All of Us Strangers

This movie consumed my waking days ever since i watched it.

It felt empty, in a good way. All of Us Strangers diving deep into loneliness, grief, self identity, and love — of course. I cannot write such words to describe how haunting and beautiful this movie is.

My stomach churn as Adam take us to experience grief with him, to feel what it lost for him, something that he’d never find again. It was warm yet so cold. Loneliness depicted really well in this. Growing up queer and watching everything slipping away.

Cold lights, muted colors on Adam’s apartment who happened to be in the middle of nowhere was suffocating. Showing how isolated he is from the rest of the world. Until a certain neighbour — Harry — came into his life and explores his identity with him.

Honestly? I keep questions things throughout the movie. Is it real? Is it really happening? then figuring out all of it as Adam processing his trauma and grief. He visits his parents everyday, having conversation that he never got to have with them. Simple talk, catching up with life, showing his parents how he was like as an adult.

But he will be forever stuck being 12 year old boy, climbing to his Mum’s bed only because he can’t sleep or decorating Christmas tree while humming songs with his parents or maybe the way he wears his childhood Christmas Pajamas that obviously won’t fit anymore.

But he also will be forever stuck being 12 year old boy who got to carry all of the grief when his parents happened to be involved in a car crash and passed away. A realization of things that always slithered him in the neck for the rest of his life: Loneliness.

Despite the grief that weighing him, Adam have to let go. it consumed him. Every trip to his parents house consumed his sanity. eventually, his parents ask him to let go, so he can move on to his real life.

They go to one last family trip to the mall when Adam finally let go of that weight.

I guess that’s what makes him enjoyed Harry’s company so much. Despite of him being scared on their first meet, Adam get to explore much more about his sexuality with him.

Harry being almost two decades younger than him put the new perspectives of how he would labeled himself. the whole discussion about the term gay or queer — they both have different experience about the way the term being spoken to them. That also led Adam to have conversation about him being queer to his Mum which explained all of his struggle in the early years of his life, things that contributed to let loneliness grappled his legs.

Later, Harry told him that he’s left out from his own family, being a ghost between his brother and sister who got attention the most. Both Harry and Adam were thrown in the same deserted big apartment — loneliness.

Then we found out that all of the moment between Harry and Adam were an imagination, except the first meet. On their first meet, Harry were drunk, practically asking Adam for company cause he was scared to be alone. But Adam close the door on his face, which led Harry to spend his night alone with alcohol and substances until he died.

Adam did find his body, rotten. But he did find him. No one find Harry, but him.

And i think, the rest is Adam’s imagination of what could’ve been. What could’ve been if they save each other from loneliness.

I can’t get this movie out of my head and i don’t think i wanted to. This is the first time i let my mouth shut, stopping myself from questioning things like i always do while watching movies. With this movie, you just got to sit down and listen. Witnessing a process, a questions to be answered, and rushed of feelings that’ll lingered on you for a couple of weeks.

let’s say, the reason why this movie got a special room in my head cause how close it is to the way i grow up and live. A cliché reason but it cannot remove the feeling to hang the whole movie — every word, every frame, every gaze, every punch to my gut — in my room like a sheet of poetry or a canvas.