Growing up, Andrew Haigh never thought he’d be a filmmaker. Over coffee in New York one afternoon, he tells W, “I wanted to do silly things, like design rollercoasters. I thought about being an architect, but I could never do that.”
Yet, it’s fair to say that Haigh has accomplished both of his childhood ambitions through his stunning, two-decade filmmaking career. Considering his lyrical body of work—with the likes of Weekend, 45 Years, Lean on Pete, and this year, the soul-shattering All of Us Strangers—you can comfortably call the 50-year-old British writer-director an architect of intricately human stories. Meanwhile, ask anyone touched by an Andrew Haigh movie and let them tell you all about what it means to be put on an emotional rollercoaster.
Watching All of Us Strangers is one such experience—one minute, the drama irreparably breaks your heart, and the next, it gives you the warmest of hugs. Loosely adapted from Taichi Yamada’s 1987 novel with some of Haigh’s autobiographical elements braided in, the film follows the tale of contemporary London writer Andrew (Andrew Scott), who randomly meets his lonely neighbor Harry (Paul Mescal) one day. Reluctantly at first, the two launch into a romantic relationship while Andrew also finds himself drawn to his suburban childhood home. While there, he gets to spend time with his now-deceased parents (Jamie Bell and Claire Foy) who are somehow alive and well like they were in the 1980s, before they were killed in a car accident. They’re ghosts, and there is a lot to reconcile between the parents and their son.
Melancholic yet clear-eyed, abstract yet firmly rooted in a tangible sense of reality, All of Us Strangers is a poetic masterpiece and one of 2023’s most assured cinematic works.
How did you intertwine the genesis of the book with your own life?
The novel is about the idea that what happens to us when we’re young—grief, loss of parents, or trauma in any regard—follows us into adulthood. You cannot escape those things. They continue to evolve and become our personalities as we get older. You could set it at any time, in the 1920s or 1820s, but I knew that there was no story unless I threw myself into it. It was a bit nerve-wracking. You're never sure how much you want to expose elements of your life. Sometimes filmmaking is quite an exposing art form.
It's a timeless truth that we are a product of our past. I recall this scene when Adam and Harry, men of different generations, discuss the words gay vs. queer.
Lots of things change quite dramatically through the generations, but there's something underneath them all that is exactly the same. In that conversation about queer or gay, the same stuff is all there. Younger generations [like Harry] don't use gay as much because of bad connotations. But for Andrew's character, queer has bad connotations. We have a different way of seeing the world, but we are far more connected than what we might like to think.
Paul Mescal in All of Us Strangers
This brings me to the notion of nostalgia. Sometimes, we wistfully think everything was better in the past. But while things aren’t perfect now, the past wasn’t a friendly place for many.
It’s very easy to get nostalgic about that record you listened to, or some furniture [from your past] and say, “Wasn't it better then?” Of course it wasn't. Nostalgia can actually be dangerous. I would say that Brexit in the UK is a fake understanding of what the past used to be. It's important to remember that underneath all that pretty nostalgia is the truth that also needs to be addressed. I wanted it to feel like you might be heading into a nostalgic version of Andrew's past. But then it gets complicated by the thornier truth.
What was your visual approach to differentiate the ’80s scenes from present time?
It was about staying grounded but being slightly shifted from reality. It was about colors, and what they're wearing. We worked out how we wanted the parents’ stuff to feel first: sensual and sort of enticing. Once we knew what we wanted that to look like, we brought it into the present story. Whatever you grow up around often bleeds into your present. There are props in the childhood home that we then have in his apartment. As the film progresses, the two slightly different styles get more mashed up.
You shot the ’80s scenes in your own childhood home, where other people now live. So, you turned up to ask for permission?
[Laughs] I knocked on the door and was like, “Let me film in your house please.” He was very open to it. When you go somewhere that you lived a long, long time ago, it feels haunted. It was kind of upsetting, but also quite beautiful. When Andrew is in bed with his mum, talking, I was watching the monitor, and I was suddenly very aware that I used to sit in this hallway outside my parents' bedroom, wanting to come in but not wanting to knock on the door. Very peculiar and strange. It felt special.
Andrew Scott, Claire Foy and Jamie Bell in All of Us Strangers
How does one cast a film featuring a version of themselves, and their parents?
It's all about who will be good together and feel okay about being vulnerable on screen. I wanted the audience to feel compassion, not just for Andrew, but all of them. I think [Jamie and Claire] understood it so quickly because they're both parents. You want to know that you are doing a good job, that you're saying the right things. There’s so much complication and pressure [as a parent]. They knew that I didn't want to vilify either of those characters.
When I spoke to Paul, he said how much he wanted to work with Andrew. He loves Andrew's work, really respects him. I felt like that was such a good starting point—when you want to be with someone, you show them your best. I could feel that Andrew was the same about Paul. They both wanted to impress each other. I watched them together and I could see sparks generating. The fact that they're really close friends now shows that was a real thing that was happening. It was just harnessing that.
I love that you have room for sensuality and frank sex scenes in this film, and in your cinema. Could you talk about your approach to filming them?
I'm always amazed when I see a sex scene done badly. I imagine most people have had sex. [Laughs] You know what it's for. You know it's never just about sex. Even if it's a one-night stand or sex between two people who've been together for 50 years. There's always something else going on in that dynamic. The trick is to understand what that is. You’re telling a story through sexual intimacy. If you think about it in that way, I don't think sex scenes are very difficult to shoot. It’s like you are doing a stunt scene.
Did you work with an intimacy coordinator?
This was the first time I did, but it was pretty much how I've always done sex scenes. It’s always about discussion with the actors about what the scene needs to be, and then a joint decision between whoever's in that scene about what we are prepared to show and not show, do and not do. You get to a common ground so no one feels any pressure. The set is very closed off, quiet, and you don't do it many times.
Paul Mescal and Andrew Scott in All of Us Strangers
Have you had any particular interest in ghost stories at any point in your life? This film is obviously not horror, but it is still a ghost story, something haunted.
When I was a kid, I used to love Stephen King books. I was obsessed with those kinds of things and films. I never wanted to make mine in any traditional sense, but even when I made 45 Years, I thought of that as a bit of a ghost story, as well. We all live with ghosts, whether it's past relationships or people we've lost or something someone said to you once that still haunts you into the present. There's so much that happens in our lives that just keeps reoccurring. I'm always interested in that on a philosophical level.
When you’re working on something so nontraditional, how do you know that it’s working tonally and logically?
This was definitely the most scared I've been making a film because there were so many things that I felt might not work. Even the central idea of your parents looking the same age as you. If that doesn't work and you just find it stupid, the whole film is a disaster. The moments of doubt can make you really panic. But you listen to your gut. People will always have opinions.
People are often looking for a meaningful connection in your films. Do you think of your cinema collectively like that?
[The connections] are very much there. I can see those things and how they are related to things in my life that have happened, and things that I'm searching for. And it is about wanting to connect, about looking for a lifeboat, which doesn't even have to be a person. It can be an idea, a job, a philosophy. But most of the time, it's a person.
All of Us Strangers is now playing in theaters.
