Nov 24, 2025
Guy Lodge’s pick of other films: On Swift Horses, Christy and The Courageous | The Observer
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Guy Lodge’s pick of other films: On Swift Horses, Christy and The Courageous | The Observer
An artist juggles the strains of work, motherhood and a husband who just won't let go in Hlynur Pálmason's 'The Love That Remains.'
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In 'Harvest,' her first English-language feature, Athina Rachel Sangari plunges audiences into the mud, sweat and tears of pre-industrial ag
There’s a particular kind of loneliness that director Andrew Haigh captures in All of Us Strangers (2023) that is both devastating and invit
'There’s a particular kind of loneliness that director Andrew Haigh captures in his 2023 film All of Us Strangers (now in The Criterion Collection) that is both devastating and invitational.
All of Us Strangers follows a screenwriter Adam (Andrew Scott) who lives alone in his London apartment complex. His room is so high up in the building that his space is illuminated by natural light. The film’s cinematographer, Jamie D. Ramsay, frames these moments of Adam beholding that skyline with a haunting sense of allure; it’s isolating and beautiful. His stripped-down existence is upended when, after a fire alarm pushes him out of the building, he encounters his neighbor, Harry (Paul Mescal). Harry’s impulsiveness and forwardness both intrigue and frighten Adam; Scott plays the character wonderfully as someone who desires the intimacy of a relationship but is afraid to name that for himself. The two begin seeing each other and concurrently, to inspire his writing, Adam visits his old childhood home. To his surprise, he sees his parents, played by Toby Bell and Claire Foy, who haven’t aged since they died in a car crash when Adam was young. The film follows these two narrative strands, as Adam is caught between pursuing the excitement of a new relationship while wrestling through the stones he’s left unturned with his ghost parents.
Haigh adapts the film from Japanese writer Taichi Yamada’s 1987 novel Strangers, and he masterfully finds ways to add a personal touch to the narrative. For all of the film’s dealing with the supernatural, it never eclipses the human story at its center. Rather than spending time delving into phantom logistics, Haigh mines the deep sadness that comes from the things we leave unsaid and undone from our loved ones. We all leave this world with regrets, and as Adam speaks with his parents, there’s a holy catharsis in this reconciliation. A particularly devastating moment involves his father acknowledging that he’d heard Adam crying alone in his room after being bullied. Adam initially waves off his father’s apologies, saying that it was a long time ago. Yet, his father gently presses further, repeating his regret before Adam can’t help but burst into tears. It’s the first of many scenes where Adam allows himself the grace of breaking. It’s beautiful that this healing can begin now, but tragic that it couldn’t happen when his parents were alive.
The highlight of the bonus features included in the Criterion’s two discs is the new interviews conducted with Haigh and critic Michael Koresky, as well as an interview with cinematographer Jamie D. Ramsay. In his conversation with Ramsay, for nearly thirty minutes, Haigh speaks to the places where his film differs from Yamada’s novel. In Yamada’s story, it’s unclear whether Adam’s parents were ghosts or simply hallucinations. Haigh found that mystery is less interesting, hence his decision to make it clear that Adam’s parents are ghosts from the start and having the dramatic tension of the film revolve around how he responds to that reality. Additionally, Haigh shared that, while he loves the fact that a lot of queer stories revolve around queer folk gaining comfort in “found family,” he specifically wanted All of Us Strangers to wrestle around this idea that “You can want to be a part of both the found family and the own family you’ve been forced out of.” The reality of unrequited desire and community is yet another specter that haunts his film.
Ramsay’s commentary is equally enlightening. Going back to the way the cinematographer depicted Adams’ apartment, he describes how he shot the times Adam is alone as if the character was “swimming in a fish tank.” Given how high up and vast Adam’s apartment is, Ramsay explains how it “created a sense of unnecessary freedom” and how “there’s no coziness in that freedom.” Adam holds the verisimilitude of the pinnacle of autonomy, but the opulence only betrays the fact that such pleasures are fleeting. For the space to be recontextualized and made better, he’ll have to confront his past and present, as evident through his new relationship with Harry and his conversations with his parents. The 4K digital master on one disc and the Blu-Ray version also serve to underscore the intentional work put forth by Ramsay and Haigh. There are moments where Scott’s Adam character almost blends in with the sunlight, oscillating between the corporeal and the spiritual. It’s an effect that is effectively rendered through the film’s upgraded resolution.
Critic Guy Lodge also contributes an essay to the collection and his words speak to the film’s aesthetic and visual choices, showing how there’s hope even amidst devastation. “Much of [All of Us Strangers] is shot in a dusky, smoke-blue after light, against which human flesh sometimes appears ablaze,” Lodge writes. Yet, by the film’s end, “bodies burn so brightly as to become a supernova in the night sky—or a single, hopeful light on in an otherwise dark high-rise.” The film reminds us that we contain multitudes and that there is always time to shine one’s light.'
“This is the stuff of Kafka, of Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Unconsoled, or of those recurring dreams you have where you simply can’t get to the cor
Red, White and Blue remain immersive and emotionally astute, as a 4K restoration promises to bring new audiences into the fold