Spoilers - All of us Strangers

[EmmaEmerald]

Just putting this out there as this film has hit me like a truck.

Honestly, if you're feeling even a tad fragile, think carefully before seeing it.

But if you're mentally robust, you might want to give it a miss anyway tbh.

I did know, from the trailer, that the main character lost his parents as a child.

It was the end that felt like a punch in the gut for me. I've actually just been on the phone to my ex talking about it...but I partly rang him because I suddenly got scared of what it would be like if anything happened to him. He's a lot younger so fingers crossed it won't!

There's definitely such a thing as too much sadness. I felt that Harry's death was just too much.

However, from what I can see online, I seem to have taken the film more literally than I should?

Three main theories I can find are

1. Harry was a figment of his imagination, or at least, the relationship was.
2. Harry was dead already and went looking for company because his death made him lonely
3. They're all ghosts

I took it literally as in

Very lonely man finds love
Takes Harry to see his old family home
Harry is already fragile and drinks to numb the pain of what he has just seen and can't really cope with his new boyfriend's state of mind

I realised at the end that Harry saw the ghosts of Adam's parents in the house, so perhaps that was a sign he was meant to cross over to the other side.

Of course, Adam sees that no one lives in his building, I thought it puts us in the realm of, he's in a state of mind where he doesn't see people.

But it adds to the possibility that they are all ghosts.

It's overwhelming isn't it. I also think that Harry died the first night. Adam was reliving trauma from his parents' death that the ketamine episode made more vivid. I think that's how Harry could 'see' the parents in the door-banging bit as they were all ghosts/Adam's imaginings.
The pyjama scene could have been just silly and comical but they made it poignant.
The underlying commentary of lives not lived is very sad.

Sorry I am a bit late but I have been a bit traumatised from watching this last weekend.
I knew there were ghosts in it but didn't realise it was such a ghost story. I thought it was going to be more about a gay man coming to terms with his sexuality after losing his parents at a young age
I love Claire Foy so thought I could cope with the ghosts.
Of course since watching I've seen Adam and Harry at every turn when I wake up when I go to bed but not the parents!
I loved the 1987 setting that upset me because I was a lost teen at that point. I love Frankie Goes To Hollywood and I absolutely adore The Power of Love so the scene at the end hearing that song in the cinema was beautiful.

We have discussed it muchly this week. DH said he doesn't really know what the fuck was going on!
My conclusion is - but it still doesn't add up - Adam died in the fire at the beginning but hadn't moved to the afterlife. Otherwise I don't really see the significance of the fire alarm and the empty building.
Harry died the night he was refused entry to Adam's flat I'm sure if that there were vampires at his door which I took as MH problems and he took his own life. Very glad it wasn't hanging.

I feel the parents came to move him from the purgatory world to the final after life. And the final beautiful scene was Adam and Harry going to the afterlife together.
Did Adam get writers block because he had died.
I would like to watch again but it has been a hard week.
Strange that I didn't cry because I usually ball my eyes out at everything.
Liked the scene where Adam's parents asked what had happened and Claire Foy exclaimed that her mother wasn't heartbroken enough to have him after losing her when his other grandparent had said they couldn't have him.
Interesting that the writer implied ghosts don't know what happened to them! When you think they're watching your every move!

i dont think adam died though, as his parents wanted him to move on,
so thought provoking

Ooooooo. Now I'm thinking possibly before.

My interpretation was move on to the afterlife.

And the housemartins song Build sounded beautiful.

@Luddite26 - ooh, interesting interpretation! Personally, I don't think there was a fire (although Adam's coughing on the tube could relate to this ...). I prefer to think that Adam was alive.

And I was a wreck after my first watch of this film, so totally get what you mean. I still keep thinking about it. I've been to see it again and will probably watch it a third time.

My DH was left completely cold by it and doesn't see what all the fuss is about. He's not an unemotional man, btw, but it just didn't get him.

I think anyone who's a fan of Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal want a hell of a lot more than to just see them without their clothes on. Can you imagine if someone said that about a female actor?

@Rarewaxwing thankyou. I can't shake it off and would like to see it again. Did you get any clues from the second viewing?
I just don't understand the significance of the fire alarm and the empty building.
I do believe there is a space or time or nothingness that exists between death and moving on and many ghosts get stook in that space. Or it is a suggestion by people who believe in spirits.
I didn't realise it was going to be such a ghost story.

I think it's a tale of loneliness and modern life with mental health problems and suicide - but I might be reading far too much into it.

But he's dead on his bed, not in the bath, isn't he?

I want to watch it again to see how much whisky was in the bottle when he came to the flat and how much was there when he was found dead. I want to know what happened first.

@Luddite26 - yes, I noticed clues to the ending when I watched it the second time, but it would have been impossible to see them first time round. For example, Harry talks about his grandma saying there's nothing a good hot bath can't cure: I think that he takes a hot bath to soothe himself after he's rejected by Adam and then he dies accidentally (because he's also drunk/has taken drugs).

I also understood what Harry meant when he said 'There's vampires at my door' 😔.

I really appreciated the acting the second time round. I was so caught up in the mystery the first time that I was just swept along. All the four main actors were excellent, I thought. And Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal were so good together.

I think the fire alarm incident is just used as a narrative device to make it clear that there are only two people living in that tower block. It demonstrates their physical isolation and gives a clue to their emotional isolation.

"I think it's a tale of loneliness and modern life with mental health problems and suicide - but I might be reading far too much into it." - agree with this.

Wouldn't it be amazing if one of the actors contributed to this thread? I would love to hear their interpretations.

Well, they will have had the screenplay someone linked above, which I found quite illuminating even though somethings had been altered.

But what caused the fire alarm? Why did Andrew Scott go back into the building when he wasn't told to go back in?

My friend said she saw a shadow pass the windows in Harry's flat when Adam was waiting outside - did anyone else notice that?

There was such a lot to talk about in this movie - my friend and I sat for two hours in the cinema foyer talking about it!

I heard someone reviewing it on 5 live they said they were stunned in silence all the way home. But I just wanted to put all the pieces together. And talk talk talk about it.

What a massive achievement, to be part of a movie that has made people feel like this.

I thought the line that Harry said why did it take so long for anyone to find me was so sad. But if Adam doesn't die what was the end with them going to eternity together at peace.

I feel films are so much more powerful if you watch them at the cinema. And sometimes films don't leave you for a while.. This one has not left me yet.
Considering we are in contact with people so easily these days we don't always keep In touch.
I felt Harry's mum/family can't have been accepting of his sexuality in contrast with Claire Foy's initial shock.
The last thing watched that pulled me in and engulfed me was It's a Sin and I'm unsure whether I could watch that again.
I definitely want to watch this again

Well I'm going to throw the cat amongst the pigeons here. I'm reading the script that someone posted. What do you think of these two parts: The first is when he's bumped into his dad and they approach their house:

They have arrived back at the house from the photograph, but the red pedal car from his childhood is now there. A wooziness builds.

MAN She’s gonna be over the moon to see you.

The man knocks on the door. A car passes, an old Granada looking like new. The front door opens but from where Adam stands he can’t see who it is.

And then once he's in the house and he's talking to his parents, we have:

We hear snippets. Like overlapping dreams. What about the time he wiped his poo on the anaglypta walls. Or that day he got hit by a Ford Granada when he tried to pedal his red car onto the main road.

So that means that when he goes back to the house, he's actually the age he was when he was hit by the Ford Granada. Does that mean he died at that point?

#mindblown

I did notice that, but he’d have been a small child when he was hit in his pedal car, so it would seem unnecessarily complicated for Adam to appear on screen in a 40something body with memories (and an Irish accent) of his parents’ deaths and the years after, if in fact he ore-deceased them, and they appear onscreen as the ages at which they died?

Yes but if they are meant to be as they were before they died, he was aged 12 - why would they have the toy car outside? Why was the car going past a Granada? I wonder if that was the impact point, where he died?

But maybe they hadn't got over his death? Is that the point?

So Adam died before his parents and lived as a ghost throughout.
So to watch it again try it from that view point and see how it fits?

But he’s had an independent existence since their deaths. I think he screen play stressed far more than I noticed, that Adam has things in his apartment that then appear in the sequences in his childhood home, which are presumably the actual objects he’s kept for his childhood.