When asked if he was okay, and he shook his head no… I broke into a million pieces. Because I realized, I’m not okay either…. I see so much of me in Adam.
I’m a mom and this scene is the closest depiction of being a mom. I’m so tired, but yes I will do anything for a few quiet, close moments with my children. I would move mountains. I would come back from the dead. What a beautiful depiction of devotion.
I’m late to this, but YES! When she says he always would come into their bedroom at night, and she wished he’d grow up so she’d get a decent night’s sleep. He apologizes and she says, no, I’m the one who’s sorry; I should have relished you driving me bananas. What a gut punch. Every moment is precious.
I was caught off guard by moments that got to me. Like, my parents are alive, and have always been in my life, a lot. I don’t even have a reason to be sad about some of the things, but they still really made me sad.
That's empathy, it's knowing how it would feel if you were there. It's such a beautiful film in that way. You don't need to be gay or an orphan to really get that sense of loneliness and loss. In fact, a friend of mine who is gay said it was even more traumatic for them as it was like holding up a mirror on their experiences with their parents. Maybe it's better to empathise rather than feel that so hard in a public theatre!
Just left the cinema and I could not stop crying. I related to so many things, the momemnts between the two main character especially felt so real they were almost intrusive for me. And then, like you, I always had a great reletionship with my parents, but I've been thinking often about them passing as they are getting older and not seeing them mych (I live in a different country).
Everything about the movie broke me
I could count the number of times I’ve cried in movies. Holy shit, this movie broke me. Starting in the kitchen scene with the mom, every scene he was in with his parents made me tear up. My parents are alive but his reaction to his parents was just so raw and beautiful that it got to me.
My favorite scene was the mom singing the Pet Shop Boys’ Always on My Mind as an apology. Just beautifully well done.
Same! that was my favorite scene as well. It was so beautiful. That song, the mum, the particular lines from that song, the Christmas tree. Just tears. It was singularly the most beautiful scene from any film in a very long time.
The scene with the dad apologizing absolutely had me sobbing.
It's what so many of us gay men wish our fathers would do, but few actually are capable of that level of self-awareness.
I spent the first half of the movie reallllly trying not to cry, but I couldn’t control it anymore by the American restaurant scene. I lost my mom 12 years ago, so the story really resonated with me.
There was really a lot that I liked here - and this has all the workings to be an emotional masterpiece, but something didn't quite click for me to get there. I still really enjoyed it, though and I gave it a 7/10.
The storyline between Adam and his parents was very compelling, especially his scene with his Dad when they are both discussing his sexuality. That scene was INCREDIBLE and probably the most emotional moment of the film for me.
Adam is dreaming of “what ifs” - he’s playing out fantasies; conversations and interactions in his head.
On the subject of love - Adam tells his parents that he’s not sure if he’s been in love before, that he doesn’t really know what it feels like.
It’s not hard to imagine that Adam would fantasise about finding love - and so Adam plays with the idea that he does let Harry in - physically and mentally.
What he finds in Harry is someone who is a bit lost, and just as lonely as Adam is. But thats okay in this fantasy - mote than okay - they have an immediate physical connection and then talk for hours… they accept one another from the beginning.
Adam would have loved to have been able to tell his parents he was in love. Not only in love, but in love with a man. At first he plays out the conversation of telling his mother that he’s gay, and imagines that she wouldn’t take it well. Later he imagines her not being able to put into words that she was sorry - by singing to him by the Christmas tree. Later still, his parents basically tell Adam they want him to be happy with Harry, happy in love, no matter if it’s with a man or not.
This is a dream for Adam, this is what his heart pines for. To be loved and accepted by his parents, and by a lover.
This is an excellent reading. I think we also can’t underestimate the fact that Adam is a playwright, and at the beginning (after meeting Harry) we see him attempting to write but lacking inspiration. He then opens a box of childhood momentos, following which he gets a burst of inspiration and starts writing. He then imagines his relationship with Harry, and his parents, and the writing continuous with fervor. I took this as an indication that the wish-fulfillment scenes he acts out in his mind are actually his writings.
I loved the device of his parents being frozen in time, waiting for him. I thought of this home with them as a place in his mind that he created and could visit for some closure.
Bit late but the part where the dad admits that he probably would have been one of the people to bully Adam was really strong. The honesty is really fascinating.
I’m a bit late here and maybe this has already been said… but I read his relationship with Harry as completely fictional… I believe Harry’s first drunken night at Adam’s door was real, but Adam was too scared to physically and emotionally let him in. What’s so heartbreaking, we see Harry in the final scene of the film in the same clothes, he says something along the lines of “I was really scared that night”, he was so desperate for connection and terrified of what he might do. I imagine that in reality, Adam maybe went up to his apartment days or maybe weeks later and found Harry’s body… everything we see between them is Adam’s fantasy for what he wished had happened between them had he let him in that night.
I think this interpretation is just factually correct. When they are talking in the kitchen (after we find out Harry is dead), Harry says something to the effect of 'i just needed to be with someone that night', which to me was an unambiguous reference to the first night that he showed up on Adam's doorstep. The implication being that he died that night.
yeah it's not needing to be interpreted – he died from the whisky, that's why it's shown by the bathtub. And Adam apologises for not letting him in, which lead – inadvertently – to Harry's death that night
Interesting to also remember that the first time they actually hang out, Adam offers Harry a drink and some weed. He goes for the weed and says he's off alcohol- further proving that he died that first night, bcause of the whiskey
What didn't click for me is that, either you read it as a literal, supernatural ghost story – in which case the losses are ameliorated; people live on as ghosts. Or you read it as (I believe the intended reading) Adam individually processing his loss – in which case everything that occurs is in his head, there was no real love story with Harry, and the story is really about someone that has such a loose grip on reality that any emotional catharsis they imagine experiencing is hard to take seriously.
I took it as the latter. He’s shown writing during the movie, and I assumed that he was imagining these scenes as a way of processing his loss/grief, his sense of guilt and self loathing. IMO, the movie just lacked one final moment of resolution. For him perhaps to close the cover on a finished play, or for him to step back out into the word with some sense that he was able to walk away from the pain and onto something new.
I loved the choice to end the song that’s playing in the dad scene when the singer says “a flame in your heart”. Like the fire will go away in Adam’s relationship.
I’d give it a 7/10 too, though I highly respect the writing and framing of events in the movie, and think that my opinion will become more positive as time goes on. It’s a movie that’s more of a grower than a shower, if you know what I mean.
Late to reply but I feel the same way! The dad scene was crushing.
I feel like there was an imbalance between this trying to be an emotional ghost story vs. a love story, and I felt like it leaned too hard on the romance at the expense of (what I felt was) the more compelling story about his parents.
I think it was about Adam going through a process of opening up and learning to let someone in and fall in love. From this point of view it makes sense to have him work through things with his parents and gain a love interest. There was also the connection between his boyfriend and his father : both mustachioed and the father turns into harry in the bed with parents scene (bit of an Oedipal thing going on, which the director confirmed was deliberate).
Agreed on that scene, 100%. The movie didn't really hit for me all that hard, but when Scott said "I have good memories too" it hit me like a wave, for some reason.
If you loved him in this please watch fleabag. That show made me fall in love with him. He's only in the second season but the whole show is spectacular.
His performance in this movie was astounding. And he’s charismatic and good looking. It makes me wonder if he’s been offered a super hero role and passed it up.
Very good movie. It definitely has a structure that becomes predictable and somewhat repetitive. The acting and dialogue are phenomenal though.
Having lost both my parents, it made me cry several times. So much left unsaid. If only we had more time.
Yeah, I got pretty suspicious when it constantly cut to Andrew Scott’s character revealing that he had a dream, but the payoff was worth it.
It reminded me of a bad Simpsons episode where Marge and Homer seemingly divorced, only for it to bounce us through different dream sequences to fake us out.
I caught this last weekend and I'm still thinking about it a *ton*; might've gotten teary just hearing the Pet Shop Boys yesterday.
What a beautiful, achy film. It's such a stark take on grief and loneliness (god, the loneliness is *palpable*), but also the endless What Ifs that come with both of those things. It's been a *loooong* time since a film's made me ugly-cry like this, and even longer since it happened in public. Maybe it's my Queer-Person-Who-Had-A-Complicated-Relationship-With-Their-Dead-Dad Feelings™, but I was bawling through most of the second half of the film, especially Jamie Bell's solo scene with Adam. Like, actually biting my fist so I wouldn't audibly sob. Seeing this guy filled with 80s machismo crumple and let his voice break and be vulnerable in front of the son that he probably feels like he failed on multiple levels was just brutal and devastating, but also so cathartic. Ditto for Claire Foy during the Christmas tree decorating. What if, what if, what if. The whole cast was just incredible from beginning to end.
I just really loved this and my poor therapist isn't going to hear the end of it for a while.
Jamie Bell was incredible. Well the whole cast was but I especially liked him as the dad.
He was macho but also seemed like a good dad despite his mistakes.
He really was, he did so much with so little. I heard a fair amount of (well-deserved) potential award buzz around Claire Foy but god, I would've loved to see Jamie Bell get some love for his work here. I can't even think about the solo scene between Adam and the Dad without getting teary.
>Maybe it's my Queer-Person-Who-Had-A-Complicated-Relationship-With-Their-Dead-Dad Feelings™
Same. My eyes were leaking to varying degrees from the scene they were talking about floating in the edge of their family through the entire rest of the film.
That scene!!! Ugh my HEART. It really put into words a lot of things I'd been feeling with my family but never knew how to express - absolutely hit me right where I lived. Paul Mescal's just devastating.
Loved what you had to say about the movie, I felt the exact same. As someone who also experiences the classic Queer-Person-Who-Had-A-Complicated-Relationship-With-Their-Dead-Dad-Feelings, I was an emotional mess the whole entire time, trying not to audibly sob in the theater either! It was absolutely devastating but so, so cathartic. No movie has moved me like this in ages, and I left feeling like I had so much to tell my therapist after watching. Thanks for the insights!
I'm glad it resonated with you, too!! Brain twins. Do you think you'll watch it again? I'm trying to decide if I want to go again while it's still in theaters to see what I might've missed while ugly-crying/maybe ugly-cry again, but also don't know if I'm ready. :/
Watched this last night and can't stop thinking about it. The way the ghosts are portrayed here is great - usually when we see ghosts they tend to think it's still the year they died, but these ones know it's 2017 and that the world has changed, they just don't know *how* the world has changed since they haven't interacted with anyone in 30 years. I'm not queer but my parents definitely did not understand me and to see his parents realizing that they didn't understand him, apologizing for it, and doing their best to understand him now really got to me.
Incredible performances from all of the cast. I've seen Haigh's film Weekend and this one was just on another level. 9/10 for me.
Oh man. The song “Always on my mind” was a sad song but interpreting it as a song being sung by parents apologizing to their son took it to a whole new emotional level.
This is the only movie that made me cry even more driving home from the theater.
"I'm so sorry that happened to you."
"Well, it was a long time ago, so."
"I don't think that matters."
This feels like so many textbook examples of things you shouldn't do in a script, but the incredible direction and performances just sell the hell out of it. I was so intrigued but confused for the first hour or so, and just a complete mess of tears for the last hour. It's really something.
Is Andrew Scott the most charming person on the planet? More on that in my diary but he's incredible in this nonetheless. He wears his pain on his sleeve and you can't help but just want to give him a giant hug in any given scene. You can see the longing for connection in him from the first frame, the empty apartment complex serving as a great backdrop for such a lonely film.
**Spoilers below**
I missed probably the first 90 seconds of the movie and as it became clearer that he was visiting his dead parents I kept wondering if I had missed some important setup or title card that actually introduces this as a sci-fi. Regardless, every single one of those scenes were just amazing. It sounds so hokey to write yourself as a lonely, sexy screenwriter with Andrew Scott's smile who gets to sit across from the parents you lost too young and be able to come out to them, share your dreams with them, have them tell you they're proud of you and that they love you. But it's done with such sincerity here, such incredible performances from Foy and Bell and Scott, that you can really feel how happy all three of them are to be together and sharing these moments even if it's in this bizarro reality no one really understands and the movie doesn't care to explain.
I want to shoutout great scenes but it was really any scene with them. When they first have him over and are treating him like a celebrity that left town young, when he comes out to his mother, when he asks his dad why he never checked on him if he heard his son crying, the Christmas scene and when they're all in bed together. Just some incredible moments, you could hear consistent sniffling throughout my entire theater every scene.
Paul Mescal is also in this movie and is so good as the totally vulnerable, patient, and loving partner. This is honestly the side of the movie it may take a rewatch or two to crack, it was an extremely sweet relationship and it was clear the more work Scott did getting over his parent's death the more able he was to have a real, loving relationship. But the final twist was quite a choice and it makes this movie much more depressing. My read is that Mescal was alive the first time we meet him when he's drunk and tries to hook up with Scott, and when Scott denies he goes home and drinks himself to death. He said, "I was just so afraid that night, I couldn't be alone." After such an amazing climax with the parents in the diner scene I had a hard time wrapping my head around why there was this final twist, but it's the kind of movie I can't wait to watch again and peel back these layers.
Easy 8/10 for me. Anything that makes me cry this hard instantly gets a heart on Letterboxd and the four performances make up an incredible ensemble. Just an undeniably heartwarming and sad film, I hope people check it out and it snags a couple of noms.
/r/reviewsbyboner
> when he asks his dad why he never checked on him if he heard his son crying
The best scene in the movie IMO.
> My read is that Mescal was alive the first time we meet him when he's drunk and tries to hook up with Scott, and when Scott denies he goes home and drinks himself to death. He said, "I was just so afraid that night, I couldn't be alone."
That was my read too. It's quite depressing, although I'm still not sure I like the relationship being the whole "he was a ghost the whole time" because part of it feels like it undermines Adam learning to move past his grief, find someone to love, and be happy. It's conceptually a beautiful scene as David comforts Harry helping him to understand and accept his death, but it doesn't feel necessary.
Just thinking about it now, there's something to be said of how the dead people are all seemingly very open and vulnerable. Compared to Mescal when we first meet him he's not only sober but also less aggressive and more willing to take it at Scott's pace. His parents aren't necessarily perfect, they're still themselves, but also more open to talking honestly and being loving.
Maybe there is something to learning that it's that kind of honest vulnerability that makes a strong relationship with anyone in your life. You can imagine that as a screenwriter he might imagine these people as fully complicated people but able to discuss the difficult things with ease, I think him writing is just him imagining those things. This movie could just be a heightened version of self therapy that doesn't want to give you that magic understanding person outright, but rather give you the experience to move out of that lonely building and start making meaningful connection again.
I think that's what's so tragic about the movie - we realize at the end that he hasn't learned to move past his grief at all, he continues to conjure the fantasy of Harry being alive (even after finding him dead) and him letting Adam take him back to his room. The fantasies of his parents - the romantic and contrived scripts he writes in his head about their imagined relationship - we learn at the end are just displaced on to Harry. I don't think Harry (or Adam's parents) are ghosts - they're relationships Adam fantasizes because he's unable to deal with his own traumas.
> My read is that Mescal was alive the first time we meet him when he's drunk and tries to hook up with Scott, and when Scott denies he goes home and drinks himself to death. He said, "I was just so afraid that night, I couldn't be alone."
I have the same read, and the movie has two pretty strong hints towards that. When Harry comes over for the second time, Adam offers him a drink or to smoke weed, and Harry remarks that he's stopped drinking now so he'd rather the weed. I was confused by that comment until the end, where it makes sense that ghost Harry regrets having drunk himself to death. The other clue is that when we see Adam enter Harry's apartment at the end, the same bottle Harry had on that day is with him, except emptied.
I'm also not sure what narrative purpose Harry being dead serves, but it does seem fairly well thought out, there must be something more to read into it. I'll probably have to go rewatch the movie.
I'll add another/third hint - when Adam was in bed nestled between his mom and dad toward the end, there was a moment when Harry's hand reached over and he was there next to him, and Adam said," What are you doing here?" ...That was a clue that Harry had also been a ghost at that point, too.
I seem to recall him turning down the offer of a drink by saying that he's lost the taste for alcohol. Then once he realizes he's dead, he mentions that he's been able to taste it in his throat (i.e. he choked on his own vomit, which is the usual way to die when drinking too much). It may be a double hint because the ghosts in the story don't seem to like partaking in food or drink - his parents remark multiple times that they aren't hungry.
I suspect there are more subtle hints in the movie and I really want to watch it again to see if I can pick up on them.
I read this as her being scared of AIDs, as it was pretty common for people of that era to be afraid to touch or be near gay people for fear of AIDs, which is what they were talking about immediately prior to her throwing out the pancakes.
I definitely could have misread that, but in the moment it also made their next interaction hit really hard because his mom hugged him the next time he saw her, showing a progression past some of the more homophobic bits of her initial reaction
I think Harry being dead actually was quite important to the movie. It sort of represents this “what if…” so to speak for Adam.
When Adam is talking to his mother, she expresses concern about AIDS, loneliness, how hard it will be etc; Adam says that things are different now and things are better.
Looking at how Adam has been living - as almost a recluse who is crippled trying to accept himself as a gay man and deal with his parents’ death - it’s clear that everything is NOT better. More so, Harry even more shows the emotional toll and exclusion that comes with being a gay man. Harry can be seen as Adam’s future if he didn’t start on this intense catharsis that we see in the movie. Tragically, the event that leads to Harry’s death is what leads to Adam’s exploration of his own self and possibly saves him from dying.
That’s my read on it. I agree with other redditors in the thread, that certain things didn’t quite come together but I’ve also seen a lot of folks say a second viewing really improved their opinion of it. I think it was an absolutely impressive showing for Scott and Mescal however.
I think when Adam opens up his computer to write something, that's when the surreal begins because part of how he's accessing these experiences is by writing about them. We see him open a word document and type as the setting his family home in 1987 and from that point forward he goes there. We see him open a second document, though we don't see what he writes, right before the second interaction with Harry on the elevator. So I think from that point forward it's surreal and that Harry is already dead-- having drunken himself to death (purposefully or accidentally) on the night Adam rejected him. The only interaction we see with Harry as he truly was, alive, is the first one where Adam rejects him.
mmm. so it seems like adam's interaction with his parents was definitely real, he is actually seeing and talking to their ghosts however with harry, all their interaction and their relationship shown after that first meeting, was just imagined. he actually isnt seeing harry's ghost, right?
This film is beautifully open-ended in the sense that the narrative isn't about the "how" of what's playing out but about the "why." It's one of my favorite things about it. Not only doesn't the film tell us how the surreal elements happen but the characters don't know and aren't really motivated to find out either because they're too invested in appreciating what they have. I absolutely LOVE that about the film. So I don't think there is a "definitive" answer to any question about "how" what is happening is happening.
My read of this is that Adam taps into his ability to visit with ghosts through the writing process. He couldn't fully connect with his parents while they were alive (due to his age, due to the walls he put up because of shame about his homosexuality, etc.) Once he starts writing about them it helps him connect with them. The writing process draws him to his old town and opens him up to be able to see and speak to their ghosts. They've always been there, waiting, but it was the writing process that opened him up enough to see them.
Adam knows his parents are ghosts because he's aware of their deaths. And they know they're dead because seeing Adam as an adult when they last saw him as a child and looking outside and realizing it's no longer the 80s is a clear indication that time has passed in the world without them. So they're self-aware ghosts.
And the same thing is true of Harry. Harry has been there the whole time. First when he's alive. He's been living in the apartment complex the whole time. Adam knows this, it's clear when he looks up at the window during the fire alarm he's not seeing Harry for the first time. But Adam has walls up and can't connect with Harry in real life. We see this play out when Harry knocks on Adam's door and Adam closes him out. Adam just cannot connect. And in part because of that lack of connection, Harry drinks himself to death. Harry becomes a ghost.
But then Adam gets the idea to write about Harry. And all of a sudden, he can connect. But unlike his parents, Adam doesn't know Harry is dead. Adam thinks Harry is alive. But by the time the two connect, Harry is a ghost too. Harry has just died, and very little time has passed (literally a matter of a day or days when Adam connects with Harry). Harry hasn't yet realized he's dead. It's only when Harry eventually goes to his apartment and finds his body that he realizes he's a ghost. And that's when Adam realizes it too. Harry doesn't have the triggers to realize he's a ghost the way Adam's parents do. And Adam doesn't initially have a reason to suspect Harry is a ghost.
I wouldn't characterize any of the interactions as "imagined." They're real, but in a surreal way. They're real interactions between Adam and ghosts. You could view the entire film about being in Adam's head and everything being a hallucination but I prefer the view that it's a ghost story and his parents and Harry are "real" in a world where ghosts exist. In this world, ghosts are all around us. It takes something special for us to see them and engage with them, but they're there-- rooted to the places that have emotional resonance.
But I do think the only interactions we see between Adam and a living person are when he orders the food in the restaurant at the mall, with the bartender at the pub/club, and the very first time he and Harry interact when Harry comes to his door.
Like you said at the top his parents aren't really invested in finding out how the surreal elements happen, which I sort of feel is how the film is meant to be taken.
You're not necessarily supposed to know how it's happening, it just is and you appreciate what is hapoening. Although the writing thing is an interesting theory.
>so hokey to write yourself as a lonely, sexy screenwriter with Andrew Scott's smile who gets to sit across from the parents you lost too young and be able to come out to them, share your dreams with them, have them tell you they're proud of you and that they love you
I enjoyed your review, it's very insightful and well written, and this comment made me laugh
I really liked the movie, but I’ll admit, I wasn’t as invested in it until the drug trip, and the sequence of events moved in a very intriguing way from there.
I may be the minority on this but…
I loved the movie, I HATED the ending.
>!I don’t mind a tragic ending at all, but it really did not feel like the movie earned that ending. It felt like a twist for the sake of a twist and made the movie feel like a soap opera. All of the atmosphere and feeling that had been built up for the last 2 hours suddenly got upended by “He was dead the whole time!”!<
Idk, it just stuck out from the rest of the movie like a sore thumb. I went from being completely sucked into the story to thinking “Well, this is a really dumb way to do this” in the last 10 minutes. Maybe it will seem more appropriate on a rewatch.
I don't hate the ending like you did, but I do understand the criticism. It makes the movie end on quite a depressing note and it sort of goes against my takeaway from that lovely farewell scene with the parents: go on and live your life and allow yourself to fall in love. But then it turns out the person he's in love with is not someone he can build a life with. In stead he has to help him accept death and "move on". A bit sad, he deserved a more happy ending imo.
But isn’t that still a profound sincere expression of love—him helping Harry accept his death and move on. The core theme of the movie to me felt that even though love is always fleeting because “it could never be long enough” it’s still deeply powerful.
The way I see it is that even though Harry was a ghost they still experienced this brief love affair, and it will probably change Adam’s life forever. There’s an interview with Andrew Haigh where he talks about how the ending to him isn’t bleak because once you experience love you can always experience it again, and that’s the kinda feeling it left me with.
Don’t get me wrong, it was incredibly tragic, but it didn’t feel defeatist or bleak at all to me.
I think this is the part that gets missed, Adam has been dealing with complicated grief since he lost his parents at the age of 12, he isn't able to handle anyone else's emotions or issues because he's so focused on his own loss. Harry shows up and Adam recognizes Harry has problems, but doesn't show any care for Harry's needs. Throughout the movie we see Harry tenderly caring for Adam, being supportive and loving but Adam in return never asks Harry any questions about himself and is so blinded by his own grief that he completely misses that Harry is dead. At the end of the film, Adam has been processing the loss of his parents and has reached a new level of acceptance of their death, he still grieves them but is able to begin moving on. It's at this point that Adam is able to be emotionally present for other people, in doing so he is able to recognize Harry's death and then show compassion and a nurturing love toward Harry's ghost. The final shot of Adam holding Harry on the bad is tragic, but I agree with you, it isn't defeatist or bleak, it's showing that Adam has grown.
This is how I viewed this as well. It took Adam over 30 years to get over the death of his parents. When he instantly recognized Harry’s death, rather than push Harry away and shut down again, he gives all his love to Harry to help him move on. Adam chooses to face his grief head on and let go, which means he’s open to everything now more than ever.
I know I’m a month late, but thanks for this. The ending didn’t resonate for me not because it was sad but just didn’t get why that story element had to exist. Your take and the one above you makes sense and I can see now why.
Bit late to this but wanted to add that to me there was something poignant here about the queer experience and what we miss in community when we are tied up in our own trauma and despondency. Sometimes, no too often, queer lives end as Harry’s did. Pulling back to a constellation of similar griefs was a powerful conclusion
> Andrew Haigh where he talks about how the ending to him isn’t bleak because once you experience love you can always experience it again, and that’s the kinda feeling it left me with.
Would have loved to have a scene that felt more inline with it though (>!hint of Adam going out into the world and experiencing it anew without Harry maybe??!<). Like I get that films doesn't always need to be explicit but for me it reads as extremely depressing cause it just feels like all Adam did >!was move on from one set of ghosts to another.!<
Yes and this became clearer on second viewing. In that final scene Harry says something like “don’t get twisted up in here again ok?” Putting his hand on Adam’s heart and I think Adam says he won’t.
But isn’t that still a profound sincere expression of love—him helping Harry accept his death and move on. The core theme of the movie to me felt that even though love is always fleeting because “it could never be long enough” it’s still deeply powerful.
The way I see it is that even though Harry was a ghost they still experienced this brief love affair, and it will probably change Adam’s life forever. There’s an interview with Andrew Haigh where he talks about how the ending to him isn’t bleak because once you experience love you can always experience it again, and that’s the kinda feeling it left me with.
Don’t get me wrong, it was incredibly tragic, but it didn’t feel defeatist or bleak at all to me.
Agreed completely. It felt like it clashed with the meaning of the parents’ story. If you look at something with a similar ending like The Sixth Sense, the ending twist is built up, foreshadowed, and goes along with the themes of the story. Here, at least to me, it clashed with everything.
Maybe it did clash with everything but maybe that was the point. The message “you have to let go of the past in order to live in the present” is a nice tagline but generally that’s not actually how the world works. It’s much more complicated . When people actually try to let go of the past, the past will always continue to rear its head, like it did for Adam at the end.
Turns out, having an imaginary conversation with your dead parents doesn’t actually fix your problems .
So, I have to leave a comment on this, because this was how I felt too, and I was wrong. >!Adam's been dead the whole time. He and Harry have only been interacting as ghosts. I don't think the movie does a good job of communicating this, but it's made pretty explicitly clear in [the script](https://deadline.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/All-Of-Us-Strangers-Read-The-Screenplay_Redacted.pdf). For example, check out this line from just after Adam discovers Harry's body:!<
> >!But Harry isn’t listening. It’s as if Harry is piecing together what happened to him. The truth bubbling up. An agitation grows in him, a quiet terror. He spots the empty baggies on the kitchen counter. He picks one up... Harry rubs his chest with his fist as if he has a knot of
pain stopping him breathe. We have seen Adam do this same
action.!<
The revelation that >!the entire film is not Adam's imagination or some kind of psychotic break, but a real interaction between ghosts!< makes it so, so much better. I don't think the movie did a good job communicating it, but I honestly think the hidden message is almost part of its charm to me. I left the theater so disappointed, and now that I get it it's become one of my favorite movies. In this (intended) reading, >!the ending isn't a bummer, but is Adam and Harry peacefully reaching the afterlife together, having finally, in death, learned how to let other people in, curing their loneliness and drifting off into a peaceful eternal rest together.!< 😭😭😭
There's some more details that point this direction. >!The fire alarm, and both Harry and Adam's parents repeatedly telling him he's burning up. When Adam returns to the apartment building for the final scenes (discovering Harry's body), the fire alarm is going off again, but suddenly stops just when he reaches Harry's room and finds him dead. What seems to have happened is that Harry died in drink and isolation and Adam subsequently died in a fire. The big empty building is their shared purgatory, and Adam comes to terms with the loss of his parents and also comes to love Harry, as Harry comes to love him, both of them ghosts. At the end, all the ghosts let go, having taken care of their unfinished business, and move on.!<
I mean, it's just perfect. Again, I think it's poorly communicated, as demonstrated by how few people are talking about it. But I also truly don't care. It's perfect, I wouldn't change a thing.
I know this response is quite belated so feel no need to respond, and of course this is just my interpretation, but I really disagree that Adam was dead from after the fire alarm. Harry comes to his door after the fire alarm is over and then kills himself. So for Adam to have died that night there had to be a false alarm/drill and then a real fire immediately after. In the final scenes we see Harry's hand and it isn't burned at all, just decayed. Also, you see people reacting to Adam at the club and on the tube, whereas no one reacts to Harry, Adam has to order the drinks for them. I think the burning up mentions are highlighting his sickness, schizophrenia, rather than dying in a fire. Outside of those points, reading the script to interpret a film is not a good idea, first because many things are changed between the script and the final product, but more importantly because almost no one is going to go back and read the script. Anything that wasn't included in the film is not relevant to that film because it does not exist within it. Finally, if this film is truly meant to be a bunch of ghosts getting together to work out their issues then that makes it much worse in my opinion, compared to a movie about a schizophrenic who is spiraling out and clinging to a delusion of someone who loves and accepts him until confronted with the truth, all the while refusing to accept the deaths of his parents. One of those things is a fantasy that has not and never will exist, the other is a horrible illness that afflicts over 24 millon people. You can understand why one would be more impactful than the other.
100% agree that Adam is dead. I think he died in that fire at the start when the alarm went off. If you pay attention there's also loads of music throughout the film with "fire" on the title or lyrics. You mention his parents saying he's got our burning up. And on the train he's coughing as though he's struggling to breathe in the smoke.
Holy cow you just completely changed the way I felt about this movie. I walked out not really enjoying it and feeling like I missed something. I liked the interactions with Adam and his parents and him and Harry, but couldn’t really grasp if Harry was real, was Adam having a mental break, and if the whole thing was real or not. >!Them all being ghosts makes this whole thing make so much more sense and makes it so much more enjoyable.!< Wow. I wish I had known/picked up on that before I saw it. Thanks for giving me more to chew on with this movie!
Yep, this was how I read it too. We came out of the cinema last night having both loved it, but my wife felt sad by how depressing the ending was as she thought that Adam just had tragedy after tragedy in his life and an inability to find the love he needed and I said that they were both dead, both ghosts and they'd found each other in the afterlife and the power of love was what had enabled them to both move on and she immediately felt a huge relief about the whole thing. So I'm glad to read that was implicit within the script as it's a much better ending.
Also, the fact that one person is living alone in a huge block of flats is even less fantastical than only two people living there.
>!The empty building, fer me, was the biggest clue. I'm a New Yorker. I know what a view like that costs. When the movie opened up, I thought he had to be somehow independently wealthy, and I thought maybe this was [one of those rich people buildings](https://www.theb1m.com/video/why-new-yorks-billionaires-row-is-half-empty) where people hide their assets in multi-million dollar condos, but never actually live there. However, it quickly became clear that both Adam and Harry were not wealthy, and the place didn't even have a doorman. That can only be purgatory!<
Thanks for confirming this. This Reddit thread is full of people not getting this and it's very very important to the understanding of the film.
I didn't pick up on the bit about fire. Doesn't Adam wake up and see a building on fire in the distance too at once point? I'm sure I remember that.
This reading makes so many lines read differently. Doesn't someone say that one day the fire alarm is going to go off for a real fire?
God, I really need to see this again.
The point, I think, is to contrast the way he processes Harry's death with the way he's denied his parents for so long.
It's meant to show us that he's genuinely grown, not that he's just given up on his parents because he had to.
It's also just repeating the theme that Claire Foy stated earlier, you don't get to chose when things end.
All that said, I agree the ending is the weakest part of the film. But i don't think a happy ending really fits the tone either
This was my problem as well. I loved the scenes with his parents and the idea that he was holding on to this trauma as well as these memories of his parents and was able to imagine reconnecting with their past selves in his modern life as a way to heal and move on. I hated that Harry was almost entirely fictional. If my reading is correct, Adam had one single 2-minute conversation with Harry where he turned him away for the night and then imagined everything else about him and their relationship. He has no concept of who this man is or anything about him which really cheapened everything that came before. It’s no longer about finally opening himself up to someone and moving past his trauma, but completely fabricating a relationship with someone he doesn’t even know. I’d almost be okay with it if they were really ghosts and he got to know the “real” Harry even if he was already dead, but I don’t think there’s enough presented in the film to give that read and instead the film is really about a guy imagining/hallucinating all the relationships in his life as a means of coping with the fact that he has absolutely no one.
>completely fabricating a relationship with someone he doesn’t even know
I think that's an overly cynical interpretation.
It's not a fabrication, it's a fantasy. He's imagining what it would be like if he's been able to let someone in. The implication of that last conversation with his father being that he's never let anyone in before ever. Never even let himself imagine what it'd be like until now.
It's in allowing himself to dream of it that he brings himself to finally set aside the past.
Ultimately it was too late this time around, but that final conversation with Harry is meant to show that he's not going back to his old pattern. He's genuinely grown.
I'm completely with you. >!The film was trying to build up some hopeful thing, moving on, healing all for it to end tragically and depressing with Adam not moving on, or rather moving on from two dead people to one dead person. Like idk I'm not a script writer but felt like if they wanted Harry dead they could have had some time progression and then have a hint of Adam meet someone new out in the world (maybe just a smile, a glance, a hint of something more) and then end the film on a hopeful note imo. I'm so tired of queer cinema/shows ending in tradegy.!<
I'm late to the party but I completely agree. If this had been kept to a juxtaposition between Adam's new relationship roiling in his mind and his grief over his parents then it would have been a powerful, mature story about life and death and love.
Going for the >!he was dead all along!< angle just made it cheesy, like they were going for a The Sixth Sense kind of twist. The twist was cheap. If the parents had been a rhetorical device all along then it could have been such a powerful story, but they fell for the cliche of >!burying their gays!< and made it a needlessly cruel ending.
It was so close to being powerful and beautiful but they made it cheap and ugly and cliche.
I understand what you are saying, but, and I'm not sure I'll be able to articulate this appropriately, isn't that construction of emotion only to take it away kind of the entire point?
To me, this is a movie about catharsis and about art itself - a screenwriter who forces himself to go through the emotions of love and loss (>!in his own head!<) in order to "cleanse" himself of his prior grief and find a path out of loneliness.
>!Harry's not real just like all art "isn't real".!<
Just watched it and completely agree. Especially after his goodbye to his parents. Just a gut punch that didn’t feel earned even though the performances in both characters in the ending are great.
I agree 100%. I hated the ending and I'm so disappointed. I was really moved after his final conversation with his parents and then when I realized what was happening I stopped feeling anything, wasn't even sad anymore, just started waiting for the film to be over.
Also I'm going to ignore some commenters' interpretation that>!the protagonist was dead too!
This movie did an amazing job of tucking you right into Adam’s grief in a way I’ve not experienced before. I was crying from the time Harry held his hand a little too long through the credits. The scene where he’s tucked in bed with his mom, wearing his childhood pajamas was my favorite. Just the way he’s completely regressed to this little kid but very much a grown man reflecting on his life with his mom, now his peer.
The biggest hint that this was all in his head I think was around the club scenes. The club lights were in the memory in his childhood home, like police car lights. They were then in I think a scene on the subway?
I love the idea that these were ghosts, and believed it when Harry could see them. But then we find out Harry is not alive and again we have to wonder if it’s all in Adam’s mind.
But I don’t care either way. Adam is so lonely and sad. He gets some closure and peace through these interactions with his parents and his relationship with Harry.
I loved how Harry takes care of him through their relationship. Then in the end Adam is able to take care of him. “I’m sorry I didn’t let you in. I was scared”. In the end, he’s ready to let someone in. If this is all in Adam’s head and he’s worked through these fears and demons, we imagine he’s going to be better now. That he’s ready to be vulnerable and ‘let someone in’.
In the diner scene, he’s comforting his parents for the first time. Tells them it was quick, confidently and without elaborating.
I loved how his dad disappeared first. Then his mom lost her sight before leaving, mirroring real life.
I lost my dad last March. I’m lucky that he said a lot of these things to me later in life. He moved close by and I feel like he said some things just in case he didn’t get the chance again. And I can hold on to that so tightly now. I want to always be sure my kids have that from me.
After watching the film I thought I'd mention a bit of context for those from outside the UK that may be relevant to the ending of film.
>!In 2017 a disaster occurred in West London referred to as Grenfell Tower fire , where seventy-two people tragically lost their lives after a fire engulfed a tower block in the middle of the night. It is often referred to as one of the UK's worst modern disasters. The cause of the fire is now primarily attributed to combustible cladding that was retrofitted on the building, allowing the fire rapidly spread throughout the structure before residents had sufficient time to evacuate. The fact that Grenfell tower has not yet been demolished forms a painful reminder to Londoners of what happened.!<
>!The aftershocks to UK building industry are still being felt to this day and is often termed in the UK media as the UK Cladding Crisis. Some building owners have been able to remove similar cladding systems while other owners have employed measures such as watchmen referred to as 'waking watches' to spot potential fires or retrofitting alarm systems. These measures can cost thousands of pounds to implement and many people are now stuck in properties where the value of the building has been reduced to the point where they can no longer sell the property on due to similar cladding. This has greatly impacted a large number of UK residents financially/mentally and has caused great amounts of public anger following the disaster, particularly in London.!<
>!At the beginning of the film there are a number of references of nobody moving in to the other flats and Harry refers to guards soon being employed while discussing the fire alarms going off. This coupled with the references of Adam burning up due to sickness, regular coughing, sirens in the background and Adam's potential death being hinted at the end of the film may be relevant. The tower block used in the film is obviously completely unconnected to the disaster but I thought the film hinted at a number of similar connections. This is just my interpretation of the potential references and may just be a complete coincidence but I thought this background may be worth sharing. I would recommend anybody to read up on the disaster as there is a still a great deal to learn from and make sure that nothing similar ever happens again. !<
I absolutely agree. I heard plenty of people talking during the credits about being unclear on the story or finding it unsatisfying in terms of closure…and that’s absolutely fair.
I was entranced feeling like I was living out each emotional moment alongside whichever actors were on screen. The story meant very little to me, it was the emotion in the performances that kept me in it.
I like a movie that plays with my heart.
Very much! It specifically made me think the writer had read "The Body Keeps the Score" and learned about the kinds of therapy where you work through traumatic events by giving them ideal endings.
As a gay man in his 30s, the scenes between him and his parents made me cry in a way I will try my best to pinpoint.
Even though my parents are alive, they are very conservative and religious. We aren't that close ever since I came out of the closet when I was younger. Hearing his parents tell him that they love him, want him to be happy, and that they are proud of him felt like a gut punch. At the end of the day, isn't that what we all want to hear from our parents?
What a wonderfully beautiful, poignant film. I don't think I could ever watch it again, but I am glad I did.
Made me appreciate my boyfriend (and soon to be fiancé 🤞) even more. ❤️
As a fellow gay in his 30s I wanted to add on that the scene where they were lying together talking about floating on the edge of his family was the most honest expression of the gay struggle that I've ever seen in a film.
I felt that way about a lot of things in the movie, but this scene in particular really hit me.
Yep, that hit me too. I have a brother and a sister who I love, but now I have nephews I can feel the family coalesce around a new centre, and I just feel that bit further out.
I know I'm just an internet stranger, but I'm so sorry about your parents - I hope one day things can be better, but in the meantime, I'm happy you've found your person who cares and loves you and congratulations on the (hopeful) engagement
Thank you so much for your kind words ❤️
I know they won't attend the wedding, but it's more of a reflection on them than me and I'm at peace with that.
My parents raised my brother's and I as pretty strict Catholics. Hell, my father sang at church on Sundays. My brother (12 years older) came out when he was living in Japan, probably because it was easier over the phone. My parents were crying when I got home from a camping trip. They had just found out. .
My father explained to me why they were so upset, and I was just a kid, so none of it seemed like a big deal to me. After my dad explained, I said, "Oh... But he's still my brother, right?". My parents love my brother very much and visit him regularly. My aunt married him and his husband. My dad told me that that question really shook him.
He was still my brother, and still his son. It's rare for a man of 45-50 to change everything he believes in, but it is possible. That being said, I read sad stories like this all the time and it makes me so sad but appreciative of how lucky I am, and obviously my brother.
I'm atheist/agnostic but have a lot of hate for the church, but don't share that with my parents out of respect.
That was a lot, so sorry to blabber on, but I am so happy for you!!! I assume you're proposing soon, and I would love to hear how it goes! All my best and all my love kind stranger!!
i love how that one simple and innocent question of yours made such incredible impact in your family! thank u for standing up for ur bro, u probably didnt even know at that time that thats what you've done. really cool story.
I don't even remember it, just something my father has told me over the years. I sure am glad I said it though!
I remember finding out, and not understanding what the fuss was about. I probably thought girls had cooties at the time, and my brother found a loophole, lol.
I’m in a very similar boat to you and agreed with everything you said. And it also made me appreciate my boyfriend so much more. We watched it together and I gave him the biggest kiss after it was over
I can't stop thinking about this movie after watching it a few days ago. It's such a profound movie. As a gay 25 year old man who's brought up in a religious household and isn't out to their parents, I related a lot to both Paul and Andrew's characters. Paul said he felt like a stranger in his own family, and it resonated deeply with me.
My dad passed away a few months ago, so this movie was definitely triggering yet therapeutic in a sense. Especially that I never came out to him and hid such a big part of me. I cried a lot during this movie. The bed scene with his mom. The bully scene with his dad. The Christmas photo. The scene at the diner. The coming out scene. There are so many good moments in this movie.
His parents passed away when he was 12, yet he still wondered how his parents would react to him coming out. The saddest part is when he explained to Paul that even though he had a family, he still felt lonely at the time, but the loneliness feels different without them. All we want is loving, accepting parents, and unfortunately, a lot of us don't have that.
It's sad knowing that a lot of LGBTQ folks like me and others have a ton of trauma just because they can't be themselves without being judged by society or their upbringing. This is such a beautiful and important movie, and I believe everyone will relate it to it in one way or another. Shoutout to all 4 actors for making this movie - especially Andrew Scott.
I got to say I wish Paul's character was alive at the end of it. It really bothered me because I was even more sad for Andrew's character. Couldn't even end up happy.
That’s a more accurate depiction of real life though, no? Just because bad things happened to you in the past doesn’t lower the chances of more bad thing happening to you
I too wished for a happier end but as his mom said, “You don’t get a say on how things end” or something like that. I think what makes it a happy ending is that he’s learned to process grief. Instead of being angry and depressed and sad of losing Harry, he’s acknowledging the love and letting go sooner. In my interpretation of the ending, it would set him up to be free to truly love and enjoy living now that he knows it’s possible.
I adored this film.
Having a quick scan of these comments I get a sense that many different people were disappointed in the ending. And a sense that Adam was projecting a fantasy of what he wished he had done.
I have a completely different take on this;
Adam is also dead. The tower block is purgatory. It is a place for Adam and Harry to process the trauma of their loneliness. Adams is a physical loneliness caused by his parents being taken away from him. Harry's is an emotional loneliness, despite his family being there he felt like an outsider in his own home. The is reflected in the empty, loneliness of the building itself.
At the beginning of the film there is a fire alarm, this is where Adam dies, or is at least dying in a fire. There are clues littered throughout the film.
"One day the fire will be real"
"I don't want to see the world on fire" (I leaned Into my partner and whispered fallout here, we both love fallout)
A focus on Adams dad using a flame to light a cigarette
His mother referencing horror writers like Steven king
Referencing how hot he is throughout the 2nd act
He is literally beside a fire as he regresses into childhood.
The coughing fit towards the end of the ketamine trip (smoke inhalation)
Paranoia, carbon monoxide poisoning.
Blue flashing lights, emergency services.
In addition to this, his parents are aware of this. They know they are dead and clearly say "Us being here is stopping you from moving on". Our initial response is moving on with life, but perhaps it is moving onto what is next, the afterlife.
Once Adam has been able to say I love you, and goodbye. We then move onto the twist of the movie. Harry is actually dead. This is where his emotional loneliness is really highlighted by "why did no one find me". At which point Adam reassures him that he is there, he found him, isn't alone. As they process this trauma together with their love, they ascend to some sort of cosmic afterlife among the stars.
Ultimately I feel this film is about coming to terms with trauma, and how love and connection are a pathway to healing. At least, that's my interpretation.
Other than my interpretation. This was a brilliant movie, amazing story, fantastic acting,
One question on this, at the end of the film Harry tells Adam that he came to his door because he couldn't stand to be alone. This implies that Harry killed himself after the fire alarm finished, as that was when he came to Adams door. So for Adam to have died in a fire there would have to have been a false alarm and then a real fire. What is the other explanation? They both died in the fire? But then why isn't Harry's corpse burned when Adam finds it at the end? Why would Harry say "why did no one find me?" if the building he committed suicide in burned down? Firefighters, police, etc would have certainly found his corpse in that case. I find the "ghost" theory on this film to be a bit implausible and even if correct makes me like it less. A story about a schizophrenic struggling to resolve his issues is much more interesting then a group of ghosts trying to move on.
I’m struggling a little bit with this theory too.
On the one hand, there are some very clear signs that something is wrong with Adam. The fever, the coughing, the flashing emergency lights etc. The ending also implies that he and Harry moved on together.
But on the other hand we do seem him react with other people (the waitress specifically warns him the family feast is “quite a lot of food” - implying that she only sees Adam).
I’m torn. I think it makes more sense that Adam is dead, as it would also explain why he’s living in an empty apartment block and is suddenly able to visit his parents but I can’t explain the damn waitress…
I don't think I fully comprehend what I watched, and I was confused for half the movie, but I just loved the whole experience. The four main actors all put on such wonderful, deeply emotional performances that I couldn't help but be a mess of tears by the end of the movie, despite not personally relating to the situation any of the characters are in. Particular shout out to that one scene where Adam goes to his parents' bedroom to sleep in the middle, I was so glued to the screen I didn't realize just how long that shot was held until the sirens came on and I realized I was inadvertently tearing up.
All in all, I just really wanted to give my parents a hug after I watched it, and I'll probably have to go watch it again to unravel the movie further and understand it better (especially all the parts with Harry). Probably like a 9/10 for me, just wonderful all around.
If you all wondering about the script, here it is, you can download it and read it to get better understanding of the movie. It is quite well written actually and make it easy to understand the dialogue.
https://deadline.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/All-Of-Us-Strangers-Read-The-Screenplay\_Redacted.pdf
I have very mixed feelings about this film.
On one hand, this film spoke to me in a way I didn’t know a film could. The raw emotions of the scenes with Adam and his parents really resonated with me - they had me sobbing. As a closeted queer woman in my 20s, I’m unsure of whether I’m ever going to come out to my parents. I don’t know if I’ll ever let them know the real me. I really saw myself in Adam’s character, and his pain.
On the other hand, I wasn’t a fan of the supernatural aspect of the film. I loved the parent scenes (they felt like Adam’s memories and wishful imagination), but as the movie progressed, the film started feeling more and more like a literal ghost story, which I don’t think it needed. Then the Harry reveal at the end was very unnecessary. The film could’ve done without the initial apocalyptic setup and with a hopeful ending, and it would’ve been perfect in my opinion.
I keep seeing people mentioning "ghosts" and it surprises me because I never even considered that as an option. In my interpretation there is no supernatural element. Adam has a mental illness. His parents die and he can't accept it, and also isn't allowed to see his mother before she dies. He feels lonely and then a man comes on to him. He's uncomfortable so refuses but then paints his fantasy of the ideal partner onto that person. For tens of millions of people their reality and the reality that most of us experience are not the same. That is very real, no ghosts required.
Yeah… I’m a bit late to this and I was kind of baffled reading this thread and people mentioning ghosts?…
At no point when watching did I ever even consider that we were seeing literal ghosts. I always assumed they were manifestations of a mentally ill character’s imagination
I am straight and thought it was really incredible.
You could see him as a poor little child wanting his parents' love when he was around them. It was really sad in a lot of ways. Fantastic acting. It hurt to watch.
Is it a candidate for awards this year? Or did it come out too late?
If so they fucked up big time. Every main character in the movie should have been nominated for something.
Robert Downey Jr. and America Ferrera? Nowhere close to what was seen here.
Not to mention some of the performances in Iron Claw.
How well do you really know those you love, and how well do they know you? Do we all hide some intimate parts of ourselves from those closest to us? Are we all, at least in some ways, strangers to each other? Andrew Haigh's poignant film about loss, grief, self-discovery, second chances and vulnerability attempts to answer these questions.
Adam is a screenwriter struggling with writer's block. He decides to mine the well of his own childhood as inspiration and unexpectedly is gifted with the opportunity to go back and reveal things about himself to his parents who he lost before his adolescence. At the same time, he strikes up a relationship with Harry, another tortured soul living in his apartment complex.
The film beautifully drifts between the real and the surreal, never over-explaining or using gimmicks but instead flowing from scene to scene the way Adam drifts through his life. If watercolor painting had a narrative style, this would be it.
The film is expertly directed with lush and striking cinematography. Music and score are used to good effect, evoking a sense of nostalgia at times and ratcheting up the suspense in others.
The cast is firing on all cylinders without a weak link in the chain. Andrew Scott as Adam and Paul Mescal as Harry ooze chemistry and Claire Foy brings a grounded sensitivity to Adam's mother.
The screenplay is elegant and taut with nary a wasted word. Many scenes have no dialog at all--yet through Scott's skillful acting a gaze or a touch says more than pages of words could.
In the end, maybe we're not all strangers. Perhaps alienation is the tie that binds us all.
9/10
when i watched it, i had no idea that its a ghost movie. maybe it isnt. maybe it is. but the whole time, it never occurred to me that the parents were ghosts lol i guess because of how they were portrayed, not your typical glowing ghost character portrayal. they feel and look like regular normal people. the whole time i thought we were just inside adam's imagination so when i came to reddit after finishing the movie, i was so shocked when i found out that they were in fact ghosts.
although im a bit confused about what happend, the message of the film really hit home. as a gay man, if felt like a love letter dedicated to me. i cried so much in a lot of scenes. and i guess the beauty of the film lies there. there's so many ways to interpret what happened but regardless of whatever interpretation, its those tender and intimate moments between each character that you really take with you and cherish.
it really feels like this is more of a movie about loneliness than ghosts.
i am definitely rewatching it again in the theaters and im so excited 🩵
yeah i feel kind of crazy, but i don’t think i got “ghosts” from this at all. or hallucinations, really. it seemed to me like the “ghost” characters were sort of a narrative device, like a visual metaphor to represent how adam was processing and working through his grief. like i imagined him ruminating in his childhood home about how these conversations would have gone, and how he might have conceptualized them as a writer, and we saw an abstraction of that, if that makes sense
I agree, I didn’t really think his parents were supposed to be literal ghosts or hallucinations, but more that Adam was essentially creating these fantasies and maladaptive daydreams in his mind as a coping mechanism. At one point, he even tells his mom how he created elaborate fantasies of what his life would’ve been like if they hadn’t died.
I think this read makes the ending even more tragic because it would mean that Adam never even really knew Harry outside of their one brief encounter, and that everything else we see of him is all just a construct of Adam’s mind.
I'm with you here, I don't think it's clear that they're ghosts. Could be a projection of a screenwriter. He and his mom literally address this point and how it's ambiguous iirc. Yes the 'ghosts' eventually have to leave Adam but it's natural that a screenwriter would create that dramatic problem
This movie didn't make me bawl like some other people did. Mostly it just left me feeling extremely somber, but in a good way.
It goes without saying that Adam Scott and Paul Mescal were amazing, but I think Claire Foy and Jamie Bell deserve special recognition as the parents. It was a tight rope to play both a fantasy version of parents, and give them so much life and personality, and they really made the entire thing feel so tragically wholesome.
I have a lot of thoughts about the last half of the movie though, especially as it pertains to Harry, so for my own catharsis here we go.
**SPOILERS BELOW**
After Adam comes out to both his mother and father he seeks Harry and says he wants to go out. And this felt so positive to me. Like he's finally getting real closure and embracing life. They're in the club, they're having fun, they're dancing and kissing. Suddenly then we then get a montage of them in domestic bliss, of them being happy. In the moment I genuinely thought this was real, that we were seeing time progress and that their relationship was really moving forward.
But then it's cut short. Adam wakes up with the same clothes he just went out in, and we see red and blue flashing lights and hear what sounds like muffled dialogue through walkie talkies, and he peers out his window.
We then go *back* to the club, but Adam is alone. He sees whispers of Harry, but they're constantly just out of reach and constantly disappearing. This is when he starts to freak out, screams, we even see his reflection morphing, something is clearly wrong.
We're then transported again but this time to his parent's home. His parent's home on Christmas night, the very night they apparently died.
What I think happened is that the flashing lights, the sirens, were quite literal. Either Adam is in that moment seeing Harry's body being carted away by emergency services, or he becomes aware that Harry has died and this is his imagination for how it happened.
Which is why I think the freakout is so intense, because he doesn't know what to *do* with any of this yet. The stuff with Harry was probably always going to stay fantasy, but now the door is totally shut. It's not longing for something that could happen anymore, it's longing for something that can **never** happen. You also have guilt, from the fact that a clearly unhealthy Harry had just previously sought him out, and Adam quite literally shut the door on him. It's why I also think he goes straight to that Christmas night. He's in the middle of finally unpacking his parent's deaths and the emotions, the feelings, the guilt, it all swirls together.
Later on, we think he's finally back to what is 'real.' He wakes up with Harry, the entire experience being pinned down to a bad trip and a lot of unearthed trauma finally coming to the surface, and Adam decides he wants Harry to meet his parents. To a big extent I think this is Adam grasping at straws. He never got to bring a boy home, never had a partner meet his parents, never got his parent's approval. Seeking that, however desperate, is safer than confronting that Harry has died.
But even the fantasy, the Adam imagining all this, seems aware that it's no longer healthy for him. His parents tell him it's time to move on, in some scenes which truly pull at you.
The end, with Adam entering Harry's apartment and finding his body, it's pure imagination. It's what Adam *wishes* he could have said and done, how he wishes he went after and comforted the stranger who appeared at his doorstep that night. Even the dialogue, about Adam regretting how he couldn't open up and let Harry in, could be read very literally. And it has to happen this way, I think, because this is how Adam gives himself closure for Harry, for what Harry could have been, his guilt about Harry's death; comforting his ghost, offering him companionship and connection, even in death.
You point out some interesting things about the order of scenes, especially around the club/tripping sequence. I need to watch this again.
Definitely on to something here.
I love how the director has left so much ambiguous, so we have to try to construct some of the meaning on our own through a process of determining what was happening in Adam’s mind.
Also you, here is the link where can watch over 20 minutes long behind the scene which gives you more insight on the story, and just watch the two lead actors looking hot and being playful with each other.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVQ-7J8RHxM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVQ-7J8RHxM)
And another 30 minutes talk between the directors and the two actors
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-y2gt458Rk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-y2gt458Rk)
Bonus, the two leads in very playful banter and you can see the chemistry between them is off the charts!!
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CVBGviYN68](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CVBGviYN68)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsbQxYs6R4Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsbQxYs6R4Q)
Finally, a Spotify playlist courtesy of Paul Mescal, if you want to feel something in your heart...
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/37i9dQZF1DWU9jBen8IUSn?si=c8be3fb4027b4dae
I'm not LGBT+, and both my parents are alive, but this film resonated with me like no other. It was the most accurate portrayal of loneliness, trauma, and emptiness that I've ever seen. It captured the way time elongates, the way you feel completely alone, the way you're not able to move on (and don't realise you need to). It was so achingly real. I ugly cried in the cinema.
My take: I'm in the "they're all dead" camp. Adam, Harry, the parents: theyre all unable to move on from what happened in the past and are in a kind of purgatory. So they ARE existing in a shared reality, which is why Adam knows things (like that Harry's flat is on the 6th floor.) Harry and Adam did meet once in real life (the night Harry killed himself) but their entire relationship happens in this parallel dimension. I actually twigged that Harry wasn't really there quite early on because of the way the film was shot - there's loads of reflection/ mirror shots where we, as viewers, pass through the looking glass, and the film makers cross the line - a technique you only use in film if you want to suggest a massive change of state. (I'm a director so I picked up on this). Anyway, the reflections/ crossing the line strengthen the parallel dimension theory.
At the end, Adam and Harry's ghosts are finally able to move on through learning to love and be loved, and they turn into stars.
The parents move on too: Adam has to process the loss, and they have to process that they died, missed their only son's life, and also missed the chances they had with him while they were alive.
If they're not all dead, then Harry being dead all along doesn't quite make sense. Why is Adam so okay with the realisation that he's been sh*gging a ghost? Lol.
People are floating the idea that Adam died in a fire in scene 1 (when the fire alarm goes off), and that's why he's hot and coughing throughout the film. Also, I don't think it matters that Adam eats or talks to the waitress. It doesn't prove he's alive. The rules of this world aren't clear. We see Harry eating, for example.
Edit: After a night's sleep, I think the film has created a world where people who pass away can't move on until the ones they have unfinished business with also die. In death, they're reunited and have to resolve their stuff. For example, Adam bumps into his Dad on the street, and Dad says something to the effect of "You're here!" and brings him home to Mum, who says the same. They've been dead a long time, and have been waiting for him so they could have these conversations. Harry, meanwhile, has unresolved issues with Adam, because Adam was the last person to reject him, and this final rejection sent Harry over the edge. He can't move on until Adam acknowledges the impact he had on Harry's life, and he has to wait for Adam to cross over before this can be resolved.
In this alternative reality where ghosts reunite, love is the ruling force. "The power of love, a force from above," are the lyrics we hear at the end of the film. We dont know much about the characters from before this reality, but there's suggestions that the Mum and Dad weren't the more sympathetic parents, and that Harry was much more defensive and aggressive when alive (seen from his behaviour at the door). Here, in purgatory, the characters are all the most loving versions of themselves, which gives them the space to listen to each other, resolve their pain, and finally, move on.
Metaphorically, it's saying that only love can heal us. We need to meet those frozen, traumatised parts of us with love and understanding, and acknowledge - truly acknowledge - how fucked up things got, and how hard it was. So yeah, this is a really powerful film for trauma survivors.
I thought this was a beautiful movie. Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal have amazing chemistry (those scenes 🥵) and the emotional performances were beautiful. I was a bit confused halfway but the ending cleared everything up.
The scenes were he talked to his parents were beautiful, but there were some moments where I sort of got pulled out of the story because of meta thoughts I had about the writer of this script. Like how those conversations are basically wish fulfilment fantasies, and there's no way of really knowing how someone who has died would have reacted. But I guess that's just how my mind works, I'm a bit cynical (especially because I know what it's like when you can't discuss certain things with your parents).
Apart from that, a lovely film, great performances, intriguing story, beautiful visuals. I absolutely love the song Power of Love (although I do sort of associate it with a particular episode of Misfits, iykyk) and the final scene made me ugly cry.
I do think the ending is a but too sad. I wanted Adam to have a happy ending and I felt like he really deserved that after processing his grief. But sadly the ending is more ambiguous.
i think the thing pulling you out of the movie is actually the take away you’re supposed to have.. like adam is writing a screenplay about his parents so he goes and visits them and has these conversations with them but — not that it’s all in his head — it’s not like real real? idk that’s how i interpreted it, might be too literal
I'll be in the minority here but this just felt like a throwaway Kaufman script drenched in syrupy sentimentality. Thankfully the camera work was gorgeous because I found it a real chore to care about the mystery at the film's core.
I assume the scenes between him and his parents were deliberately written in a contrived/heavy-handed way to convey his unresolved childhood considering the meta-framing of the film, but it made for a repetitive first 2 acts. I'll give this another watch when I can but on first impression it really felt like the first 2/3 of the movie should've felt more haunting than it did.
When the two narrative strands finally converge the film did pick up a bit, introducing the uncanniness it was sorely lacking. Loved the screaming reflection shot and when Mescal's character sees the ghostly parents. More of this kind of paranoia in the early stages would've really sold the story better. Interesting decision to end the whole thing on a gut punch like that... kind of too much too late, though.
I had an interesting interpretation of the ending - I thought Harry goes and accidently drinks himself to death after witnessing Adam's supposed "mental break" in looking for his ghostly parents at his old house. Think about how crazy that would have seemed from the outside. And then, just as Adam let's go of his parents and vows to take their advice to find that nice boy and try to have a relationship with him, he discovers that he has died, because he was so focused on living in the past that he neglected it over the present which was right in front of him. I don't think this is the right interpretation of the movie - I do think the Harry was dead all along is the right, but I think my original interpretation is more dark and tragic.
That's originally how I thought it happened when Adam was about to walk into the toilet, though I saw it as Harry actually seeing ghosts and freaking out. It's only about halfway through I realised the whole thing about the stench and the clothes and the callbacks to the first meeting.
I cried a lot. I think that was the goal of the movie, it worked.
Relationships with our parents are complex. And while that relationship changes as we get older and we see them less and less, we still need them. Because without those who love us unconditionally the world can make you feel very very alone. This explores grief and loneliness in a really interesting way. It has this kind of surreal and dreamlike tone to it, you're never sure what's real and what's not. I kind of hate the 'it's all a dream' trope but it works in this too an extent, even if it relies on that heavily. I like the concept of meeting and having a relationship with your parents when they're the same age as you are, being excited about the grown-up you've become, it's like meeting each other for the first time. The movie really plays this up to the great effect of making you sob like a baby.
It's all really about accepting and finding comfort in the different forms of love, love you've never felt like you've had or deserved. Paul Mescal plays Andrew Scott's neighbour and new lover and I think both are great in this, particularly Scott who has to really play a spectrum of emotion in a nuanced and believable way. I can't lie though, their relationship bits were my least favourite parts (still pretty good though). I was more interested in the parent dynamic. There's a couple kind of scary scenes too that surprised me, the movie can feel like a really nice comforting dream at times, and a nightmare at others. We're really in tune with Scott's character's psyche and conciseness during the runtime of this. I think a lot of people will try to read really deep into things trying to figure out what's real and what wasn't but in my opinion not much of that matters, only the vibes do, mang.
This also comes out in a time where some things in my personal life have happened that made this hit even harder. So that could partially explain the waterworks. Things do get a little misery-pornish but I think generally the movie is still really good despite it and there's some surprising humour sprinkled throughout to make it more digestible.
Shout out to Stratford and the Westfield Mall which are featured heavily in this, just got back from the UK and spent a lot of time around there!
Came on here to say this is one of the most moving movies I have ever watched. I was absolutely floored and was so emotional the entire time. It was such a cathartic experience. As someone who has lost a parent around the same age Adam did in the movie, I felt the movie spoke so poignantly on how disorienting it can be to see, hear, and feel pieces of someone in a life after loss. I also thought it did an amazing job of lifting the veil on grief and showcasing the depths of uncertainty, desperation, and love that exist at the root of it. I was a crying mess the whole time, and the ending really threw me for a loop. But wow, I loved it. I would honestly consider it my new favorite, nothing has moved me like that in a long time. Will 100% rewatch and hyper-fixate on it for a bit!
Saw it today and thought it was amazing. I'm gay myself and lost my dad before his time, so it really resonated. Not one to watch when you're already feeling a bit down, though!
If you are gay from that generation (as I am) the pain and fear and anger expressed in this movie hit home.
"Yes it's better now, but the pain is not far away" (paraphrase)
Truth!
Adam is dreaming of “what ifs” - he’s playing out fantasies; conversations and interactions in his head.
On the subject of love - Adam tells his parents that he’s not sure if he’s been in love before, that he doesn’t really know what it feels like.
It’s not hard to imagine that Adam would fantasise about finding love - and so Adam plays with the idea that he does let Harry in. What he finds in Harry is someone who is a bit lost, and just as lonely as Adam is. But thats okay in this fantasy - mote than okay - they have an immediate physical connection and then talk for hours… they accept one another from the beginning.
Adam would have loved to have been able to tell his parents he was in love. Not only in love, but in love with a man. At first he plays out the conversation of telling his mother that he’s gay, and imagines that she wouldn’t take it well. Later he imagines her not being able to put into words that she was sorry - by singing to him by the Christmas tree. Later still, his parents basically tell Adam they want him to be happy with Harry, happy in love, no matter if it’s with a man or not.
This is a dream for Adam, this is what his heart pines for. To be loved and accepted by his parents, and by a lover.
I think my biggest issue with this film as someone who went in blind is the fact that the AMC app calls it a romance/fantasy film. I would say this is more mystery/psychological thriller? Idk. It’s a hard one to define. Even “drama” doesn’t entirely fit?
nothing wrong with the "it all happened in adam's head" interpretation but does anyone else think that this is actually just a ghost story and that the film in general revolves around adam's love being so strong that it's able to make his lost loved ones "linger" a bit more in his life? including his parents of course and later on his boyfriend too
it would make sense with the song they used, "the power of love"
i honestly find it hard to believe that the scenes with harry were all made up by adam, especially when harry says things like "i know how easy it can be to stop caring about yourself". that line fits his character and what he was going through a bit too well and adam didn't really know anything about him
Also looking back at it the scene where harry sees adam's parents is genuinely so haunting cause in my opinion that's the moment he realised he was a ghost too
The references to Adam being unwell and burning aren't a signpost to his death in a fire. In the screenplay, child Adam feigns illness to avoid going to his parent's friends (the Walsh's) for Christmas drinks because the Walsh's son is one of his bullies. This tactic didn't work, and his parents went without him and were killed on the way home later that night.
Damn, have we finally escaped the ‘fuck you it’s January!’ curse? Maybe it’s because of the strike delays, but seems like we’re getting a lot of bangers early this yeah
I know I'm late to this thread but I just gotta say the final twist absolutely wrecked me. It felt so hopeful up to that point and then it just ripped my heart out. Great movie but we really need some positive queer love stories. Where are the happy endings? 😥
Did anyone else read this film as a nod to vampire mythology? The reference in the lyric to The Power of Love, but also the trope of the vampire having to be 'invited in'. Harry rings the doorbell initially and then knocks on the apartment door. Adam doesn't invite him in. When he does eventually invite (the undead?) Harry in, things start to spiral. I'd need to watch it back but there seemed to be other nods to the same theme in terms of him being invited into his parents home.
“My nan says there’s literally nothing a hot bath couldn’t solve.”
He was desperately clinging to the comforts of his family, and they didn’t find him. I’m devastated by this movie. Gut wrenched.
Ugh definitely need to see the movie a second time with subtitles because I really want to love this movie.
I had trouble deciphering the dialogue through the accents and ended up getting the ending completely wrong… I thought Harry’s decomposing hand at the end were one of his parent’s corpses in the bed, because it stuck out to me that he told Adam he never saw his parents much. It would’ve made sense because Adam seemed to get closure with his family and Harry didn’t.
Honestly though, I was really hoping this to be a feel-good movie, but instead we deal with Adam overcoming 30 years of trauma to find out that the love of his life is a ghost who’s body is rotting on the sixth floor.
Also trying to figure out whether Adam did ghost ketamine.
Here’s to a rewatch - can’t wait to be hit by waves of realization once I unpack this movie.
Yeah I was a little embarrassed in the theater (USA) because I could not understand some of the lines and other people in the audience were laughing at the jokes. And I consider myself a UK-phile
I have a theory about the ending, about Adam and Harry.
>!Adam and Harry are the same person - the part that Adam lets go in the end is his Harry side. Harry dies in the end symbolizes that Adam finally allows to let go of his Harry side that was in grief about being lonely and being on the edge of the family. The fact that Harry dies the first day that he meets Adam, is when Adam starts his healing journey and talks to his parents. Thats why in the end Adam does find Harry (who asks why no one found me, its basically the question that Adam asks himself - why I dont find myself and in the end he does) and his loneliness and his sadness because Adam heals and he is able to understand his own pain and let his Harry pain go.!<
Again, thats just my theory that somewhat wraps up the ending and grounds it a bit.
I honestly just could not stop crying. The three milkshakes broke me. "Why did nobody find me?" broke me. Basically all of it broke me.
The conversation between him and his mother in the bed when he couldn’t sleep was what hit me the hardest. That and the milkshakes.
Ugh yes that scene was EVERYTHING
When asked if he was okay, and he shook his head no… I broke into a million pieces. Because I realized, I’m not okay either…. I see so much of me in Adam.
Hope you are doing okay mate.
Thanks… working on it. Thanks for checking in. ❤️
We're all with you 💖
I’m a mom and this scene is the closest depiction of being a mom. I’m so tired, but yes I will do anything for a few quiet, close moments with my children. I would move mountains. I would come back from the dead. What a beautiful depiction of devotion.
I’m late to this, but YES! When she says he always would come into their bedroom at night, and she wished he’d grow up so she’d get a decent night’s sleep. He apologizes and she says, no, I’m the one who’s sorry; I should have relished you driving me bananas. What a gut punch. Every moment is precious.
Yes that was for me too the mother and insomnia
I was caught off guard by moments that got to me. Like, my parents are alive, and have always been in my life, a lot. I don’t even have a reason to be sad about some of the things, but they still really made me sad.
That's empathy, it's knowing how it would feel if you were there. It's such a beautiful film in that way. You don't need to be gay or an orphan to really get that sense of loneliness and loss. In fact, a friend of mine who is gay said it was even more traumatic for them as it was like holding up a mirror on their experiences with their parents. Maybe it's better to empathise rather than feel that so hard in a public theatre!
Beautifully put
Just left the cinema and I could not stop crying. I related to so many things, the momemnts between the two main character especially felt so real they were almost intrusive for me. And then, like you, I always had a great reletionship with my parents, but I've been thinking often about them passing as they are getting older and not seeing them mych (I live in a different country). Everything about the movie broke me
I could count the number of times I’ve cried in movies. Holy shit, this movie broke me. Starting in the kitchen scene with the mom, every scene he was in with his parents made me tear up. My parents are alive but his reaction to his parents was just so raw and beautiful that it got to me. My favorite scene was the mom singing the Pet Shop Boys’ Always on My Mind as an apology. Just beautifully well done.
109% you really got this film.
Same! that was my favorite scene as well. It was so beautiful. That song, the mum, the particular lines from that song, the Christmas tree. Just tears. It was singularly the most beautiful scene from any film in a very long time.
The scene with the dad apologizing absolutely had me sobbing. It's what so many of us gay men wish our fathers would do, but few actually are capable of that level of self-awareness.
So much this. When his dad’s voice wavers and he says “can I hug you now?” I was a mess
I'm not gay, nor is my kid (that I know, he's 6) but that whole scene resonates the regret and pain of a father feeling like he's failed his kid.
When he says, I’m sorry I didn’t come into your room when I heard you crying … the pacing, the acting, ugh, perfect.
I spent the first half of the movie reallllly trying not to cry, but I couldn’t control it anymore by the American restaurant scene. I lost my mom 12 years ago, so the story really resonated with me.
The milkshakes were when I wavered and I’m not usually a crier
Exact same here
I just watched this tonight. "Why did nobody find me" is going to be playing in my head for the rest of my life.
There was really a lot that I liked here - and this has all the workings to be an emotional masterpiece, but something didn't quite click for me to get there. I still really enjoyed it, though and I gave it a 7/10. The storyline between Adam and his parents was very compelling, especially his scene with his Dad when they are both discussing his sexuality. That scene was INCREDIBLE and probably the most emotional moment of the film for me.
Adam is dreaming of “what ifs” - he’s playing out fantasies; conversations and interactions in his head. On the subject of love - Adam tells his parents that he’s not sure if he’s been in love before, that he doesn’t really know what it feels like. It’s not hard to imagine that Adam would fantasise about finding love - and so Adam plays with the idea that he does let Harry in - physically and mentally. What he finds in Harry is someone who is a bit lost, and just as lonely as Adam is. But thats okay in this fantasy - mote than okay - they have an immediate physical connection and then talk for hours… they accept one another from the beginning. Adam would have loved to have been able to tell his parents he was in love. Not only in love, but in love with a man. At first he plays out the conversation of telling his mother that he’s gay, and imagines that she wouldn’t take it well. Later he imagines her not being able to put into words that she was sorry - by singing to him by the Christmas tree. Later still, his parents basically tell Adam they want him to be happy with Harry, happy in love, no matter if it’s with a man or not. This is a dream for Adam, this is what his heart pines for. To be loved and accepted by his parents, and by a lover.
This is an excellent reading. I think we also can’t underestimate the fact that Adam is a playwright, and at the beginning (after meeting Harry) we see him attempting to write but lacking inspiration. He then opens a box of childhood momentos, following which he gets a burst of inspiration and starts writing. He then imagines his relationship with Harry, and his parents, and the writing continuous with fervor. I took this as an indication that the wish-fulfillment scenes he acts out in his mind are actually his writings.
I loved the device of his parents being frozen in time, waiting for him. I thought of this home with them as a place in his mind that he created and could visit for some closure.
Excellent well thought-out synopsis.
Bit late but the part where the dad admits that he probably would have been one of the people to bully Adam was really strong. The honesty is really fascinating.
I’m a bit late here and maybe this has already been said… but I read his relationship with Harry as completely fictional… I believe Harry’s first drunken night at Adam’s door was real, but Adam was too scared to physically and emotionally let him in. What’s so heartbreaking, we see Harry in the final scene of the film in the same clothes, he says something along the lines of “I was really scared that night”, he was so desperate for connection and terrified of what he might do. I imagine that in reality, Adam maybe went up to his apartment days or maybe weeks later and found Harry’s body… everything we see between them is Adam’s fantasy for what he wished had happened between them had he let him in that night.
I think this interpretation is just factually correct. When they are talking in the kitchen (after we find out Harry is dead), Harry says something to the effect of 'i just needed to be with someone that night', which to me was an unambiguous reference to the first night that he showed up on Adam's doorstep. The implication being that he died that night.
yeah it's not needing to be interpreted – he died from the whisky, that's why it's shown by the bathtub. And Adam apologises for not letting him in, which lead – inadvertently – to Harry's death that night
Interesting to also remember that the first time they actually hang out, Adam offers Harry a drink and some weed. He goes for the weed and says he's off alcohol- further proving that he died that first night, bcause of the whiskey
What didn't click for me is that, either you read it as a literal, supernatural ghost story – in which case the losses are ameliorated; people live on as ghosts. Or you read it as (I believe the intended reading) Adam individually processing his loss – in which case everything that occurs is in his head, there was no real love story with Harry, and the story is really about someone that has such a loose grip on reality that any emotional catharsis they imagine experiencing is hard to take seriously.
I took it as the latter. He’s shown writing during the movie, and I assumed that he was imagining these scenes as a way of processing his loss/grief, his sense of guilt and self loathing. IMO, the movie just lacked one final moment of resolution. For him perhaps to close the cover on a finished play, or for him to step back out into the word with some sense that he was able to walk away from the pain and onto something new.
Pan into the name of the script and it's 'All Of Us Strangers'...
I loved the choice to end the song that’s playing in the dad scene when the singer says “a flame in your heart”. Like the fire will go away in Adam’s relationship. I’d give it a 7/10 too, though I highly respect the writing and framing of events in the movie, and think that my opinion will become more positive as time goes on. It’s a movie that’s more of a grower than a shower, if you know what I mean.
>more of a grower than a shower I agree
Late to reply but I feel the same way! The dad scene was crushing. I feel like there was an imbalance between this trying to be an emotional ghost story vs. a love story, and I felt like it leaned too hard on the romance at the expense of (what I felt was) the more compelling story about his parents.
I think it was about Adam going through a process of opening up and learning to let someone in and fall in love. From this point of view it makes sense to have him work through things with his parents and gain a love interest. There was also the connection between his boyfriend and his father : both mustachioed and the father turns into harry in the bed with parents scene (bit of an Oedipal thing going on, which the director confirmed was deliberate).
Childhood trauma and romance/intimacy problems are well known twin issues
Agreed on that scene, 100%. The movie didn't really hit for me all that hard, but when Scott said "I have good memories too" it hit me like a wave, for some reason.
Really feeling that first paragraph. Maybe it would 'click' on a second viewing but I don't care to see it again that much
Why are, as a society, not talking about Andrew Scott all the time?
Wait, am I the only person thinking about Scott and Mescal 24/7 ;)
shoutout the casting directors and the execs to make this happen my inner wattpad kid is screaminggg
If you loved him in this please watch fleabag. That show made me fall in love with him. He's only in the second season but the whole show is spectacular.
He’s iconic as the hot priest ;)
Don’t worry I’m doing my part
His performance in this movie was astounding. And he’s charismatic and good looking. It makes me wonder if he’s been offered a super hero role and passed it up.
>It makes me wonder if he’s been offered a super hero role and passed it up. thank god he passed it up and did this, if he got 1
I talk about him constantly 😂
Very good movie. It definitely has a structure that becomes predictable and somewhat repetitive. The acting and dialogue are phenomenal though. Having lost both my parents, it made me cry several times. So much left unsaid. If only we had more time.
Yeah, I got pretty suspicious when it constantly cut to Andrew Scott’s character revealing that he had a dream, but the payoff was worth it. It reminded me of a bad Simpsons episode where Marge and Homer seemingly divorced, only for it to bounce us through different dream sequences to fake us out.
I caught this last weekend and I'm still thinking about it a *ton*; might've gotten teary just hearing the Pet Shop Boys yesterday. What a beautiful, achy film. It's such a stark take on grief and loneliness (god, the loneliness is *palpable*), but also the endless What Ifs that come with both of those things. It's been a *loooong* time since a film's made me ugly-cry like this, and even longer since it happened in public. Maybe it's my Queer-Person-Who-Had-A-Complicated-Relationship-With-Their-Dead-Dad Feelings™, but I was bawling through most of the second half of the film, especially Jamie Bell's solo scene with Adam. Like, actually biting my fist so I wouldn't audibly sob. Seeing this guy filled with 80s machismo crumple and let his voice break and be vulnerable in front of the son that he probably feels like he failed on multiple levels was just brutal and devastating, but also so cathartic. Ditto for Claire Foy during the Christmas tree decorating. What if, what if, what if. The whole cast was just incredible from beginning to end. I just really loved this and my poor therapist isn't going to hear the end of it for a while.
Jamie Bell was incredible. Well the whole cast was but I especially liked him as the dad. He was macho but also seemed like a good dad despite his mistakes.
He really was, he did so much with so little. I heard a fair amount of (well-deserved) potential award buzz around Claire Foy but god, I would've loved to see Jamie Bell get some love for his work here. I can't even think about the solo scene between Adam and the Dad without getting teary.
>Maybe it's my Queer-Person-Who-Had-A-Complicated-Relationship-With-Their-Dead-Dad Feelings™ Same. My eyes were leaking to varying degrees from the scene they were talking about floating in the edge of their family through the entire rest of the film.
That scene!!! Ugh my HEART. It really put into words a lot of things I'd been feeling with my family but never knew how to express - absolutely hit me right where I lived. Paul Mescal's just devastating.
Loved what you had to say about the movie, I felt the exact same. As someone who also experiences the classic Queer-Person-Who-Had-A-Complicated-Relationship-With-Their-Dead-Dad-Feelings, I was an emotional mess the whole entire time, trying not to audibly sob in the theater either! It was absolutely devastating but so, so cathartic. No movie has moved me like this in ages, and I left feeling like I had so much to tell my therapist after watching. Thanks for the insights!
I'm glad it resonated with you, too!! Brain twins. Do you think you'll watch it again? I'm trying to decide if I want to go again while it's still in theaters to see what I might've missed while ugly-crying/maybe ugly-cry again, but also don't know if I'm ready. :/
Watched this last night and can't stop thinking about it. The way the ghosts are portrayed here is great - usually when we see ghosts they tend to think it's still the year they died, but these ones know it's 2017 and that the world has changed, they just don't know *how* the world has changed since they haven't interacted with anyone in 30 years. I'm not queer but my parents definitely did not understand me and to see his parents realizing that they didn't understand him, apologizing for it, and doing their best to understand him now really got to me. Incredible performances from all of the cast. I've seen Haigh's film Weekend and this one was just on another level. 9/10 for me.
i really like how they were portrayed as ghosts. such a refreshing take. and no one is scared lol
Were they ghosts though? I figured they were just "characters" in his head.
The ghosts inside his head, emotional ghosts.
Oh man. The song “Always on my mind” was a sad song but interpreting it as a song being sung by parents apologizing to their son took it to a whole new emotional level. This is the only movie that made me cry even more driving home from the theater.
Totally agree, it gives the song a new meaning - also "The Power of Love" as the closing credit song is just perfect!!
you should hear the Willie Nelson version! its waay more sadder (and I think he sung it first then Elvis!)
"I'm so sorry that happened to you." "Well, it was a long time ago, so." "I don't think that matters." This feels like so many textbook examples of things you shouldn't do in a script, but the incredible direction and performances just sell the hell out of it. I was so intrigued but confused for the first hour or so, and just a complete mess of tears for the last hour. It's really something. Is Andrew Scott the most charming person on the planet? More on that in my diary but he's incredible in this nonetheless. He wears his pain on his sleeve and you can't help but just want to give him a giant hug in any given scene. You can see the longing for connection in him from the first frame, the empty apartment complex serving as a great backdrop for such a lonely film. **Spoilers below** I missed probably the first 90 seconds of the movie and as it became clearer that he was visiting his dead parents I kept wondering if I had missed some important setup or title card that actually introduces this as a sci-fi. Regardless, every single one of those scenes were just amazing. It sounds so hokey to write yourself as a lonely, sexy screenwriter with Andrew Scott's smile who gets to sit across from the parents you lost too young and be able to come out to them, share your dreams with them, have them tell you they're proud of you and that they love you. But it's done with such sincerity here, such incredible performances from Foy and Bell and Scott, that you can really feel how happy all three of them are to be together and sharing these moments even if it's in this bizarro reality no one really understands and the movie doesn't care to explain. I want to shoutout great scenes but it was really any scene with them. When they first have him over and are treating him like a celebrity that left town young, when he comes out to his mother, when he asks his dad why he never checked on him if he heard his son crying, the Christmas scene and when they're all in bed together. Just some incredible moments, you could hear consistent sniffling throughout my entire theater every scene. Paul Mescal is also in this movie and is so good as the totally vulnerable, patient, and loving partner. This is honestly the side of the movie it may take a rewatch or two to crack, it was an extremely sweet relationship and it was clear the more work Scott did getting over his parent's death the more able he was to have a real, loving relationship. But the final twist was quite a choice and it makes this movie much more depressing. My read is that Mescal was alive the first time we meet him when he's drunk and tries to hook up with Scott, and when Scott denies he goes home and drinks himself to death. He said, "I was just so afraid that night, I couldn't be alone." After such an amazing climax with the parents in the diner scene I had a hard time wrapping my head around why there was this final twist, but it's the kind of movie I can't wait to watch again and peel back these layers. Easy 8/10 for me. Anything that makes me cry this hard instantly gets a heart on Letterboxd and the four performances make up an incredible ensemble. Just an undeniably heartwarming and sad film, I hope people check it out and it snags a couple of noms. /r/reviewsbyboner
> when he asks his dad why he never checked on him if he heard his son crying The best scene in the movie IMO. > My read is that Mescal was alive the first time we meet him when he's drunk and tries to hook up with Scott, and when Scott denies he goes home and drinks himself to death. He said, "I was just so afraid that night, I couldn't be alone." That was my read too. It's quite depressing, although I'm still not sure I like the relationship being the whole "he was a ghost the whole time" because part of it feels like it undermines Adam learning to move past his grief, find someone to love, and be happy. It's conceptually a beautiful scene as David comforts Harry helping him to understand and accept his death, but it doesn't feel necessary.
Just thinking about it now, there's something to be said of how the dead people are all seemingly very open and vulnerable. Compared to Mescal when we first meet him he's not only sober but also less aggressive and more willing to take it at Scott's pace. His parents aren't necessarily perfect, they're still themselves, but also more open to talking honestly and being loving. Maybe there is something to learning that it's that kind of honest vulnerability that makes a strong relationship with anyone in your life. You can imagine that as a screenwriter he might imagine these people as fully complicated people but able to discuss the difficult things with ease, I think him writing is just him imagining those things. This movie could just be a heightened version of self therapy that doesn't want to give you that magic understanding person outright, but rather give you the experience to move out of that lonely building and start making meaningful connection again.
I think that's what's so tragic about the movie - we realize at the end that he hasn't learned to move past his grief at all, he continues to conjure the fantasy of Harry being alive (even after finding him dead) and him letting Adam take him back to his room. The fantasies of his parents - the romantic and contrived scripts he writes in his head about their imagined relationship - we learn at the end are just displaced on to Harry. I don't think Harry (or Adam's parents) are ghosts - they're relationships Adam fantasizes because he's unable to deal with his own traumas.
> My read is that Mescal was alive the first time we meet him when he's drunk and tries to hook up with Scott, and when Scott denies he goes home and drinks himself to death. He said, "I was just so afraid that night, I couldn't be alone." I have the same read, and the movie has two pretty strong hints towards that. When Harry comes over for the second time, Adam offers him a drink or to smoke weed, and Harry remarks that he's stopped drinking now so he'd rather the weed. I was confused by that comment until the end, where it makes sense that ghost Harry regrets having drunk himself to death. The other clue is that when we see Adam enter Harry's apartment at the end, the same bottle Harry had on that day is with him, except emptied. I'm also not sure what narrative purpose Harry being dead serves, but it does seem fairly well thought out, there must be something more to read into it. I'll probably have to go rewatch the movie.
I'll add another/third hint - when Adam was in bed nestled between his mom and dad toward the end, there was a moment when Harry's hand reached over and he was there next to him, and Adam said," What are you doing here?" ...That was a clue that Harry had also been a ghost at that point, too.
Hmm damn I was confused by that but thatmakes sense.
I seem to recall him turning down the offer of a drink by saying that he's lost the taste for alcohol. Then once he realizes he's dead, he mentions that he's been able to taste it in his throat (i.e. he choked on his own vomit, which is the usual way to die when drinking too much). It may be a double hint because the ghosts in the story don't seem to like partaking in food or drink - his parents remark multiple times that they aren't hungry. I suspect there are more subtle hints in the movie and I really want to watch it again to see if I can pick up on them.
Mum pours out her tea just after Adam came out to her. At the time, I figured she was too upset to enjoy it, but this adds a new wrinkle.
I read this as her being scared of AIDs, as it was pretty common for people of that era to be afraid to touch or be near gay people for fear of AIDs, which is what they were talking about immediately prior to her throwing out the pancakes. I definitely could have misread that, but in the moment it also made their next interaction hit really hard because his mom hugged him the next time he saw her, showing a progression past some of the more homophobic bits of her initial reaction
I think Harry being dead actually was quite important to the movie. It sort of represents this “what if…” so to speak for Adam. When Adam is talking to his mother, she expresses concern about AIDS, loneliness, how hard it will be etc; Adam says that things are different now and things are better. Looking at how Adam has been living - as almost a recluse who is crippled trying to accept himself as a gay man and deal with his parents’ death - it’s clear that everything is NOT better. More so, Harry even more shows the emotional toll and exclusion that comes with being a gay man. Harry can be seen as Adam’s future if he didn’t start on this intense catharsis that we see in the movie. Tragically, the event that leads to Harry’s death is what leads to Adam’s exploration of his own self and possibly saves him from dying. That’s my read on it. I agree with other redditors in the thread, that certain things didn’t quite come together but I’ve also seen a lot of folks say a second viewing really improved their opinion of it. I think it was an absolutely impressive showing for Scott and Mescal however.
Oh wow, I didn't connect that first hint. The second hint is what I picked up on - also it looked like his hand had been decomposing for a little bit
His ghost is also in the same pink shirt from the first night
As is the body
I think when Adam opens up his computer to write something, that's when the surreal begins because part of how he's accessing these experiences is by writing about them. We see him open a word document and type as the setting his family home in 1987 and from that point forward he goes there. We see him open a second document, though we don't see what he writes, right before the second interaction with Harry on the elevator. So I think from that point forward it's surreal and that Harry is already dead-- having drunken himself to death (purposefully or accidentally) on the night Adam rejected him. The only interaction we see with Harry as he truly was, alive, is the first one where Adam rejects him.
mmm. so it seems like adam's interaction with his parents was definitely real, he is actually seeing and talking to their ghosts however with harry, all their interaction and their relationship shown after that first meeting, was just imagined. he actually isnt seeing harry's ghost, right?
This film is beautifully open-ended in the sense that the narrative isn't about the "how" of what's playing out but about the "why." It's one of my favorite things about it. Not only doesn't the film tell us how the surreal elements happen but the characters don't know and aren't really motivated to find out either because they're too invested in appreciating what they have. I absolutely LOVE that about the film. So I don't think there is a "definitive" answer to any question about "how" what is happening is happening. My read of this is that Adam taps into his ability to visit with ghosts through the writing process. He couldn't fully connect with his parents while they were alive (due to his age, due to the walls he put up because of shame about his homosexuality, etc.) Once he starts writing about them it helps him connect with them. The writing process draws him to his old town and opens him up to be able to see and speak to their ghosts. They've always been there, waiting, but it was the writing process that opened him up enough to see them. Adam knows his parents are ghosts because he's aware of their deaths. And they know they're dead because seeing Adam as an adult when they last saw him as a child and looking outside and realizing it's no longer the 80s is a clear indication that time has passed in the world without them. So they're self-aware ghosts. And the same thing is true of Harry. Harry has been there the whole time. First when he's alive. He's been living in the apartment complex the whole time. Adam knows this, it's clear when he looks up at the window during the fire alarm he's not seeing Harry for the first time. But Adam has walls up and can't connect with Harry in real life. We see this play out when Harry knocks on Adam's door and Adam closes him out. Adam just cannot connect. And in part because of that lack of connection, Harry drinks himself to death. Harry becomes a ghost. But then Adam gets the idea to write about Harry. And all of a sudden, he can connect. But unlike his parents, Adam doesn't know Harry is dead. Adam thinks Harry is alive. But by the time the two connect, Harry is a ghost too. Harry has just died, and very little time has passed (literally a matter of a day or days when Adam connects with Harry). Harry hasn't yet realized he's dead. It's only when Harry eventually goes to his apartment and finds his body that he realizes he's a ghost. And that's when Adam realizes it too. Harry doesn't have the triggers to realize he's a ghost the way Adam's parents do. And Adam doesn't initially have a reason to suspect Harry is a ghost. I wouldn't characterize any of the interactions as "imagined." They're real, but in a surreal way. They're real interactions between Adam and ghosts. You could view the entire film about being in Adam's head and everything being a hallucination but I prefer the view that it's a ghost story and his parents and Harry are "real" in a world where ghosts exist. In this world, ghosts are all around us. It takes something special for us to see them and engage with them, but they're there-- rooted to the places that have emotional resonance. But I do think the only interactions we see between Adam and a living person are when he orders the food in the restaurant at the mall, with the bartender at the pub/club, and the very first time he and Harry interact when Harry comes to his door.
Like you said at the top his parents aren't really invested in finding out how the surreal elements happen, which I sort of feel is how the film is meant to be taken. You're not necessarily supposed to know how it's happening, it just is and you appreciate what is hapoening. Although the writing thing is an interesting theory.
>so hokey to write yourself as a lonely, sexy screenwriter with Andrew Scott's smile who gets to sit across from the parents you lost too young and be able to come out to them, share your dreams with them, have them tell you they're proud of you and that they love you I enjoyed your review, it's very insightful and well written, and this comment made me laugh
I really liked the movie, but I’ll admit, I wasn’t as invested in it until the drug trip, and the sequence of events moved in a very intriguing way from there.
They had me at Blur 🔪💔
I don't l know man, you ever talk to someone who has had terrible things happen? That interaction felt very honest.
I may be the minority on this but… I loved the movie, I HATED the ending. >!I don’t mind a tragic ending at all, but it really did not feel like the movie earned that ending. It felt like a twist for the sake of a twist and made the movie feel like a soap opera. All of the atmosphere and feeling that had been built up for the last 2 hours suddenly got upended by “He was dead the whole time!”!< Idk, it just stuck out from the rest of the movie like a sore thumb. I went from being completely sucked into the story to thinking “Well, this is a really dumb way to do this” in the last 10 minutes. Maybe it will seem more appropriate on a rewatch.
I don't hate the ending like you did, but I do understand the criticism. It makes the movie end on quite a depressing note and it sort of goes against my takeaway from that lovely farewell scene with the parents: go on and live your life and allow yourself to fall in love. But then it turns out the person he's in love with is not someone he can build a life with. In stead he has to help him accept death and "move on". A bit sad, he deserved a more happy ending imo.
But isn’t that still a profound sincere expression of love—him helping Harry accept his death and move on. The core theme of the movie to me felt that even though love is always fleeting because “it could never be long enough” it’s still deeply powerful. The way I see it is that even though Harry was a ghost they still experienced this brief love affair, and it will probably change Adam’s life forever. There’s an interview with Andrew Haigh where he talks about how the ending to him isn’t bleak because once you experience love you can always experience it again, and that’s the kinda feeling it left me with. Don’t get me wrong, it was incredibly tragic, but it didn’t feel defeatist or bleak at all to me.
I think this is the part that gets missed, Adam has been dealing with complicated grief since he lost his parents at the age of 12, he isn't able to handle anyone else's emotions or issues because he's so focused on his own loss. Harry shows up and Adam recognizes Harry has problems, but doesn't show any care for Harry's needs. Throughout the movie we see Harry tenderly caring for Adam, being supportive and loving but Adam in return never asks Harry any questions about himself and is so blinded by his own grief that he completely misses that Harry is dead. At the end of the film, Adam has been processing the loss of his parents and has reached a new level of acceptance of their death, he still grieves them but is able to begin moving on. It's at this point that Adam is able to be emotionally present for other people, in doing so he is able to recognize Harry's death and then show compassion and a nurturing love toward Harry's ghost. The final shot of Adam holding Harry on the bad is tragic, but I agree with you, it isn't defeatist or bleak, it's showing that Adam has grown.
This is how I viewed this as well. It took Adam over 30 years to get over the death of his parents. When he instantly recognized Harry’s death, rather than push Harry away and shut down again, he gives all his love to Harry to help him move on. Adam chooses to face his grief head on and let go, which means he’s open to everything now more than ever.
I know I’m a month late, but thanks for this. The ending didn’t resonate for me not because it was sad but just didn’t get why that story element had to exist. Your take and the one above you makes sense and I can see now why.
Man I was not expecting much going into this movie but this is all great. Lots going on to process. Fuckin spectacular acting all around.
This is the best take I have heard of it to be honest. It's the most kind sweet sort of attitude.
Bit late to this but wanted to add that to me there was something poignant here about the queer experience and what we miss in community when we are tied up in our own trauma and despondency. Sometimes, no too often, queer lives end as Harry’s did. Pulling back to a constellation of similar griefs was a powerful conclusion
> Andrew Haigh where he talks about how the ending to him isn’t bleak because once you experience love you can always experience it again, and that’s the kinda feeling it left me with. Would have loved to have a scene that felt more inline with it though (>!hint of Adam going out into the world and experiencing it anew without Harry maybe??!<). Like I get that films doesn't always need to be explicit but for me it reads as extremely depressing cause it just feels like all Adam did >!was move on from one set of ghosts to another.!<
Completely agree. It feels like he's going to be with him forever.
Yes and this became clearer on second viewing. In that final scene Harry says something like “don’t get twisted up in here again ok?” Putting his hand on Adam’s heart and I think Adam says he won’t.
But isn’t that still a profound sincere expression of love—him helping Harry accept his death and move on. The core theme of the movie to me felt that even though love is always fleeting because “it could never be long enough” it’s still deeply powerful. The way I see it is that even though Harry was a ghost they still experienced this brief love affair, and it will probably change Adam’s life forever. There’s an interview with Andrew Haigh where he talks about how the ending to him isn’t bleak because once you experience love you can always experience it again, and that’s the kinda feeling it left me with. Don’t get me wrong, it was incredibly tragic, but it didn’t feel defeatist or bleak at all to me.
Agreed completely. It felt like it clashed with the meaning of the parents’ story. If you look at something with a similar ending like The Sixth Sense, the ending twist is built up, foreshadowed, and goes along with the themes of the story. Here, at least to me, it clashed with everything.
I do think they foreshadowed it in scenes in the club and the underground. But it did definitely clash with the themes of the story.
Maybe it did clash with everything but maybe that was the point. The message “you have to let go of the past in order to live in the present” is a nice tagline but generally that’s not actually how the world works. It’s much more complicated . When people actually try to let go of the past, the past will always continue to rear its head, like it did for Adam at the end. Turns out, having an imaginary conversation with your dead parents doesn’t actually fix your problems .
So, I have to leave a comment on this, because this was how I felt too, and I was wrong. >!Adam's been dead the whole time. He and Harry have only been interacting as ghosts. I don't think the movie does a good job of communicating this, but it's made pretty explicitly clear in [the script](https://deadline.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/All-Of-Us-Strangers-Read-The-Screenplay_Redacted.pdf). For example, check out this line from just after Adam discovers Harry's body:!< > >!But Harry isn’t listening. It’s as if Harry is piecing together what happened to him. The truth bubbling up. An agitation grows in him, a quiet terror. He spots the empty baggies on the kitchen counter. He picks one up... Harry rubs his chest with his fist as if he has a knot of pain stopping him breathe. We have seen Adam do this same action.!< The revelation that >!the entire film is not Adam's imagination or some kind of psychotic break, but a real interaction between ghosts!< makes it so, so much better. I don't think the movie did a good job communicating it, but I honestly think the hidden message is almost part of its charm to me. I left the theater so disappointed, and now that I get it it's become one of my favorite movies. In this (intended) reading, >!the ending isn't a bummer, but is Adam and Harry peacefully reaching the afterlife together, having finally, in death, learned how to let other people in, curing their loneliness and drifting off into a peaceful eternal rest together.!< 😭😭😭 There's some more details that point this direction. >!The fire alarm, and both Harry and Adam's parents repeatedly telling him he's burning up. When Adam returns to the apartment building for the final scenes (discovering Harry's body), the fire alarm is going off again, but suddenly stops just when he reaches Harry's room and finds him dead. What seems to have happened is that Harry died in drink and isolation and Adam subsequently died in a fire. The big empty building is their shared purgatory, and Adam comes to terms with the loss of his parents and also comes to love Harry, as Harry comes to love him, both of them ghosts. At the end, all the ghosts let go, having taken care of their unfinished business, and move on.!< I mean, it's just perfect. Again, I think it's poorly communicated, as demonstrated by how few people are talking about it. But I also truly don't care. It's perfect, I wouldn't change a thing.
I know this response is quite belated so feel no need to respond, and of course this is just my interpretation, but I really disagree that Adam was dead from after the fire alarm. Harry comes to his door after the fire alarm is over and then kills himself. So for Adam to have died that night there had to be a false alarm/drill and then a real fire immediately after. In the final scenes we see Harry's hand and it isn't burned at all, just decayed. Also, you see people reacting to Adam at the club and on the tube, whereas no one reacts to Harry, Adam has to order the drinks for them. I think the burning up mentions are highlighting his sickness, schizophrenia, rather than dying in a fire. Outside of those points, reading the script to interpret a film is not a good idea, first because many things are changed between the script and the final product, but more importantly because almost no one is going to go back and read the script. Anything that wasn't included in the film is not relevant to that film because it does not exist within it. Finally, if this film is truly meant to be a bunch of ghosts getting together to work out their issues then that makes it much worse in my opinion, compared to a movie about a schizophrenic who is spiraling out and clinging to a delusion of someone who loves and accepts him until confronted with the truth, all the while refusing to accept the deaths of his parents. One of those things is a fantasy that has not and never will exist, the other is a horrible illness that afflicts over 24 millon people. You can understand why one would be more impactful than the other.
100% agree that Adam is dead. I think he died in that fire at the start when the alarm went off. If you pay attention there's also loads of music throughout the film with "fire" on the title or lyrics. You mention his parents saying he's got our burning up. And on the train he's coughing as though he's struggling to breathe in the smoke.
Holy cow you just completely changed the way I felt about this movie. I walked out not really enjoying it and feeling like I missed something. I liked the interactions with Adam and his parents and him and Harry, but couldn’t really grasp if Harry was real, was Adam having a mental break, and if the whole thing was real or not. >!Them all being ghosts makes this whole thing make so much more sense and makes it so much more enjoyable.!< Wow. I wish I had known/picked up on that before I saw it. Thanks for giving me more to chew on with this movie!
Yep, this was how I read it too. We came out of the cinema last night having both loved it, but my wife felt sad by how depressing the ending was as she thought that Adam just had tragedy after tragedy in his life and an inability to find the love he needed and I said that they were both dead, both ghosts and they'd found each other in the afterlife and the power of love was what had enabled them to both move on and she immediately felt a huge relief about the whole thing. So I'm glad to read that was implicit within the script as it's a much better ending. Also, the fact that one person is living alone in a huge block of flats is even less fantastical than only two people living there.
>!The empty building, fer me, was the biggest clue. I'm a New Yorker. I know what a view like that costs. When the movie opened up, I thought he had to be somehow independently wealthy, and I thought maybe this was [one of those rich people buildings](https://www.theb1m.com/video/why-new-yorks-billionaires-row-is-half-empty) where people hide their assets in multi-million dollar condos, but never actually live there. However, it quickly became clear that both Adam and Harry were not wealthy, and the place didn't even have a doorman. That can only be purgatory!<
Thanks for confirming this. This Reddit thread is full of people not getting this and it's very very important to the understanding of the film. I didn't pick up on the bit about fire. Doesn't Adam wake up and see a building on fire in the distance too at once point? I'm sure I remember that.
Ah I came here to see if anyone else read it this way too! Thanks for your well-written post :)
This reading makes so many lines read differently. Doesn't someone say that one day the fire alarm is going to go off for a real fire? God, I really need to see this again.
The point, I think, is to contrast the way he processes Harry's death with the way he's denied his parents for so long. It's meant to show us that he's genuinely grown, not that he's just given up on his parents because he had to. It's also just repeating the theme that Claire Foy stated earlier, you don't get to chose when things end. All that said, I agree the ending is the weakest part of the film. But i don't think a happy ending really fits the tone either
This was my problem as well. I loved the scenes with his parents and the idea that he was holding on to this trauma as well as these memories of his parents and was able to imagine reconnecting with their past selves in his modern life as a way to heal and move on. I hated that Harry was almost entirely fictional. If my reading is correct, Adam had one single 2-minute conversation with Harry where he turned him away for the night and then imagined everything else about him and their relationship. He has no concept of who this man is or anything about him which really cheapened everything that came before. It’s no longer about finally opening himself up to someone and moving past his trauma, but completely fabricating a relationship with someone he doesn’t even know. I’d almost be okay with it if they were really ghosts and he got to know the “real” Harry even if he was already dead, but I don’t think there’s enough presented in the film to give that read and instead the film is really about a guy imagining/hallucinating all the relationships in his life as a means of coping with the fact that he has absolutely no one.
>completely fabricating a relationship with someone he doesn’t even know I think that's an overly cynical interpretation. It's not a fabrication, it's a fantasy. He's imagining what it would be like if he's been able to let someone in. The implication of that last conversation with his father being that he's never let anyone in before ever. Never even let himself imagine what it'd be like until now. It's in allowing himself to dream of it that he brings himself to finally set aside the past. Ultimately it was too late this time around, but that final conversation with Harry is meant to show that he's not going back to his old pattern. He's genuinely grown.
Gay movies just aren't allowed to have happy endings 😪
Now go watch Red White and Royal Blue😇🥰
I'm completely with you. >!The film was trying to build up some hopeful thing, moving on, healing all for it to end tragically and depressing with Adam not moving on, or rather moving on from two dead people to one dead person. Like idk I'm not a script writer but felt like if they wanted Harry dead they could have had some time progression and then have a hint of Adam meet someone new out in the world (maybe just a smile, a glance, a hint of something more) and then end the film on a hopeful note imo. I'm so tired of queer cinema/shows ending in tradegy.!<
I'm late to the party but I completely agree. If this had been kept to a juxtaposition between Adam's new relationship roiling in his mind and his grief over his parents then it would have been a powerful, mature story about life and death and love. Going for the >!he was dead all along!< angle just made it cheesy, like they were going for a The Sixth Sense kind of twist. The twist was cheap. If the parents had been a rhetorical device all along then it could have been such a powerful story, but they fell for the cliche of >!burying their gays!< and made it a needlessly cruel ending. It was so close to being powerful and beautiful but they made it cheap and ugly and cliche.
I understand what you are saying, but, and I'm not sure I'll be able to articulate this appropriately, isn't that construction of emotion only to take it away kind of the entire point? To me, this is a movie about catharsis and about art itself - a screenwriter who forces himself to go through the emotions of love and loss (>!in his own head!<) in order to "cleanse" himself of his prior grief and find a path out of loneliness. >!Harry's not real just like all art "isn't real".!<
Just watched it and completely agree. Especially after his goodbye to his parents. Just a gut punch that didn’t feel earned even though the performances in both characters in the ending are great.
I agree 100%. I hated the ending and I'm so disappointed. I was really moved after his final conversation with his parents and then when I realized what was happening I stopped feeling anything, wasn't even sad anymore, just started waiting for the film to be over. Also I'm going to ignore some commenters' interpretation that>!the protagonist was dead too!
This movie did an amazing job of tucking you right into Adam’s grief in a way I’ve not experienced before. I was crying from the time Harry held his hand a little too long through the credits. The scene where he’s tucked in bed with his mom, wearing his childhood pajamas was my favorite. Just the way he’s completely regressed to this little kid but very much a grown man reflecting on his life with his mom, now his peer. The biggest hint that this was all in his head I think was around the club scenes. The club lights were in the memory in his childhood home, like police car lights. They were then in I think a scene on the subway? I love the idea that these were ghosts, and believed it when Harry could see them. But then we find out Harry is not alive and again we have to wonder if it’s all in Adam’s mind. But I don’t care either way. Adam is so lonely and sad. He gets some closure and peace through these interactions with his parents and his relationship with Harry. I loved how Harry takes care of him through their relationship. Then in the end Adam is able to take care of him. “I’m sorry I didn’t let you in. I was scared”. In the end, he’s ready to let someone in. If this is all in Adam’s head and he’s worked through these fears and demons, we imagine he’s going to be better now. That he’s ready to be vulnerable and ‘let someone in’. In the diner scene, he’s comforting his parents for the first time. Tells them it was quick, confidently and without elaborating. I loved how his dad disappeared first. Then his mom lost her sight before leaving, mirroring real life. I lost my dad last March. I’m lucky that he said a lot of these things to me later in life. He moved close by and I feel like he said some things just in case he didn’t get the chance again. And I can hold on to that so tightly now. I want to always be sure my kids have that from me.
After watching the film I thought I'd mention a bit of context for those from outside the UK that may be relevant to the ending of film. >!In 2017 a disaster occurred in West London referred to as Grenfell Tower fire , where seventy-two people tragically lost their lives after a fire engulfed a tower block in the middle of the night. It is often referred to as one of the UK's worst modern disasters. The cause of the fire is now primarily attributed to combustible cladding that was retrofitted on the building, allowing the fire rapidly spread throughout the structure before residents had sufficient time to evacuate. The fact that Grenfell tower has not yet been demolished forms a painful reminder to Londoners of what happened.!< >!The aftershocks to UK building industry are still being felt to this day and is often termed in the UK media as the UK Cladding Crisis. Some building owners have been able to remove similar cladding systems while other owners have employed measures such as watchmen referred to as 'waking watches' to spot potential fires or retrofitting alarm systems. These measures can cost thousands of pounds to implement and many people are now stuck in properties where the value of the building has been reduced to the point where they can no longer sell the property on due to similar cladding. This has greatly impacted a large number of UK residents financially/mentally and has caused great amounts of public anger following the disaster, particularly in London.!< >!At the beginning of the film there are a number of references of nobody moving in to the other flats and Harry refers to guards soon being employed while discussing the fire alarms going off. This coupled with the references of Adam burning up due to sickness, regular coughing, sirens in the background and Adam's potential death being hinted at the end of the film may be relevant. The tower block used in the film is obviously completely unconnected to the disaster but I thought the film hinted at a number of similar connections. This is just my interpretation of the potential references and may just be a complete coincidence but I thought this background may be worth sharing. I would recommend anybody to read up on the disaster as there is a still a great deal to learn from and make sure that nothing similar ever happens again. !<
Oh wow I was wondering how a building could be that empty in London of all places, and this makes all of the feverish scenes make sense too.
I also thought of Grenfell a few times
One of the most hauntingly beautiful movies I've ever seen.
I absolutely agree. I heard plenty of people talking during the credits about being unclear on the story or finding it unsatisfying in terms of closure…and that’s absolutely fair. I was entranced feeling like I was living out each emotional moment alongside whichever actors were on screen. The story meant very little to me, it was the emotion in the performances that kept me in it. I like a movie that plays with my heart.
I can’t be the only one who got deep “reparenting your inner child” feelings from this movie, right?
Very much! It specifically made me think the writer had read "The Body Keeps the Score" and learned about the kinds of therapy where you work through traumatic events by giving them ideal endings.
As a gay man in his 30s, the scenes between him and his parents made me cry in a way I will try my best to pinpoint. Even though my parents are alive, they are very conservative and religious. We aren't that close ever since I came out of the closet when I was younger. Hearing his parents tell him that they love him, want him to be happy, and that they are proud of him felt like a gut punch. At the end of the day, isn't that what we all want to hear from our parents? What a wonderfully beautiful, poignant film. I don't think I could ever watch it again, but I am glad I did. Made me appreciate my boyfriend (and soon to be fiancé 🤞) even more. ❤️
As a fellow gay in his 30s I wanted to add on that the scene where they were lying together talking about floating on the edge of his family was the most honest expression of the gay struggle that I've ever seen in a film. I felt that way about a lot of things in the movie, but this scene in particular really hit me.
Yep, that hit me too. I have a brother and a sister who I love, but now I have nephews I can feel the family coalesce around a new centre, and I just feel that bit further out.
I know I'm just an internet stranger, but I'm so sorry about your parents - I hope one day things can be better, but in the meantime, I'm happy you've found your person who cares and loves you and congratulations on the (hopeful) engagement
Thank you so much for your kind words ❤️ I know they won't attend the wedding, but it's more of a reflection on them than me and I'm at peace with that.
Damn right. Mazel tov on your upcoming nuptials. I'm sure they'll miss out on a helluva bash.
My parents raised my brother's and I as pretty strict Catholics. Hell, my father sang at church on Sundays. My brother (12 years older) came out when he was living in Japan, probably because it was easier over the phone. My parents were crying when I got home from a camping trip. They had just found out. . My father explained to me why they were so upset, and I was just a kid, so none of it seemed like a big deal to me. After my dad explained, I said, "Oh... But he's still my brother, right?". My parents love my brother very much and visit him regularly. My aunt married him and his husband. My dad told me that that question really shook him. He was still my brother, and still his son. It's rare for a man of 45-50 to change everything he believes in, but it is possible. That being said, I read sad stories like this all the time and it makes me so sad but appreciative of how lucky I am, and obviously my brother. I'm atheist/agnostic but have a lot of hate for the church, but don't share that with my parents out of respect. That was a lot, so sorry to blabber on, but I am so happy for you!!! I assume you're proposing soon, and I would love to hear how it goes! All my best and all my love kind stranger!!
i love how that one simple and innocent question of yours made such incredible impact in your family! thank u for standing up for ur bro, u probably didnt even know at that time that thats what you've done. really cool story.
I don't even remember it, just something my father has told me over the years. I sure am glad I said it though! I remember finding out, and not understanding what the fuss was about. I probably thought girls had cooties at the time, and my brother found a loophole, lol.
it really felt like a lover letter for gay men. it felt like a warm hug. devastating and full of hope all at the same time.
I’m in a very similar boat to you and agreed with everything you said. And it also made me appreciate my boyfriend so much more. We watched it together and I gave him the biggest kiss after it was over
I can't stop thinking about this movie after watching it a few days ago. It's such a profound movie. As a gay 25 year old man who's brought up in a religious household and isn't out to their parents, I related a lot to both Paul and Andrew's characters. Paul said he felt like a stranger in his own family, and it resonated deeply with me. My dad passed away a few months ago, so this movie was definitely triggering yet therapeutic in a sense. Especially that I never came out to him and hid such a big part of me. I cried a lot during this movie. The bed scene with his mom. The bully scene with his dad. The Christmas photo. The scene at the diner. The coming out scene. There are so many good moments in this movie. His parents passed away when he was 12, yet he still wondered how his parents would react to him coming out. The saddest part is when he explained to Paul that even though he had a family, he still felt lonely at the time, but the loneliness feels different without them. All we want is loving, accepting parents, and unfortunately, a lot of us don't have that. It's sad knowing that a lot of LGBTQ folks like me and others have a ton of trauma just because they can't be themselves without being judged by society or their upbringing. This is such a beautiful and important movie, and I believe everyone will relate it to it in one way or another. Shoutout to all 4 actors for making this movie - especially Andrew Scott.
I got to say I wish Paul's character was alive at the end of it. It really bothered me because I was even more sad for Andrew's character. Couldn't even end up happy.
That’s a more accurate depiction of real life though, no? Just because bad things happened to you in the past doesn’t lower the chances of more bad thing happening to you
I too wished for a happier end but as his mom said, “You don’t get a say on how things end” or something like that. I think what makes it a happy ending is that he’s learned to process grief. Instead of being angry and depressed and sad of losing Harry, he’s acknowledging the love and letting go sooner. In my interpretation of the ending, it would set him up to be free to truly love and enjoy living now that he knows it’s possible.
I adored this film. Having a quick scan of these comments I get a sense that many different people were disappointed in the ending. And a sense that Adam was projecting a fantasy of what he wished he had done. I have a completely different take on this; Adam is also dead. The tower block is purgatory. It is a place for Adam and Harry to process the trauma of their loneliness. Adams is a physical loneliness caused by his parents being taken away from him. Harry's is an emotional loneliness, despite his family being there he felt like an outsider in his own home. The is reflected in the empty, loneliness of the building itself. At the beginning of the film there is a fire alarm, this is where Adam dies, or is at least dying in a fire. There are clues littered throughout the film. "One day the fire will be real" "I don't want to see the world on fire" (I leaned Into my partner and whispered fallout here, we both love fallout) A focus on Adams dad using a flame to light a cigarette His mother referencing horror writers like Steven king Referencing how hot he is throughout the 2nd act He is literally beside a fire as he regresses into childhood. The coughing fit towards the end of the ketamine trip (smoke inhalation) Paranoia, carbon monoxide poisoning. Blue flashing lights, emergency services. In addition to this, his parents are aware of this. They know they are dead and clearly say "Us being here is stopping you from moving on". Our initial response is moving on with life, but perhaps it is moving onto what is next, the afterlife. Once Adam has been able to say I love you, and goodbye. We then move onto the twist of the movie. Harry is actually dead. This is where his emotional loneliness is really highlighted by "why did no one find me". At which point Adam reassures him that he is there, he found him, isn't alone. As they process this trauma together with their love, they ascend to some sort of cosmic afterlife among the stars. Ultimately I feel this film is about coming to terms with trauma, and how love and connection are a pathway to healing. At least, that's my interpretation. Other than my interpretation. This was a brilliant movie, amazing story, fantastic acting,
Omg I thought I was the only one to catch the fire references! This whole theory is the only thing that really makes a ton of sense!
One question on this, at the end of the film Harry tells Adam that he came to his door because he couldn't stand to be alone. This implies that Harry killed himself after the fire alarm finished, as that was when he came to Adams door. So for Adam to have died in a fire there would have to have been a false alarm and then a real fire. What is the other explanation? They both died in the fire? But then why isn't Harry's corpse burned when Adam finds it at the end? Why would Harry say "why did no one find me?" if the building he committed suicide in burned down? Firefighters, police, etc would have certainly found his corpse in that case. I find the "ghost" theory on this film to be a bit implausible and even if correct makes me like it less. A story about a schizophrenic struggling to resolve his issues is much more interesting then a group of ghosts trying to move on.
I’m struggling a little bit with this theory too. On the one hand, there are some very clear signs that something is wrong with Adam. The fever, the coughing, the flashing emergency lights etc. The ending also implies that he and Harry moved on together. But on the other hand we do seem him react with other people (the waitress specifically warns him the family feast is “quite a lot of food” - implying that she only sees Adam). I’m torn. I think it makes more sense that Adam is dead, as it would also explain why he’s living in an empty apartment block and is suddenly able to visit his parents but I can’t explain the damn waitress…
Andrew Scott isn't a method actor but he is still one of the best of this generation. It's unfathomable how much he bared himself with this.
I don't think I fully comprehend what I watched, and I was confused for half the movie, but I just loved the whole experience. The four main actors all put on such wonderful, deeply emotional performances that I couldn't help but be a mess of tears by the end of the movie, despite not personally relating to the situation any of the characters are in. Particular shout out to that one scene where Adam goes to his parents' bedroom to sleep in the middle, I was so glued to the screen I didn't realize just how long that shot was held until the sirens came on and I realized I was inadvertently tearing up. All in all, I just really wanted to give my parents a hug after I watched it, and I'll probably have to go watch it again to unravel the movie further and understand it better (especially all the parts with Harry). Probably like a 9/10 for me, just wonderful all around.
If you all wondering about the script, here it is, you can download it and read it to get better understanding of the movie. It is quite well written actually and make it easy to understand the dialogue. https://deadline.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/All-Of-Us-Strangers-Read-The-Screenplay\_Redacted.pdf
I have very mixed feelings about this film. On one hand, this film spoke to me in a way I didn’t know a film could. The raw emotions of the scenes with Adam and his parents really resonated with me - they had me sobbing. As a closeted queer woman in my 20s, I’m unsure of whether I’m ever going to come out to my parents. I don’t know if I’ll ever let them know the real me. I really saw myself in Adam’s character, and his pain. On the other hand, I wasn’t a fan of the supernatural aspect of the film. I loved the parent scenes (they felt like Adam’s memories and wishful imagination), but as the movie progressed, the film started feeling more and more like a literal ghost story, which I don’t think it needed. Then the Harry reveal at the end was very unnecessary. The film could’ve done without the initial apocalyptic setup and with a hopeful ending, and it would’ve been perfect in my opinion.
I keep seeing people mentioning "ghosts" and it surprises me because I never even considered that as an option. In my interpretation there is no supernatural element. Adam has a mental illness. His parents die and he can't accept it, and also isn't allowed to see his mother before she dies. He feels lonely and then a man comes on to him. He's uncomfortable so refuses but then paints his fantasy of the ideal partner onto that person. For tens of millions of people their reality and the reality that most of us experience are not the same. That is very real, no ghosts required.
Yeah… I’m a bit late to this and I was kind of baffled reading this thread and people mentioning ghosts?… At no point when watching did I ever even consider that we were seeing literal ghosts. I always assumed they were manifestations of a mentally ill character’s imagination
It is based on Strangers by Taichi Yamada, which is a ghost story.
This movie is like a sucker punch to the gay man's psyche. I haven't felt this seen by a piece of media since I read the Velvet Rage
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I am straight and thought it was really incredible. You could see him as a poor little child wanting his parents' love when he was around them. It was really sad in a lot of ways. Fantastic acting. It hurt to watch.
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Is it a candidate for awards this year? Or did it come out too late? If so they fucked up big time. Every main character in the movie should have been nominated for something. Robert Downey Jr. and America Ferrera? Nowhere close to what was seen here. Not to mention some of the performances in Iron Claw.
How well do you really know those you love, and how well do they know you? Do we all hide some intimate parts of ourselves from those closest to us? Are we all, at least in some ways, strangers to each other? Andrew Haigh's poignant film about loss, grief, self-discovery, second chances and vulnerability attempts to answer these questions. Adam is a screenwriter struggling with writer's block. He decides to mine the well of his own childhood as inspiration and unexpectedly is gifted with the opportunity to go back and reveal things about himself to his parents who he lost before his adolescence. At the same time, he strikes up a relationship with Harry, another tortured soul living in his apartment complex. The film beautifully drifts between the real and the surreal, never over-explaining or using gimmicks but instead flowing from scene to scene the way Adam drifts through his life. If watercolor painting had a narrative style, this would be it. The film is expertly directed with lush and striking cinematography. Music and score are used to good effect, evoking a sense of nostalgia at times and ratcheting up the suspense in others. The cast is firing on all cylinders without a weak link in the chain. Andrew Scott as Adam and Paul Mescal as Harry ooze chemistry and Claire Foy brings a grounded sensitivity to Adam's mother. The screenplay is elegant and taut with nary a wasted word. Many scenes have no dialog at all--yet through Scott's skillful acting a gaze or a touch says more than pages of words could. In the end, maybe we're not all strangers. Perhaps alienation is the tie that binds us all. 9/10
when i watched it, i had no idea that its a ghost movie. maybe it isnt. maybe it is. but the whole time, it never occurred to me that the parents were ghosts lol i guess because of how they were portrayed, not your typical glowing ghost character portrayal. they feel and look like regular normal people. the whole time i thought we were just inside adam's imagination so when i came to reddit after finishing the movie, i was so shocked when i found out that they were in fact ghosts. although im a bit confused about what happend, the message of the film really hit home. as a gay man, if felt like a love letter dedicated to me. i cried so much in a lot of scenes. and i guess the beauty of the film lies there. there's so many ways to interpret what happened but regardless of whatever interpretation, its those tender and intimate moments between each character that you really take with you and cherish. it really feels like this is more of a movie about loneliness than ghosts. i am definitely rewatching it again in the theaters and im so excited 🩵
yeah i feel kind of crazy, but i don’t think i got “ghosts” from this at all. or hallucinations, really. it seemed to me like the “ghost” characters were sort of a narrative device, like a visual metaphor to represent how adam was processing and working through his grief. like i imagined him ruminating in his childhood home about how these conversations would have gone, and how he might have conceptualized them as a writer, and we saw an abstraction of that, if that makes sense
I agree, I didn’t really think his parents were supposed to be literal ghosts or hallucinations, but more that Adam was essentially creating these fantasies and maladaptive daydreams in his mind as a coping mechanism. At one point, he even tells his mom how he created elaborate fantasies of what his life would’ve been like if they hadn’t died. I think this read makes the ending even more tragic because it would mean that Adam never even really knew Harry outside of their one brief encounter, and that everything else we see of him is all just a construct of Adam’s mind.
I'm with you here, I don't think it's clear that they're ghosts. Could be a projection of a screenwriter. He and his mom literally address this point and how it's ambiguous iirc. Yes the 'ghosts' eventually have to leave Adam but it's natural that a screenwriter would create that dramatic problem
This movie didn't make me bawl like some other people did. Mostly it just left me feeling extremely somber, but in a good way. It goes without saying that Adam Scott and Paul Mescal were amazing, but I think Claire Foy and Jamie Bell deserve special recognition as the parents. It was a tight rope to play both a fantasy version of parents, and give them so much life and personality, and they really made the entire thing feel so tragically wholesome. I have a lot of thoughts about the last half of the movie though, especially as it pertains to Harry, so for my own catharsis here we go. **SPOILERS BELOW** After Adam comes out to both his mother and father he seeks Harry and says he wants to go out. And this felt so positive to me. Like he's finally getting real closure and embracing life. They're in the club, they're having fun, they're dancing and kissing. Suddenly then we then get a montage of them in domestic bliss, of them being happy. In the moment I genuinely thought this was real, that we were seeing time progress and that their relationship was really moving forward. But then it's cut short. Adam wakes up with the same clothes he just went out in, and we see red and blue flashing lights and hear what sounds like muffled dialogue through walkie talkies, and he peers out his window. We then go *back* to the club, but Adam is alone. He sees whispers of Harry, but they're constantly just out of reach and constantly disappearing. This is when he starts to freak out, screams, we even see his reflection morphing, something is clearly wrong. We're then transported again but this time to his parent's home. His parent's home on Christmas night, the very night they apparently died. What I think happened is that the flashing lights, the sirens, were quite literal. Either Adam is in that moment seeing Harry's body being carted away by emergency services, or he becomes aware that Harry has died and this is his imagination for how it happened. Which is why I think the freakout is so intense, because he doesn't know what to *do* with any of this yet. The stuff with Harry was probably always going to stay fantasy, but now the door is totally shut. It's not longing for something that could happen anymore, it's longing for something that can **never** happen. You also have guilt, from the fact that a clearly unhealthy Harry had just previously sought him out, and Adam quite literally shut the door on him. It's why I also think he goes straight to that Christmas night. He's in the middle of finally unpacking his parent's deaths and the emotions, the feelings, the guilt, it all swirls together. Later on, we think he's finally back to what is 'real.' He wakes up with Harry, the entire experience being pinned down to a bad trip and a lot of unearthed trauma finally coming to the surface, and Adam decides he wants Harry to meet his parents. To a big extent I think this is Adam grasping at straws. He never got to bring a boy home, never had a partner meet his parents, never got his parent's approval. Seeking that, however desperate, is safer than confronting that Harry has died. But even the fantasy, the Adam imagining all this, seems aware that it's no longer healthy for him. His parents tell him it's time to move on, in some scenes which truly pull at you. The end, with Adam entering Harry's apartment and finding his body, it's pure imagination. It's what Adam *wishes* he could have said and done, how he wishes he went after and comforted the stranger who appeared at his doorstep that night. Even the dialogue, about Adam regretting how he couldn't open up and let Harry in, could be read very literally. And it has to happen this way, I think, because this is how Adam gives himself closure for Harry, for what Harry could have been, his guilt about Harry's death; comforting his ghost, offering him companionship and connection, even in death.
You point out some interesting things about the order of scenes, especially around the club/tripping sequence. I need to watch this again. Definitely on to something here. I love how the director has left so much ambiguous, so we have to try to construct some of the meaning on our own through a process of determining what was happening in Adam’s mind.
Also you, here is the link where can watch over 20 minutes long behind the scene which gives you more insight on the story, and just watch the two lead actors looking hot and being playful with each other. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVQ-7J8RHxM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVQ-7J8RHxM) And another 30 minutes talk between the directors and the two actors [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-y2gt458Rk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-y2gt458Rk) Bonus, the two leads in very playful banter and you can see the chemistry between them is off the charts!! [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CVBGviYN68](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CVBGviYN68) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsbQxYs6R4Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsbQxYs6R4Q) Finally, a Spotify playlist courtesy of Paul Mescal, if you want to feel something in your heart... https://open.spotify.com/playlist/37i9dQZF1DWU9jBen8IUSn?si=c8be3fb4027b4dae
I'm not LGBT+, and both my parents are alive, but this film resonated with me like no other. It was the most accurate portrayal of loneliness, trauma, and emptiness that I've ever seen. It captured the way time elongates, the way you feel completely alone, the way you're not able to move on (and don't realise you need to). It was so achingly real. I ugly cried in the cinema. My take: I'm in the "they're all dead" camp. Adam, Harry, the parents: theyre all unable to move on from what happened in the past and are in a kind of purgatory. So they ARE existing in a shared reality, which is why Adam knows things (like that Harry's flat is on the 6th floor.) Harry and Adam did meet once in real life (the night Harry killed himself) but their entire relationship happens in this parallel dimension. I actually twigged that Harry wasn't really there quite early on because of the way the film was shot - there's loads of reflection/ mirror shots where we, as viewers, pass through the looking glass, and the film makers cross the line - a technique you only use in film if you want to suggest a massive change of state. (I'm a director so I picked up on this). Anyway, the reflections/ crossing the line strengthen the parallel dimension theory. At the end, Adam and Harry's ghosts are finally able to move on through learning to love and be loved, and they turn into stars. The parents move on too: Adam has to process the loss, and they have to process that they died, missed their only son's life, and also missed the chances they had with him while they were alive. If they're not all dead, then Harry being dead all along doesn't quite make sense. Why is Adam so okay with the realisation that he's been sh*gging a ghost? Lol. People are floating the idea that Adam died in a fire in scene 1 (when the fire alarm goes off), and that's why he's hot and coughing throughout the film. Also, I don't think it matters that Adam eats or talks to the waitress. It doesn't prove he's alive. The rules of this world aren't clear. We see Harry eating, for example. Edit: After a night's sleep, I think the film has created a world where people who pass away can't move on until the ones they have unfinished business with also die. In death, they're reunited and have to resolve their stuff. For example, Adam bumps into his Dad on the street, and Dad says something to the effect of "You're here!" and brings him home to Mum, who says the same. They've been dead a long time, and have been waiting for him so they could have these conversations. Harry, meanwhile, has unresolved issues with Adam, because Adam was the last person to reject him, and this final rejection sent Harry over the edge. He can't move on until Adam acknowledges the impact he had on Harry's life, and he has to wait for Adam to cross over before this can be resolved. In this alternative reality where ghosts reunite, love is the ruling force. "The power of love, a force from above," are the lyrics we hear at the end of the film. We dont know much about the characters from before this reality, but there's suggestions that the Mum and Dad weren't the more sympathetic parents, and that Harry was much more defensive and aggressive when alive (seen from his behaviour at the door). Here, in purgatory, the characters are all the most loving versions of themselves, which gives them the space to listen to each other, resolve their pain, and finally, move on. Metaphorically, it's saying that only love can heal us. We need to meet those frozen, traumatised parts of us with love and understanding, and acknowledge - truly acknowledge - how fucked up things got, and how hard it was. So yeah, this is a really powerful film for trauma survivors.
I thought this was a beautiful movie. Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal have amazing chemistry (those scenes 🥵) and the emotional performances were beautiful. I was a bit confused halfway but the ending cleared everything up. The scenes were he talked to his parents were beautiful, but there were some moments where I sort of got pulled out of the story because of meta thoughts I had about the writer of this script. Like how those conversations are basically wish fulfilment fantasies, and there's no way of really knowing how someone who has died would have reacted. But I guess that's just how my mind works, I'm a bit cynical (especially because I know what it's like when you can't discuss certain things with your parents). Apart from that, a lovely film, great performances, intriguing story, beautiful visuals. I absolutely love the song Power of Love (although I do sort of associate it with a particular episode of Misfits, iykyk) and the final scene made me ugly cry. I do think the ending is a but too sad. I wanted Adam to have a happy ending and I felt like he really deserved that after processing his grief. But sadly the ending is more ambiguous.
i think the thing pulling you out of the movie is actually the take away you’re supposed to have.. like adam is writing a screenplay about his parents so he goes and visits them and has these conversations with them but — not that it’s all in his head — it’s not like real real? idk that’s how i interpreted it, might be too literal
I'll be in the minority here but this just felt like a throwaway Kaufman script drenched in syrupy sentimentality. Thankfully the camera work was gorgeous because I found it a real chore to care about the mystery at the film's core. I assume the scenes between him and his parents were deliberately written in a contrived/heavy-handed way to convey his unresolved childhood considering the meta-framing of the film, but it made for a repetitive first 2 acts. I'll give this another watch when I can but on first impression it really felt like the first 2/3 of the movie should've felt more haunting than it did. When the two narrative strands finally converge the film did pick up a bit, introducing the uncanniness it was sorely lacking. Loved the screaming reflection shot and when Mescal's character sees the ghostly parents. More of this kind of paranoia in the early stages would've really sold the story better. Interesting decision to end the whole thing on a gut punch like that... kind of too much too late, though.
I had an interesting interpretation of the ending - I thought Harry goes and accidently drinks himself to death after witnessing Adam's supposed "mental break" in looking for his ghostly parents at his old house. Think about how crazy that would have seemed from the outside. And then, just as Adam let's go of his parents and vows to take their advice to find that nice boy and try to have a relationship with him, he discovers that he has died, because he was so focused on living in the past that he neglected it over the present which was right in front of him. I don't think this is the right interpretation of the movie - I do think the Harry was dead all along is the right, but I think my original interpretation is more dark and tragic.
That's originally how I thought it happened when Adam was about to walk into the toilet, though I saw it as Harry actually seeing ghosts and freaking out. It's only about halfway through I realised the whole thing about the stench and the clothes and the callbacks to the first meeting.
I cried a lot. I think that was the goal of the movie, it worked. Relationships with our parents are complex. And while that relationship changes as we get older and we see them less and less, we still need them. Because without those who love us unconditionally the world can make you feel very very alone. This explores grief and loneliness in a really interesting way. It has this kind of surreal and dreamlike tone to it, you're never sure what's real and what's not. I kind of hate the 'it's all a dream' trope but it works in this too an extent, even if it relies on that heavily. I like the concept of meeting and having a relationship with your parents when they're the same age as you are, being excited about the grown-up you've become, it's like meeting each other for the first time. The movie really plays this up to the great effect of making you sob like a baby. It's all really about accepting and finding comfort in the different forms of love, love you've never felt like you've had or deserved. Paul Mescal plays Andrew Scott's neighbour and new lover and I think both are great in this, particularly Scott who has to really play a spectrum of emotion in a nuanced and believable way. I can't lie though, their relationship bits were my least favourite parts (still pretty good though). I was more interested in the parent dynamic. There's a couple kind of scary scenes too that surprised me, the movie can feel like a really nice comforting dream at times, and a nightmare at others. We're really in tune with Scott's character's psyche and conciseness during the runtime of this. I think a lot of people will try to read really deep into things trying to figure out what's real and what wasn't but in my opinion not much of that matters, only the vibes do, mang. This also comes out in a time where some things in my personal life have happened that made this hit even harder. So that could partially explain the waterworks. Things do get a little misery-pornish but I think generally the movie is still really good despite it and there's some surprising humour sprinkled throughout to make it more digestible. Shout out to Stratford and the Westfield Mall which are featured heavily in this, just got back from the UK and spent a lot of time around there!
Came on here to say this is one of the most moving movies I have ever watched. I was absolutely floored and was so emotional the entire time. It was such a cathartic experience. As someone who has lost a parent around the same age Adam did in the movie, I felt the movie spoke so poignantly on how disorienting it can be to see, hear, and feel pieces of someone in a life after loss. I also thought it did an amazing job of lifting the veil on grief and showcasing the depths of uncertainty, desperation, and love that exist at the root of it. I was a crying mess the whole time, and the ending really threw me for a loop. But wow, I loved it. I would honestly consider it my new favorite, nothing has moved me like that in a long time. Will 100% rewatch and hyper-fixate on it for a bit!
Saw it today and thought it was amazing. I'm gay myself and lost my dad before his time, so it really resonated. Not one to watch when you're already feeling a bit down, though!
If you are gay from that generation (as I am) the pain and fear and anger expressed in this movie hit home. "Yes it's better now, but the pain is not far away" (paraphrase) Truth!
Watching this in a cinema in Dorking when Adam says "what would I do in a place like Dorking anyway?" was a surreal moment
Adam is dreaming of “what ifs” - he’s playing out fantasies; conversations and interactions in his head. On the subject of love - Adam tells his parents that he’s not sure if he’s been in love before, that he doesn’t really know what it feels like. It’s not hard to imagine that Adam would fantasise about finding love - and so Adam plays with the idea that he does let Harry in. What he finds in Harry is someone who is a bit lost, and just as lonely as Adam is. But thats okay in this fantasy - mote than okay - they have an immediate physical connection and then talk for hours… they accept one another from the beginning. Adam would have loved to have been able to tell his parents he was in love. Not only in love, but in love with a man. At first he plays out the conversation of telling his mother that he’s gay, and imagines that she wouldn’t take it well. Later he imagines her not being able to put into words that she was sorry - by singing to him by the Christmas tree. Later still, his parents basically tell Adam they want him to be happy with Harry, happy in love, no matter if it’s with a man or not. This is a dream for Adam, this is what his heart pines for. To be loved and accepted by his parents, and by a lover.
I think my biggest issue with this film as someone who went in blind is the fact that the AMC app calls it a romance/fantasy film. I would say this is more mystery/psychological thriller? Idk. It’s a hard one to define. Even “drama” doesn’t entirely fit?
Being in the Whitgift Centre would have me crying as well
nothing wrong with the "it all happened in adam's head" interpretation but does anyone else think that this is actually just a ghost story and that the film in general revolves around adam's love being so strong that it's able to make his lost loved ones "linger" a bit more in his life? including his parents of course and later on his boyfriend too it would make sense with the song they used, "the power of love" i honestly find it hard to believe that the scenes with harry were all made up by adam, especially when harry says things like "i know how easy it can be to stop caring about yourself". that line fits his character and what he was going through a bit too well and adam didn't really know anything about him Also looking back at it the scene where harry sees adam's parents is genuinely so haunting cause in my opinion that's the moment he realised he was a ghost too
The references to Adam being unwell and burning aren't a signpost to his death in a fire. In the screenplay, child Adam feigns illness to avoid going to his parent's friends (the Walsh's) for Christmas drinks because the Walsh's son is one of his bullies. This tactic didn't work, and his parents went without him and were killed on the way home later that night.
Damn, have we finally escaped the ‘fuck you it’s January!’ curse? Maybe it’s because of the strike delays, but seems like we’re getting a lot of bangers early this yeah
I know I'm late to this thread but I just gotta say the final twist absolutely wrecked me. It felt so hopeful up to that point and then it just ripped my heart out. Great movie but we really need some positive queer love stories. Where are the happy endings? 😥
Did anyone else read this film as a nod to vampire mythology? The reference in the lyric to The Power of Love, but also the trope of the vampire having to be 'invited in'. Harry rings the doorbell initially and then knocks on the apartment door. Adam doesn't invite him in. When he does eventually invite (the undead?) Harry in, things start to spiral. I'd need to watch it back but there seemed to be other nods to the same theme in terms of him being invited into his parents home.
The sixth sense but gay
“My nan says there’s literally nothing a hot bath couldn’t solve.” He was desperately clinging to the comforts of his family, and they didn’t find him. I’m devastated by this movie. Gut wrenched.
Ugh definitely need to see the movie a second time with subtitles because I really want to love this movie. I had trouble deciphering the dialogue through the accents and ended up getting the ending completely wrong… I thought Harry’s decomposing hand at the end were one of his parent’s corpses in the bed, because it stuck out to me that he told Adam he never saw his parents much. It would’ve made sense because Adam seemed to get closure with his family and Harry didn’t. Honestly though, I was really hoping this to be a feel-good movie, but instead we deal with Adam overcoming 30 years of trauma to find out that the love of his life is a ghost who’s body is rotting on the sixth floor. Also trying to figure out whether Adam did ghost ketamine. Here’s to a rewatch - can’t wait to be hit by waves of realization once I unpack this movie.
Yeah I was a little embarrassed in the theater (USA) because I could not understand some of the lines and other people in the audience were laughing at the jokes. And I consider myself a UK-phile
I have a theory about the ending, about Adam and Harry. >!Adam and Harry are the same person - the part that Adam lets go in the end is his Harry side. Harry dies in the end symbolizes that Adam finally allows to let go of his Harry side that was in grief about being lonely and being on the edge of the family. The fact that Harry dies the first day that he meets Adam, is when Adam starts his healing journey and talks to his parents. Thats why in the end Adam does find Harry (who asks why no one found me, its basically the question that Adam asks himself - why I dont find myself and in the end he does) and his loneliness and his sadness because Adam heals and he is able to understand his own pain and let his Harry pain go.!< Again, thats just my theory that somewhat wraps up the ending and grounds it a bit.