All Of Us Strangers spoilers (directly) below.
If, in between big heaving sobs, you don’t leave All Of Us Strangers humming Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s The Power Of Love, then check your pulse: you too might also be a departed figure from the afterlife.
Writer-director Andrew Haigh’s hauntingly beautiful film understands the power of nostalgia, and how much of it is rooted in sound. “I think almost every single song that comes out was scripted," he recently told IndieWire. "I knew what that music was before I even started, and I made sure we got the rights to it before we started. Everything was sort of designed with that in mind. [The movie] is about the power of music, weirdly, to drag us back into the past.”
Here’s all the key needle drops from the film (watch out for some spoilers along the way):
Setting The Scene in Adam’s Flat – Fine Young Cannibals: Johnny Come Home
While stuck with writer’s block, Adam cues up this archetypal slice of ‘80s pop to transport himself back to the era. As Roland Gift’s falsetto cries out ‘Johnny/We’re sorry/Won’t you come on home’, is it this 1984 track that causes Adam to revisit his own home, and find out if his parents were also sorry for what happened in his childhood? Or is it Build by The Housemartins, that he also spins, that has him yearning for the past once again?
The Christmas Tree Decorating Scene – Pet Shop Boys: Always On My Mind
The family don’t yet know it – well, apart from Adam, that is – but this is the last time they’ll all be together, a picture perfect moment as they decorate the Christmas tree. As they do so, they start to sing along to the 1987 Pet Shop Boys cover of Elvis Presley’s Always On My Mind. The lyrics (Maybe I didn't hold you/All those lonely, lonely times) echo the repressed nature of some middle-England families of that age, but have an extra poignancy and subtext for Adam and his dad. It seems to be at points cathartic, as they sing what they could never express at the time.
The Nightclub Scene – Joe Smooth: Promised Land
Once voted number 4 in DJ Mag’s Top 100 Club Tunes, there’s no dance floor that this song can't fill. The song speaks of unity, of how there’s peace and comfort when we join forces with others – and whether it’s the song or just the bumps of ket Adam and Scott hoofed up in the club toilets, for one moment, Adam is happy, enjoying a transcendental moment among the sweaty, smiling faces in the crowd. If the film is all a dream, we hope that this is one event that actually came to pass for Adam in reality and not just the breakdown afterwards.
The Meltdown Scene – Blur: Death Of A Party
Used to great effect, the one song in the soundtrack from the ‘90s (1997 specifically, from the band’s self-titled album) is a slowed-down, twisted and distorted nightmare, as Adam either falls into a terrifying k-hole, or falls screaming further back into his delusional hallucinations. Perhaps both! Either way, the art-school band track perfectly captures that moment on a night out when it all gets a bit dark.
The End Scene – Frankie Goes To Hollywood: The Power Of Love
“I’ll protect you from the Hooded Claw,” Adam tells Harry in the final scene, “Keep the vampires from your door.” He is, of course, quoting from the Frankie Goes To Hollywood 1984 song, The Power Of Love. It’s not the first time that the song appears in the film, as Adam plays it earlier in the story, and it’s on the TV on the night Harry tries to drop in.
The song would also have extra significance for Adam, who, we learn, lost his parents in a car crash on Christmas Eve. Although not intentionally created as a Christmas song, when the nativity-theme video for the track was released, alongside the religious iconography for the single's artwork, it was placed in the Christmas canon forevermore and hit number one in the charts in 1984. Each new festive year, as Adam heard that song, it will have transported him back to that tragic Christmas as a child when he lost his parents.
It’s a total gut punch of a song to use in the ending minutes of the film, as the lyrics implore us to ‘make love your goal’. This ethos is reflected in both the ending of All Of Us Strangers and in the beginning of the music video, with light emanating from a giant star. Equally, the warm, fire-like lighting that Haigh bathed many of the romance scenes in seems to reference the lyrics ‘Flame on, burn desire/ Love with tongues of fire’, as Adam’s joy with a partner finally illuminates his dark world. Ultimately, as the pair fade into stars and the credits roll, the lyrics sing out: ‘Love is the light/scaring darkness away’.
Back in 2012, Frankie Goes to Hollywood frontman Holly Johnson spoke about his deep attachment to the song. “I always felt like The Power of Love was the record that would save me in this life," he told The Guardian. "There is a Biblical aspect to its spirituality and passion; the fact that love is the only thing that matters in the end.” A mantra that we hope Adam takes with him, wherever he floats off to in the ether.
