Continuing my countdown of last year’s best films…

Best Films of 2023
#8. All of Us Strangers

In recent years I’ve come to embrace imperfections in the movies I love. In the past, I’ve found myself rationalizing moments that don’t quite land, as if in order to treasure a film I have to first sand away any rough edges. Now, I’m quicker to say “that part didn’t work, but this is still a five-star masterpiece.”

What does that have to do with writer-director Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers, you ask? Well, there’s an element of this film that I haven’t quite wrapped my head around. I really need to rewatch it to figure out how certain pieces fit together with the whole (I apologize for the vagueness, but I’m avoiding spoilers).

But that quibble doesn’t matter, not one bit. Because there’s a scene in this movie where gay screenwriter Adam (Andrew Scott) has a conversation with the father he lost when he was 12, and his father (Jamie Bell) gets choked up because he knew his son was bullied but didn’t try to comfort him.

And there’s another scene where Adam’s mother (Claire Foy) sings to him while they decorate the Christmas tree, the night before she and her husband die in a car accident.

The movie has many scenes that good and that gut-wrenching.

All of Us Strangers is a ghost story, in case you hadn’t figured that out. It doesn’t bother exploring why Adam meets his parents again decades after their passing. Maybe it’s part of the screenplay he’s writing, maybe it’s a hallucination, maybe this is simply a world where ghosts exist. What it does explore is the emptiness of grief, the beauty of forgiveness, and (as today’s SOTD spells out) the power of love.

That love is also present in a new relationship Adam begins with a neighbor, Harry, played by Paul Mescal. The two men — far enough apart in age that Harry has had a very different coming out experience — share an intimacy sorely missing in both of their lives.

While All of Us Strangers is quite lyrical, wistful, and romantic, it also has a strand of horror in its DNA that surprised and unsettled me during one stretch. I love when a movie catches me off guard like that.

This movie also has a staggeringly good ensemble, with only four speaking roles (not counting an offscreen waitress). Every one of these actors is a marvel, incredibly subtle but emotionally rich, with Scott leading the way in one of the year’s very best performances.

So yeah, this is easily one of my favorite films of last year, even if I need to see it again to really grasp everything. And even if I never fully grasp it at all.

[Note: I did rewatch the movie after writing this and some of its mysteries made a little more sense to me. It remained just as powerful in every other way.]