All of Us Strangers is a beautiful, poignant film that explores grief in a raw, realistic way. It’s also the kind of story that feels designed just to hurt you. And not just to hurt you, to do so and then let you sit in that hurt, while it twists the knife further. It’s this dichotomy that makes the movie somewhat hard to process. Is there something to be learned from this exploration of grief that is specific to All of Us Strangers and that makes the movie necessary? The answer is probably no.
It is fair to say this is true of all art. We don’t make art because it’s necessary, we make it to explore the way we’re feeling – and to, perhaps, allow others to connect to it. If All of Us Strangers feels pointless at times, it’s perhaps because there’s a certain nihilism to the exploration of grief for the sake of it, particularly for those who relate to that pain.
That the movie explores an LGBTQ+ relationship as it attempts to sort through Adam’s (Andrew Scott) past, makes the decisions this movie makes all the more difficult to swallow. Especially as Adam’s relationship with Harry (Paul Mescal) exists as some sort of a mirage that we, the viewers, and Adam himself, hold onto throughout the movie. It’s beautiful and it’s painful, but it’s also grounding. Grief is better shared, and just as Adam is sharing it with Harry, he’s sharing it with us.
In that regard, there’s a little bit of catharsis to the exploration, but not the liberating kind. Any time we explore the gaping wound that is grief, there’s a level of liberation. Grief is, even to this day, somewhat of a taboo. For something that most people experience at one point or another, grief is still something we tend to hold close to our hearts. It hurts to put it out there, to share it with someone.
But All of Us Strangers feels like it’s asking us to engage in that catharsis for no reason other than to let the wound air out, and though there’s a certain poetry to the idea of pain as a kind of inescapable part of our lives, in the end, we all want wounds to scab over. To heal. What the movie is proposing only sounds good in the abstract – or, well, in the movies.
Perhaps that’s why it’s easy to dismiss All of Us Strangers as just another sad story. Not only that, as another sad gay story. We’ve had way too many of those at that point. It feels like that’s all we ever get. Just as, when it comes to grief, it feels like the norm is this exploration that feels designed to be more about the pain than about the healing.
There’s beauty in All of Us Strangers – and at times, there’s real joy. There are also two actors in Scott and Mescal who are giving it their all, particularly in every moment they get together. But that’s sadly not enough when the cloud of inevitability hangs over every scene they share. We don’t get anything else. We never have. And that still hurts, even after all this time.
Is there something here? Yes. Is it for everyone? No. It’s hard to blame those who, at this point, would rather just invest in something else.
Agree? Disagree? What did you think of All of Us Strangers? Share with us in the comments below!
All of Us Strangers is in theaters now.
