Welcome to Our

25th Year of Publication

October 2024

MDM1024-1-cr

Ghosts and Dreams
All of Us Strangers, I Saw the TV Glow

 

Miles David Moore

 

Legal sanctions are fewer against LGBTQ people than they used to be.  Societal prejudice and incomprehension, however, continue to make gay and transgender life difficult over and above the basic problem of living in the Universe. Two recent films—Andrew Haigh's All of Us Strangers and Jane Schoenbrun's I Saw the TV Glow—use dreamlike fantasy to tell poignant, melancholy stories of people consigned against their will to be misfits.

Based on a novel by Taichi Yamada, All of Us Strangers begins with the panorama of London that Adam (Andrew Scott) sees from his high-rise window.  Adam, a screenwriter, is almost the only tenant in his building, and his surroundings are chillingly impersonal.  One night Harry (Paul Mescal), his only neighbor, comes knocking with a bottle of whiskey, half of which he has already drunk.  Harry asks to come in, just to talk "or whatever you want."  Adam is tempted, but refuses.

The next day Adam travels to the suburbs.  He wanders the pleasant streets, stopping in front of one house before walking on.  Ambling through a park, he sees a man in the distance and follows him to a convenience store.  The man buys some liquor, then turns around and faces Adam.

"Shall we go?" he asks.

"Where?" Adam asks.

"Home."

They go to the house where Adam stopped before. A woman comes to the door.  "Is it him?" she asks.

It is quickly established that the man and woman (Jamie Bell, Claire Foy) are Adam's parents.  It is apparent Adam has not seen them in some time.  It is also apparent that Adam's parents are roughly his age.

MDM1024-2-cr

In his previous films Weekend, 45 Years, and Lean on Pete, Haigh established himself as the cinema's poet of loneliness.  In All of Us Strangers, he solidifies and expands on that status.  All of Us Strangers is his best film to date, and he will be lucky to exceed it.  With the aid of a brilliant cinematographer, Jamie D. Ramsay, and a superb quartet of actors, Haigh creates a lyrical, sometimes phantasmagorical film about a man whose circumstances have militated all his life against human connection.

To avoid misunderstanding, I must say here that Haigh does not present loneliness as an inevitable consequence of homosexuality. In his films, there are as many kinds of loneliness as there are people.  45 Years is about a long-married woman who comes to realize that her husband has never truly loved her; Lean on Pete is about an orphaned boy whose only friend is a horse.  Adam's case is just as particular.  Raised by a grandparent, without brothers or sisters, Adam never had the chance to really know his parents, who died in a car crash shortly before his twelfth birthday. He certainly never had a chance to know how they would have reacted to his being gay.  Through whatever process—supernatural or imaginative—All of Us Strangers is the story of his discovering that.  At one point Adam's mother looks in his eyes and says she always heard that being gay means a lonely life.

"If I am (lonely), it's not because of that," he says.  "Not really."

She lifts an eyebrow.  "Not really?"

Concurrently Adam begins a relationship with Harry, whom he encounters at the elevator and invites up for a drink.  It's been a long time since either had a love relationship, or even sex; as Adam says, "I thought that if I fucked anybody, I'd
die." Harry's familial problems are the opposite of Adam's: his parents are still living, he has siblings, and none of them want anything to do with him.  "I've always felt like a stranger in my own family," Harry says.  "Coming out just puts a name to the difference that's always been there."

"Things are better now—of course they are," Adam replies.  "But it doesn't take much to make you feel the way you felt."

All of Us Strangers is as quietly heartbreaking as all of Haigh's films, and with a greater sense of tragedy, thanks to a twist at the end that I, at least, did not see coming.  The pervasive melancholy is lightened only by Frankie Goes to Hollywood's "The Power of Love," which plays at the beginning and end of the film.  "Make love your goal," the song tells us, and that is as strong a summation of Haigh's message as can be made.

I Saw the TV Glow is even sadder than All of Us Strangers, and even more dreamlike—in fact, nightmarish. It depicts the power that television programs can have over lonely kids, but it cuts far deeper than that.  It is about finding your place in a world that conspires to deny you one.  The chances of your doing that, the film tells us, are tenuous.

mdm1024-3-cr1

At the beginning, Owen (Ian Foreman) is a lonely, asthmatic twelve-year-old with few friends, a dying mother (Danielle Deadwyler) and a dictatorial stepfather (Fred Durst).  One day at school he sees an older girl named Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine) with an episode guide to The Pink Opaque, a show on the Young Adult Network.  Owen's interest is piqued.  He asks her about the show, and she eagerly tells him: The Pink Opaque is about two teenage girls, Isabel (Helena Howard) and Tara (Lindsey Jordan), who share a psychic bond that helps them fight supernatural villains such as Mr. Melancholy and the Ice Cream Man.

The Pink Opaque airs at 10:30, which is past Owen's strictly enforced bedtime.  In addition, Owen's stepfather Frank disapproves of the show; when Owen mentions it one night, Frank answers, "Isn't that a show for girls?" Owen must resort to subterfuge to sneak out to watch the show with Maddy.  When subterfuge stops working, Maddy makes VHS tapes that Owen (now played by Justice Smith) can watch surreptitiously.  Maddy's home life is even worse than Owen's; her mother is indifferent, her stepfather abusive.  At one point she confesses to Owen that she is lesbian and asks him if he likes girls or boys.

Owen smiles shyly.  "I like TV," he says.

Eventually Maddy can no longer bear life at home, and decides to run away.  She urges Owen to come with her, but Owen is too afraid.  Owen graduates from school and gets a dead-end job at the local movie theater, then another dead-end job at a "family entertainment center," a' la Chuck E. Cheese.  His stepfather dies, and he inherits their house.  He says he has a family that he loves "more than anything," but we see no evidence of this.

Then, Maddy returns.   

mdm1024-4-cr

In discussing I Saw the TV Glow, Schoenbrun has said she based the screenplay partly on her own absorption in such shows as Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  Without going into detail, I myself know firsthand how seductive television can be for young people who don't fit into the real world.  With the collaboration of cinematographer Eric K. Yue, editor Sofi Marshall and production designer Brandon Tonner-Connolly, Schoenbrun immerses us in the world of The Pink Opaque, a world alternately alluring and terrifying, like the best fairy tales.  ("The Pink Opaque" is also the title of a 1986 compilation album by the Scottish rock group Cocteau Twins, a group famous for its dreamlike, densely produced music.)

The final third of I Saw the TV Glow is harrowing, the performances of Smith and Lundy-Paine reaching feverish intensity to match the hallucinatory visuals.  Owen and Maddy are on opposite paths in life, based in each case on their viewing of The Pink Opaque.  Neither is happy, and some of Maddy's choices are appalling.  But Maddy at least has made choices.  She will never be like Owen, whom we last see apologizing to a roomful of people that is utterly indifferent to him.

 

Share This Page

View readers' comments in Letters to the Editor

mdm-new-1122-cr

Film Reviews
Index of Miles David Moore's 
reviews and writings
|

Miles David Moore is a retired Washington, D.C. reporter for Crain Communications, the author of three books of poetry and Scene4's Film Critic. For more of his reviews and articles, check the Archives.

©2024 Miles David Moore
©2024 Publication Scene4 Magazine

 

October 2024

  Sections Cover · This Issue · inFocus · inView · inSight · Perspectives · Special Issues
  Columns Adler · Alenier · Alpaugh · Bettencourt · Jones · Luce · Marcott · Walsh 
  Information Masthead · Your Support · Prior Issues · Submissions · Archives · Books
  Connections Contact Us · Comments · Subscribe · Advertising · Privacy · Terms · Letters

|  Search Issue | Search Archives | Share Page |

Scene4 (ISSN 1932-3603), published monthly by Scene4 Magazine
of Arts and Culture. Copyright © 2000-2024 Aviar-Dka Ltd – Aviar Media Llc.

Thai Airways at Scene4 Magazine