After more than 20 years as a filmmaker, Andrew Haigh has made his breakout hit, according to reports gushing over his new film All of Us Strangers. But it’s news to him. The British director has been an indie darling for over a decade after his 48-hour gay romance Weekend led to HBO series Looking and highly praised award-winner 45 Years, among others. “I guess they mean that it’s a wider breakout,” Haigh tells Broadsheet on a Zoom call from London. “But I try not to think about what other people say about my career.”
All of Us Strangers is certainly a tipping point for greater awareness of Haigh’s work, after winning best film and best director statues at the British Independent Film Awards and picking up nominations on the award season circuit. With good reason – one of the most memorable films you’ll see all year, it’s a beautifully shot, strikingly original fantasy starring Andrew Scott (yep, Fleabag’s “hot priest”, tipped to be Oscar-nominated) and buzzy leading man Paul Mescal (Aftersun).
Set to a brilliant ’80s soundtrack featuring Pet Shop Boys and Frankie Goes to Hollywood, it’s a surreal elegy to lost childhood told with a tinge of pandemic isolation. With crackling tension and chemistry, Scott and Mescal play lonely souls who meet in a looming, curiously empty UK tower block. Scott later transports back to his childhood home in 1987, where his late parents (played by Jamie Bell and Claire Foy) are still alive and not terribly surprised to see him. If it sounds silly, it isn’t. The wonderful performances and elegant writing and direction make for an intriguing watch that lingers in the mind.
I can’t help telling Haigh how much his early hit, Weekend, meant to me as a thirty-something gay man. I saw the film on a humid afternoon in 2011 and it socked me in the guts. Both films capture the isolation and yearning of gay relationships through a refreshingly contemporary lens. “There’s definitely a connection between the two films,” says Haigh. “I saw (All of Us Strangers) as a kind of conversation piece with that original film but exploded it into this stranger metaphysical environment.”
While Haigh’s style is realistic and natural, this film tackles the magical “what if” scenario of time travel to tell a deeper story about life and death. “I knew I wanted [the film] to feel grounded, but sort of ‘floating’ above the surface of the world allows us to get into a more subconscious space in the character’s mind,” he explains. “I wanted to feel like I was really in the head of the character, and that the film was an expression of how he saw the world, rather than us seeing him within the world.”
Loosely based on the Japanese novel Strangers by the late Taichi Yamada, it’s a film that sometimes requires work from the audience. An increasingly bizarre vibe gradually takes hold, with lush set pieces including a raucous nightclub scene and a startling coming out between mother and son adding to the dreamlike atmosphere. Some have been left flummoxed by the ambiguous ending, but is that beside the point?
“I’d be really interested for people to watch the film a [second time],” says Haigh. “There is a logic to it, and there’s something that I think is relatively clear-cut about it narratively. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a mystery around it all too. And I like the idea that you can go back and unpick the ending. It makes the film continue in your mind after you’ve seen it.”
There is a scene towards the end of the film where in his pyjamas Scott gets into bed with his mum and dad. It’s played gloriously straight, and there are few who could pull this moment off without a smirk. I was surprised and thrilled to learn that the location is Haigh’s real childhood home where he grew up in the suburbs of London, which was loaned for filming. “I lived there until I was nine,” he says, nodding. “So much of me is in the script and in the story, so it made sense to do it in my own childhood home. It was [like] being in a haunted house, really.”
Haigh admits he “wasn't particularly happy as a kid”, but the location served the film well. The film essentially says: we can’t escape our childhoods. “The only thing you can do is try to deal with it and recalibrate elements of your childhood in order to move forward,” he says. What would young Andrew Haigh have thought of the film, and its success? “I think he’d be very shocked! But since he is me, I imagine that he would enjoy it. But he’d probably tell me to stop talking about the gay stuff so much.”
All Of Us Strangers is released on January 18.
