, while Adam begins a passionate affair with Harry, the second tenant. Filmmaker Andrew Haigh and actor Andrew Scott talk to us about their moving and mysterious All of Us Strangers.
Acclaimed at the Telluride Festival and winner of a plethora of awards and nominations since, All of Us Strangers is loosely based on a novel by Taichi Yamada.
“When I read it about five years ago, I couldn’t put it down,” Andrew Haigh recalled during a virtual conference at which The duty was able to attend.
“The idea of meeting your parents again, years after their death… It immediately fascinated me, because it lent itself to a different exploration of themes that interest me: family, love, wounds from the past… The novel being a fairly traditional Japanese ghost story, I subjected myself to a long and arduous adaptation process. I wanted to transpose the story to England, and above all, to make it resonate with me in a personal way. »
Creatively, the director of Weekend And 45 Years (45 years old) benefited, so to speak, from the pandemic confinement.
“While writing, I was as isolated as Adam. Insularity made introspection easier: I delved very deeply into myself. The film is not strictly speaking autobiographical, but it is very, very personal. I wanted to be specific about the protagonist, about Adam, so I filled his life with details from mine, in the hope that others would relate to it. I believe that the more personal we show ourselves, the more we can hope to achieve the universal. »
The nature of love
During the adaptation, Andrew Haigh realized that through this project he was not so much trying to explore the parent-child bond as to understand the nature of love.
“In order to achieve this, I found it interesting to place family love and romantic love in parallel. I think the two are inseparable… Ultimately, I preserved the essence of the novel – the concept and this character of a screenwriter prey to melancholy – but that’s about it. »
For example, in the novel, the ghosts have evil motivations, while in the film, not at all: Adam’s parents are resolutely benevolent, and curious to discover what has become of their only son. Through conversations that are all the more unusual because they are handled with absolute naturalness, words that were once silenced are finally spoken.
What if it was never too late to speak your truth? In this respect, the gay theme is specific to the film: in the novel, the hero falls in love with a woman.
“I’m gay, so this change was a natural fit for me,” notes Andrew Haigh. In fact, I’ve wanted to tell a story with family connotations linked to homosexuality for a long time. Growing up as a gay kid is a different experience. »
One of the most apt observations from Andrew’s scenario is that, out of love, sometimes a family member will say something unintentionally brutal or hurtful Andrew Scott.
This whole part greatly moved Andrew Scott (revealed in the role of Moriarty in the series Sherlock), who plays Adam, and who is also openly gay.
“One of the most accurate observations from Andrew’s scenario is that out of love, sometimes a family member will say something unintentionally brutal or hurtful. Another member will then feel “invisibilized”. And from this will be born a dull anger which will remain there as long as it is not named. »
By discussing with his parents, beyond death, his homosexuality – a homosexuality of which he was already aware at 12 years old at the time of their death in an accident -, Adam “names” his resentment, his bitterness… but also his dismay at not knowing whether his father and mother would have accepted or rejected him.
In doing so, Adam becomes for the first time “visible” in full, for who he is, in the eyes of his parents. And the appeasement follows the torment…
Return to childhood
From the outset, Andrew Scott felt close to Adam, whom he felt like he had known forever.
“In our initial discussions, Andrew and I quickly came to the conclusion that I shouldn’t ‘play’ Adam too much. I had to refrain from any embellishment in the game, tending towards a more raw quality, in contrast with the dreamlike, metaphysical dimension of the proposition. My interpretation is greatly informed by my own childhood and that of Andrew. »
In this case, Andrew Haigh took the “personal” approach to the point of filming in the real house of his childhood, the interior of which was restored to its original state. with the blessing of the current owners.
“I turned 50, and I notice that as we get older, we tend to revisit the past more,” notes the filmmaker. Not necessarily with regret or nostalgia: it can be to draw lessons from it, or to make observations that had escaped us until then. »
According to Andrew Haigh, the past is not immutable: our perception of it changes as we age. At 50, with hindsight and experience, we no longer have the same view on events and people as we did at 12.
And as Adam says in the film: it doesn’t take much to return to childhood. This is what he does: he summons his parents in order to dispel the misunderstandings that remained unresolved after the accident. These unsaid things are what really haunts Adam, what fuels his deadly melancholy. Resolve the past, to finally live in the present…
“What Adam does is not that different from what we all do in life,” notes Andrew Scott. I mean… We all have mental conversations sometimes with people who aren’t there. We imagine ourselves falling in love with a certain person, we develop scenarios…”
Liminal space
Should we deduce from this that the plot ofAll of Us Strangers takes place exclusively in Adam’s head? Yes and no. It’s more complicated, and more poetic.
“For me, the film takes place in this zone of drowsiness that precedes sleep,” says Andrew Haigh. You know: this liminal space that is not completely fanciful, but not completely real either. I tried, in my script and my production, to keep the audience in that space, with Adam. »
“The emotions felt in a dream are real, even if the dream itself is not,” says Andrew Scott. You can wake up from a dream feeling incredibly troubled. I think that one of the reasons why the film provokes such strong reactions is because Andrew managed to combine two distinct things: the power of evoking dreams, and the power of identification of realism. During filming, we didn’t even think about the supernatural aspect: all we cared about was the authenticity of the characters and their interactions. »
Agreeing with his star’s comments, Andrew Haigh adds: “In such a context, the relevant questions were no longer logical, but emotional. »
The filmmaker concludes: “The love we feel for our parents does not disappear with them. He lives. I would even say that this love becomes stronger as time passes. »
The film All of Us Strangers hits theaters on January 5.