All of Us Strangers
異人たち
Discussed in the Journal
JournalThe Night You Need to Talk, You Need a Word, Not an AnswerStoryline
The whole story, ending included.
A screenwriter finds his dead parents alive in his childhood home; adapted from a Japanese novel first filmed by Nobuhiko Obayashi in 1988.
Adam, a screenwriter in middle age, lives alone in a new London tower block where he seems to have only one neighbour. One night that neighbour, Harry, drunk and holding a bottle of whisky, knocks and asks to come in. Adam, unsettled, sends him away. Trying to write, he goes back to the suburban house where he grew up and finds his parents living there, exactly as they were when they died in a car crash decades earlier, just before his twelfth birthday. He has dinner with them and promises to come back.
In the tower he meets Harry again and this time says yes. They become lovers, and Harry, distant from his own family, is someone Adam can finally talk to. Adam keeps returning to the house. He comes out to his mother, who accepts it with worry and some discomfort; he tells his father how much it hurt that he never spoke about the bullying Adam suffered, and they make peace. On a night out, high on ketamine, Adam finds himself at Christmas in his childhood home and climbs into bed with his parents to tell his mother how he was sent to live with his grandmother afterwards. He tells Harry what his grandmother kept from him: his father died at once, his mother lingered in hospital for days, and he was never allowed to see her.
When Adam takes Harry to the house it is empty. Harry, frightened for him, wants to leave, and they glimpse Adam's mother at the window. The next morning his parents tell him he must let them go. At the restaurant he loved as a boy they ask whether their deaths were quick; he tells them both died instantly, a kindness to his mother, and they vanish. Adam goes to Harry's flat and finds his body. Harry died of an overdose on the night Adam turned him away. His ghost waits in the kitchen, ashamed that no one found him. Adam takes him home, and they lie together while Adam sings him The Power of Love, until they are a small light among the stars.
Starring
Andrew Scottas Adam
A lonely London screenwriter who finds his long-dead parents living on in his childhood home.
Adam’s story
Adam lives alone in a near-empty tower and turns away Harry, the drunk neighbour who knocks one night. At his childhood home he finds his parents, as they were when they died just before his twelfth birthday, and keeps going back. He tells his mother he is gay, and tells his father how his silence about the bullying hurt; they make peace. To Harry, now his lover, he tells how his grandmother never let him see his dying mother. When his parents ask him to let them go, he tells them both died instantly, a kindness to his mother, and they vanish. Then he finds Harry's body: Harry died the night Adam turned him away. Adam takes his ghost home and sings to him until they are a small light among the stars.
Paul Mescalas Harry
Adam's younger neighbour in the tower block, distant from his own family, who becomes his lover.
Harry’s story
Harry is younger than Adam, distant from his own family, and seemingly the tower's only other resident. One night he knocks on Adam's door, drunk, with a bottle of whisky, and is sent away. When they meet again by the lift, Adam lets him in, and they become lovers; Harry talks about his family and listens to Adam's grief. On a night out he lets Adam know that ketamine is nothing new to him, and brings Adam home when he loses himself. At the empty house in the suburbs he is frightened for Adam and wants to leave. Then Adam finds his body: Harry has been dead since the night he was turned away, and his ghost, ashamed that no one found him, waits in the kitchen. Adam takes him home and holds him.
Claire Foyas Adam's mother
Adam's mother, killed in a car crash when he was a boy, who meets her grown son looking just as she did then.
Jamie Bellas Adam's father
Adam's father, killed in the same crash, who never spoke to his son about the bullying he endured.
Why it matters
All of Us Strangers is about grief that has stopped time: a man in middle age who is still, somewhere, the boy whose parents did not come home. Andrew Haigh moved Taichi Yamada's 1987 novel, first filmed in Japan by Nobuhiko Obayashi in 1988, to present-day London and made its hero gay, so that the conversations Adam never had, telling his mother who he is and his father how he was bullied, become the heart of the film. Yamada, who helped the new adaptation along, liked its script. It won seven prizes at the British Independent Film Awards, among them Best Film. The loneliness it shows is particular, a gay man who grew up keeping himself from the people he loved, but its question reaches anyone who has lost someone: what there would be to say to the dead if they opened the door, and whether being loved at last can come too late.