Andrew Haig’s triumphant return
Due to his background as an assistant editor at Ridley Scott, Andrew Haig has not maintained caliber for his personal work success by the author of the recent Napoleon. But he grasped, in his own way, the sense of care and grandeur. But there is nothing, however, comparable between Andrew Haig and Ridley Scott and, beyond that, there seems to be nothing in the cinematic landscape even comparable to what Andrew Haig, an English filmmaker from the 1950s, offers in Without ever knowing each other.
With a cast reduced to the essentials, Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal in the main roles, Jamie Bell and Claire Foy in secondary but no less essential roles, Andrew Haig develops a story that unites several stories. A love story, a ghost story, a family story and finally a story of sexual identity. All complete, in what has the appearance of a “small” film. A minimal cast, few locations, a budget that we imagine is limited. But make no mistake, Without ever knowing each otherhe’s a real one fantastic movie with his ghosts, a powerful one political film with its treatment of homosexuality, a stunner family drama with its unprecedented back and forth between childhood and adulthood, finally a heartbreaking romance starring two phenomenal actors.
At the crossroads of genres
In the present day, in a cold and anonymous London, Adam meets his neighbor Harry. Until proven otherwise, they appear to be the only two residents of a large, impersonal apartment tower. Suppose they are solitary and immediately their solitudes respond to each other. They will love each other immediately. At the same time as this relationship develops, Adam, an uninspired screenwriter, returns to the distant English suburbs where he grew up, until his parents died in a car accident when he was 12. There, in front of his old house, he will find his father and mother, real ghosts of a past that still haunts him today. He will start a conversation with them, tell them who he has become, they will ask them questions: What is your life like today? ?
We would ruin its exceptional quality Without ever knowing each other say too much about their supernatural reunion. But we can say about this “new” encounter that it is sweet, palpable and unlikely, and that the actors Andrew Scott, Claire Foy and Jamie Bell tell exceptional performance on extraordinarily intelligent and empathetic dialogue. Her parents died at the age Adam is now, they are three adults talking to each other. But he is their child, he has been an adult since the 2020s, they have been adults since the end of the 80s. An agreement is then attempted between a generation that did not know and was afraid of homosexuality, and a generation for which this is the norm.
Paul Mescal – Andrew Scott, great cinema couple
Paul Mescal, an actor of unfathomable talent, plays a character whose loneliness surpasses that of Adam. It is this solitude that allows Adam to open up, to taste again to the joys of a love he hasn’t known for too long, for mysterious reasons. Perhaps because, as an orphan, he feels deprived of everything and has learned to live with the permanent terror of his irremediable destiny of being alone.
To tell what happens to Adam, moving from one ghost to another, behaving in a way that makes you wonder if he too is alive, Andrew Haig has beautifully adapted the text of the novel Foreigners by Taichi Yamada, of which Without ever knowing each other it is the second adaptation for cinema. She adapted it so that the light radiated, in all colors, from all angles, with a sublime photograph. This is what we feel watching this film, first of all, of literally incredible beauty.
The beauty of the text, the images, the music, the oceanic sadness of Adam and Harry, and also their love so natural and happy. Together, the two actors each radiate in the image, with this delightful paradox: each is more beautiful, larger, more present when they are both. The more space one takes up, the more space it leaves for the other. This is where Andrew Haig directs, with his two main actors a cinematic masterpiece : it sublimates and transcends its frame, and no screen will ever be too large to be projected Without ever knowing each other.
Anatomy of a masterpiece
As it unfolds Without ever knowing each other, all certainties falter. What is Adam doing? What is he looking for? In the end, it doesn’t matter if he can write. It doesn’t even matter what the outcome of his relationship with Harry will be. With his parents, returned from the dead to the world of the living – or would Adam be the one to join them? – start this conversation that no one can have: talking to your parents, who are no longer parents, about their child that you once were. Talking between adults who no longer know their respective parents and thus dealing with two societies that never coexist. Here homosexual identity plays a role, but more profoundly it serves as a gateway to a broader, more metaphysical question: who are we, each of us, and who are we? how we love each other, together ? The idea is fantastic, as is its execution on screen.
It’s actually hard to explain Without ever knowing each other, to say it, and here it is, once again, a masterpiece of cinema. His images, his story, his photography, his actors together form something so clear, so limpid, so profoundly powerful that no words could faithfully convey it. Except perhaps that at its end, astonishing and overwhelming, there is no longer any joy, nor sadness, nor hope, nor regret, nor any other dialectical sensation: there is only the full awareness that love, Love in its purest form and complete is the key to absolutely, absolutely, absolutely everything.
Without Ever Knowing Us by Andrew Haig, in theaters starting from February 14, 2024. Above is the trailer. Find all our trailers here.
Source: Cine Serie
Ray Ortiz is a journalist at Gossipify, known for his coverage of trending news and current events. He is committed to providing readers with accurate and unbiased reporting, and is respected for his ability to keep readers informed on the latest news and issues.
