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.

Yes, true. And I think there's a photo of him with his mum when he's about 11 or so - in the script, anyway - or rather it says a photo of him just before he died.

Just delving deeper into the script - a couple more things made me wonder:

On the train back from his parents' house, when his dad hugged him and after the conversation about him being gay:

As he returns home, Adam feels a lightness of being. He doesn’t notice that some of the passengers are staring at him.

At the nightclub:

Adam notices someone staring at him, barely out of his teens but full of swagger and confidence. The YOUNG GUY looks at Adam with something like pity in his eyes. Feeling a little paranoid, Adam checks his reflection in the mirror above the bar, rearranges his hair, the glass stretching his image. He is relieved to see Harry in that reflection coming back from the loos.

Interesting that Harry has a reflection - I noticed the mirrors were draped at Adam's parents' home and assumed that was to hide the fact they didn't have a reflection.

Does anyone have any idea why these people were staring at Adam?

Just before HE died?
Sorry I will read this script tonight when I finish work!

Arrgh sorry, no! That was my mistake. It said:

He puts the photo back on the kitchen counter. It is of Adam in his dressing gown sitting with his mum on the stairs, red tinsel around the bannister, the age he was when they died.

😂 desperately searching for answers,!

I thought it was all to do with survivor guilt.
He felt bad he hadn't gone with his parents.
He can see them "for as long as it lasts."
He now feels bad that he hadn't opened the door.
But he now knows how to handle it, so spoons him into the afterlife.
Either really or in his head, I don't care, but he comes out of it able to move on and pursue a new relationship. "I'm sorry I couldn't let you in". But he will, the next time/for a new partner.

If all of them have been in limbo/a figment of his imagination/ or they're all dead including him then I think it needs signposting more than a few coughs/blue lights/feeling hot. Plus he interacts with the waitress. So I thought the empty block was a plot device to show isolation/why he finds Harry and others don't.
That said, I could be persuaded given Grenfell.

1.57 Director says empty block encapsulates how Adam feels when in fact "there could be other people" there. Director has "no idea" why the alarm goes off - it was to get the character outside.
Andrew Scott says the flat feels like purgatory (but no mention of his character being dead).

Apparently the family home is actually the director's family home.

That's really funny about the fire alarm - I've had so many theories about that and he wasn't giving it a second thought!

I was watching this:

I found myself irritated at the ending rather than moved! Also, as someone who was in same-sex relationships as a teen and in my 20s and in a group of friends mostly estranged from our parents, that storyline was over-emphasised, like it was the most interesting thing about him. I think they could have explored other issues more about his life, for example how he became a writer, which is a pretty unusual career, and had their deaths influenced that, or more generally was that why he wasn't in a relationship? I think it would have been more poignant if he had been able to move on with Harry rather than having the weird confusing bit at the end.

I loved the reminder of the 80s, how attitudes have changed. Particularly around the crying/bullying. Very much of you were bullied and a boy parents ignored it. Or told you to man up.
DS thought they were awful parents and unusual in their harshness and homophobia. In my memory this was the norm and it was very unusual for parents to be accepting of homosexuality. My gay friends didn't come out for years to their parents. Nowadays it would be unusual for parents to not be OK with their children being gay

This Empire article is helpful

www.empireonline.com/movies/features/all-of-us-strangers-ending-explained/

That makes so much sense to me. Especially now I realise I have been singing the wrong lyrics all these years. I always thought he sang 'make love your own...'

I've seen it twice now, I've read the script twice and I'm going to let Adam and Harry RIP together.
My interpretation, and I may be rude ignoring what the director was, is that Adam died in the beginning and he was in purgatory and he and Harry found a way to move to the other side together after years of loneliness.
Funnily enough this film didn't make me cry even though I usually cry my heart out at everything. I feel the way things just didn't add up stopped it hitting me that way but it did take a hold of me. The music especially the Power of Love - I absolutely adore Holly Johnson and he has lived with HIV for decades now, the year 1987, personally not the best of times for me and the general them of drugs, loneliness and suicide made the film really get to me rather than me enjoy the upset
Very similar to the series It's A Sin that got to me, hit me like a sledgehammer and I cried buckets at the end and all through it.
But this was a bit too ambiguous for me to get upset it didn't quite reach my buttons.
It could have been a really nice live story had Harry not died and I think that would have made me lose it!
RIP Adam and Harry let me lay you to bed as I am sick of imagining you in the dark!

I think the fever is key to this. When I was a kid (in the 80s) I had lots of weird fevers where everything seemed real. I think he met Harry on night one and turned him down and then that triggered something - his unconscious fevered mind working through why he is closed off to love and belonging. He is so scared of loving and losing again so he stays shut off from any other human. I loved the scenes with his parents.

What I found hardest was contemplating that his dead parents missed their son as much as he missed them.

Just watched this…

Its the kind of film I will need to watch several times before I can get my head round it.

Enjoy isn’t the right word so far, however I found it to be very uncomfortably impactful, similar to that feeling of waking up peacefully and the few seconds of realisation there is something awful to deal with.

I agree with a PP that the underlying theme is grief, loss and doom.

I took it that Harry died the first night, I understand if it may have been before the scene of him knocking on Adams door but I it works better for me that there was that 1st interaction.

I was looking the whole way through for “twist” (sounds too Hollywood for this movie) as wondered why there was so much relevance to Adams health, coughing, temperature, the way he had to fall off not a seat on one of the scenes on the train. I did think at one point that Adam might be terminally ill and the journey back to his childhood was a kind of grieving/healing process before he could allow himself to let go.

I think where I might interpret it differently and the main reason I found it so heart wrenchingly sad was I don’t think Adams parents were great parents and that he had quite an unhappy childhood. I understand I different time in terms of tolerance but there was reference to his mum admitting she wasn’t mother of the year, his dad admitting of being a bully when he was child and of course, the family pictures where he looked so sad and it being mentioned that he was lonely and withdrawn.

I took from the flashbacks/visits with his parents that Adam was idealising the relationship and future he wished he could have had with them.

I think you're right- his mum talks about how he a strange child, always running away. I guess a lot of us idealise our childhoods but if we look closer we remember the times when we were scared or anxious and we remember our parent's style of parenting as sketchy in places. It seems like he was never really comfortable in himself. Maybe the film is about reconciliation.

The stuff with Harry is interesting. Harry is pissed and annoying when he knocks at the door. But in Adam's head he makes him into a lovely boyfriend - just the sort of relationship that he wants/needs to help with his grief and loss.

It is definitely not a film to watch when you are fragile! Hit home a lot I thought Andrew and Paul did a great job.

Watched it last night and started crying from the point he looks through old childhood /family things. My dad died when I was a child and there were no such things as now - no counselling or memory boxes etc and I have no videos of him talking, photos are old and blurry, I have very little tangible of him except an old rain coat I can't bear to part with.

I have a question - during the fire drill is that his mum and dad in the background on the left?

I think he is imagining everything except seeing Harry in the window. I think he works through his family issues - he says he's trying to write about them - and then goes to find him, and finds him dead. I don't think they ever met.

I think the empty building is him being immersed in grief.

Watched this evening and cried buckets. I don’t cry at films but this kicked me in the guts, being the same age as Adam and having lost a parent. The soundtrack really hit hard too.
I also think Harry died after he knocked on Adam’s door the first night.

Omg I chose the wrong film to watch last night. Yesterday was the anniversary of my mums death and I put a film on to distract me. Knew nothing about the film, hadn't seen the trailer.

Should have stopped watching but couldn't, do hate films like this when you have to interpret the ending yourself but it was beautiful done.

I think Harry killed himself on the first night they met as was rejected. Adam dreamed the relationship, what could have been.

But maybe they were all ghosts as Harry lived on the lower level and said let's go upstairs. Adam had to redeem himself to go to heaven.
You don't see either off them interact with 'alive' people.

Woke up with 'the power of love' in my head, hopefully it's replaced 'murder on the dancefloor'

to you both xx

Did he not interact with the waitress irl?

It was a beautiful, elegiac film and now I've had time to reflect on it, I'm appreciating it more, if that makes sense.

I'm lucky enough to still have both my parents around but for someone who doesn't, this film must be deeply affecting.....maybe in a positive way.

It feels weirdly hurtful to post sympathy to two of the last three posters who've consecutively mentioned a loss of a parent. I thought that at the time and have reflected. I think it's so painful to lose a parent as a child that everything is so sensitive around it.