Andrew Haigh's "The All of Us Strangers" depicts Yamada Taichi's "imagination of the loser"

Synopsis of "All of Us Strangers"

At night, the presence of people fades away in a tower apartment in London. Adam, a screenwriter who lives alone, coincidentally receives a visit from Harry, a mysterious resident of the same apartment building, and his mundane daily life changes. As his relationship with Harry deepens, Adam is drawn back to the world of his childhood, and his parents, who died 30 years ago, appear before him, exactly as they were. He feels his tightly closed heart loosen up in this unexpected reunion, but an unexpected world unfolds before him...

Index

• A film adaptation of Taichi Yamada's English novel
• Andrew Haigh's personal perspective
• Yamada Taichi and "The Imagination of the Loser"
• London in the 80s and the music and film scene of the time
• Great cast: Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal

A film adaptation of Taichi Yamada's English novel

Is there a certain compatibility between British and Japanese films? In 2023, writer Kazuo Ishiguro wrote a screenplay for Akira Kurosawa's masterpiece " Ikiru " (52), setting it in Britain, and the film " Living " (22) became a hot topic. Bill Nighy, who replaced Takashi Shimura as the protagonist, who has only a short time left to live, was well-received for his stern performance and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor. Ishiguro himself was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Speaking of stage plays, Hirokazu Koreeda's 1998 film " It's a Wonderful Life " is being adapted into a stage play titled "After Life" at the well-established National Theatre in 2021. The script for the stage version was written by the much-talked-about playwright Jack Thorne, who wrote the award-winning play "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child" and last year also wrote the script for "The Motive and the Cue," a story by John Gielgud and Richard Burton that was also hugely popular at the National Theatre.

And now, " The All of Us Strangers " (23) has been made, which is an adaptation of Taichi Yamada's novel " The All of Us Strangers ' Summer " set in Britain. This novel has also been made into a film directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi, but " The All of Us Strangers" is a film adaptation inspired by the novel.

As a Japanese person, I can't help but compare this work to the original Japanese novel by Taichi Yamada and the Japanese film adaptation, but the film directed by Andrew Haigh is based on the English version. It's probably best to think that the nuances of the English translation are slightly different from the Japanese novel.

"All of Us Strangers" (C)2023 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.

The first person to become interested in adapting this novel into a film was Anthony Minghella, who likes adapting literary novels into films such as " The English Patient " (1996) and "The Talented Mr. Ripley " (1999). His directorial debut, " The Night Before Christmas " (1991), was about a dead man who becomes a ghost and watches over his lover, so it seems to have a similar story to " All of Us Strangers Summer ." I would have liked to see a film adaptation by Minghella, who liked delicate sensibilities, but he passed away in 2008. After several twists and turns, it seems that the offer was made to director Hay.

The Japanese novel was published in 1987, and the author learned about it through a recommendation from someone, and remembers finding it interesting. However, since Yamada Taichi was a TV scriptwriter, it seemed a little surprising that he wrote it as a novel rather than a TV drama. The English version was published in 2003. The British version was published by Faber & Faber, a prestigious literary publisher, and is titled "Stranger." The translator is an American, Wayne P. Lammers, who has also lived in Japan.

To give a brief synopsis of the story based on the English version of the novel, the main character is a TV scriptwriter in his late 40s. He has just divorced his wife and has a son who is a university student. He has given the house to his wife and lives in an apartment. One night, a woman who lives in the same apartment asks him to join her for a drink, but he declines the invitation. This is because just before that, he has received a shocking confession from a man who used to work with him at a TV station. He has fallen in love with the main character's ex-wife and is considering a serious relationship with her.

The man immediately rejected the neighbor's advances because he had some distrust for women. That night, when the woman appeared at his door, he felt uncomfortable and saw her as his wife, so he rejected her. The depiction of this part (in English) left a strong impression.

Then, when he stops by his hometown of Asakusa, he meets his parents, who are supposed to be dead, and feels deeply comforted. The descriptions of the entertainment halls in Asakusa also seem quite strange when read in English. In the British film adaptation, the setting is changed to London, and these Japanese elements are cut out. Moreover, the protagonist is a gay man instead of a divorced man, and his position is also different from that of the original.

Andrew Haigh's personal perspective