Yesterday was the closing night of the 32nd St. Louis International Film Festival, and there I watched the new film, All of Us Strangers. It was written and directed by Andrew Haigh, who adapted it from the Japanese novel Strangers, by Taichi Yamada. I've seen two of Haigh's previous movies -- Lean on Pete, and Weekend -- the latter a good, solid film, and the former being my favorite movie of 2018 (when it was widely released here in the United States).
All of Us Strangers tells the story of Adam, played by Andrew Scott, a forty-something gay man living alone in a new, modern apartment building in London. There appear to be only two inhabitants in the entire structure -- Adam, and his neighbor from a few floors below, Harry (Paul Mescal). Harry comes on strong to Adam one night, and is rebuked. Adam later has a change of heart, and the two end up developing a relationship of sorts.
While others' opinions may vary, the beating heart of the movie is, in my view, the storyline of Adam and his parents (played by Jamie Bell and Clarie Foy). Adam is a writer and, while he's having writers' block, decides to visit his family home in the suburbs. He hasn't lived there in decades, as his parents died in an accident in the late-1980s. When he arrives in his old suburban stomping grounds, however, he runs into his father, the same age he was when he died, buying cigarettes at the corner store. He invites his son back to the house and, surprise surprise, there is his mum, also looking like the age she was when she passed away.
Some reviewers haven't been as comfortable with the surreal nature of the movie, with its unexplained visitations with the dead, and I can understand that. It is played in a very corporeal fashion, and not a flashy, spiritual sense, but still, it may be a bit too 'out there' for some folks. For me, it is what works best about the film, and what made the most emotional impact. I wrote earlier this year about how now, with both my parents gone, I no longer have anyone who can share in the memories of my childhood home life, when it was just the three of us -- mom, dad and I. It was just a few months ago that I also wrote about the desire to revisit the home I grew up in (and the inability to do so).
Indeed, my childhood and home life from that time have been on my mind quite a lot this year. In fact, before I'd even heard of All of Us Strangers, I'd often found myself daydreaming about wanting to somehow go back in time -- possibly to 1984 or thereabouts? -- and just spend a day, a week, a month, or even a year living with my parents again in that relatively small abode. Two beds, one bath, an eat-in kitchen, wood-paneled living room, a breezeway, and an attached one-car garage. That was my life on Draper St. from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s. It was my world.
That compact house is where I would sit at the kitchen table, drawing pictures as mom cooked dinner. It is where I watched TV with my parents (James Bond movies on ABC, The Jeffersons, reruns of old black & white westerns, and more). It is where I would spend time in my bedroom listening to cassette tapes of Michael Jackson's Thriller album, Hall & Oates' Big Bam Boom, and Sting's The Dream of the Blue Turtles. Once, when we got a new refrigerator, I asked my parents if we could keep the large, tall box it came in. They said yes, and we brought it into my bedroom and placed it next to my writing desk. I cut a small doorway into one side, and it became my very own TARDIS. I would enter the small confines of that plain brown box, and pretend it was the sprawling interior of Doctor Who's time machine. I'd pull a few imaginary levers, travel through time and space, then open the cardboard door back into my bedroom, pretending that I'd just landed on some strange new world.
What would be the best way to visit those times again? Better yet, what would I do? I've given a lot of thought to those questions this year -- perhaps more thought than is healthy for a fantasy that can never be realized. I imagine inhabiting my younger self. Best not to stay too long so as not to supplant any of my actual memories. It would be wise to travel back to one of the more mundane periods, when nothing of great importance was going on in our lives, just the usual routine.
I would choose a weekend, as that is when dad was home (he often worked all over the state during the week, on road projects). I'd enjoy watching an old western with him, and ask him to put on one of his favorite records. We had a record player in the living room, and on certain evenings he'd play gospel music by Mahalia Jackson or Shirley Caesar. That wasn't really my thing then, nor were westerns, so I remember being fairly disinterested in those moments. Not this time. This time, I would sit there with rapt attention.
I would converse with my mom while she made lunch. I'd just sit by her while she read a book. I'd eagerly get in the car with her when we'd make one of our weekly trips to Jewel/Osco for groceries. There would also be some alone time, as I'd sit in my bedroom with its tan walls and orange-painted door and window trim (yes, those were really the colors), and pop one of those old cassette tapes into the player and enjoy some tunes. On the Saturday afternoon, I would turn on the little black & white TV that sat in my room and watch a few hours of PBS (as I often did). Maybe I'd climb out the back window, onto the back porch, and go play in the sandbox my dad had made for me under the big, old Sycamore tree. I haven't played in a sandbox in years.
On many Saturday mornings (or was it Sundays? -- I can't remember) my uncle Joe would stop by for a bit. He and dad would sit at the kitchen table, talking about whatever it was two adult brothers would discuss. Joe always had a lot of nervous energy, which manifested with his legs always tapping up and down while he sat. I never bothered dad and Joe while they visited. To be honest, it didn't interest me. But, this time, on the trip back, I'd probably eavesdrop on what they were saying, just a little. Uncle Joe's been gone almost 32 years. It would be nice to see him again.
All of that is the rose-colored nostalgia. Then there's the serious stuff. I'd be tempted to say something to my parents about their future. Would I actually do so? I'd tell myself to keep it cryptic, but could I? My dad was diagnosed with cancer in 1996 and died from it in 1997. Would I, visiting my parents in 1984, say something to dad about how maybe he should get a cancer screening in, say, 1995? In 2008, mom had hip replacement surgery that she later discovered was done with faulty parts, and it ended up causing her to have multiple revision surgeries, forcing her into early retirement. Would I say something to her about perhaps delaying her hip surgery -- a surgery that wouldn't even happy until quarter century later? Would I advise uncle Joe to be hyper alert to his surroundings on a construction site in January 1992? Would it be bad to possibly alter their future, even for the supposed better? Would they even remember what I'd said, or take the warnings seriously?
Adam's deceased parents in All of Us Strangers somehow know that they're dead, or at least that they will die before seeing him grow up, and so they seem very interested in how his life turned out after they're gone. It was those scenes where he was catching up with them on things that got me choked up, as I've often thought about how the world has changed since my dad died twenty-six years ago. My maternal grandmother and I were close, often talking about a whole range of subjects, and she's been gone since 1998. How I've imagined scenarios where, somehow, her and my dad are able to come back, even just briefly, and I've excitedly sat them down and gone over all the things that have happened since they were last alive, both personally and in the broader world.
'That's amazing, Matt,' I imagine them saying, wide-eyed and enthralled with what I was relaying. We would sit there for hours, sharing memories, talking about old times, and going over the things they'd missed during the intervening years. Of course, in this relaxed, chatty invention, they would love everything I'd done, would be concerned when I'd tell them about some of the health issues I've had, and would like and hate all of the same things I've liked and hated that have gone on in the world. In other words, they would be reflections of me. They weren't like that, of course. They were there own people, with their own thoughts and feelings. But, in this fantasy, they would listen with rapt attention about the world they had missed.
Whether it's me going back to 1984, or my dad and grandma making a brief return to the present, or Adam visiting with his deceased parents at their old family home, it's all just a fantasy. In the real world, time moves on, as it always does. There's no going back. And, the dead are gone, never to return. They will live on, of course, as long as we live on and remember them. Our memories of those who are no longer here may not be perfect playback machines, as we may imagine our departed love ones in a better, more perfect light than they possibly deserve, but then that's okay. In the end, we're all just imperfect beings, doing our best to get through life while we're here, finding the happiness when we can. And that is perhaps what the fantasy is really about.
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