All of Us Strangers’ Cinematographer Explains How Lighting Amplified Grief

The powerful emotions of loneliness, loss and the spirit of memory that run through “All of Us Strangers” spoke volumes to cinematographer Jamie Ramsey.

Written and directed by Andrew Haigh, the movie stars Andrew Scott as Adam, a gay screenwriter who lives alone. A chance encounter with Harry (Paul Mescal) leads to a relationship and triggers memories for Adam, who finds himself in a fantastical world when he visits his childhood home and sees his parents (Claire Foy and Jamie Bell) 30 years after they died in a car accident.

Ramsey needed to represent the concept of isolation and loneliness of Adam’s character, while maintaining warmth.

Ramsey lit Adam’s day-to-day world in a straightforward manner.

“But when he goes back to his parents, that’s when the lighting starts to develop this ethereal sense, and the ghost of the past starts to affect his real life.”

In scenes with Adam’s parents, Ramsey deliberately used a strong backlight that would seep through the window and create a glow or a halo around Foy in particular. “It was this idea that they’re on the threshold of passing through, and they’re really on the edge of leaving us,” Ramsey says. “I thought it was so important to have against a strong white light that finds its way into a room or finds its way to a moment.”

Adam’s final visit with his parents takes place in a restaurant where they have a heart-wrenching discussion about his sexuality in perhaps the film’s most devastating moment.

Ramsey casts a clear angelic glow on Bell as Adam is hearing his father’s words. “Conceptually, that’s when they leave him,” Ramsey says. The majority of the scene is played with an afternoon shaft of light coming in, but once they disappear, the sun has set, and the scene is bathed in a cold blue light. “That was to represent the idea that the ethereal presence of life belonged to them. There are three milkshakes left on the table, the light is off, and there’s a vacuum of nothingness,” he explains. “That’s the antithesis of the warm glow represented by the ghost.