Albert Camus' classic existential novel 'The Stranger' receives a sleek, stunning cinematic update

The Stranger, directed by François Ozon, just opened in theaters, and it’s an interesting, atmospheric adaptation of Albert Camus novel that intelligently updates the story with a 21st-century sensibility.

First and foremost, it is cinematic, combining Ozon’s storytelling skill with stunning black-and-white visuals. The novel, one of the most important works of existentialist literature, is told from its anti-hero’s emotionally detached, even numb, point of view.

Its protagonist wrestles with questions of how to act in a godless universe where everything is absurd and meaningless, and makes a shocking choice to commit a murder that apparently means nothing to him.

Ozon decides to expand on the novel’s story by situating its anti-hero, Meursault, firmly in a vividly depicted time and place and deepening the roles of the people around him, since dramatizing his inner life would make for a bleak, one-note movie.

Most importantly, he brings the late 1930s/early 1940s Algiers to life and shows the culture clash between the formal, Francophone community (the so-called “pieds-noirs”) and the indigenous population, some of which is shown to still be traditional and some of which is modernizing.

Camus' original work sometimes seen as detached from Arab Algerian population

Camus, born and raised in the French community in Algeria, had a complex relationship to the place and to the French colonials there. He was politically active in trying to help the Algerians obtain rights and independence but also rejected the terrorism of some factions and felt that a compromise allowing French residents to continue living there was possible.

His grandparents moved to Algeria, and he was the second generation born there, so his roots in the country ran deep. In recent decades, the fact that the Arab characters in the book, including the murder victim, are not named came under criticism and was seen as evidence of the colonialist French community’s detachment from the Arab population.

The film opens with a montage detailing life in colonialist Algeria, and much of the movie features atmospheric street scenes that make it clear that the French community there is only part of the picture. As the film focuses on Meursault (Benjamin Voisin, Lost Illusions), much of it is wordless, especially the first half.

He is a handsome clerk in his late 20s in a commercial office who lives alone in a tiny apartment in Algiers. One morning, he receives a telegram informing him of his mother’s death in a government-run old-age facility in a rural area.

He is emotionless as he is given two days off from work and goes to the facility to observe the mourning ritual and attend her funeral. He is not interested in his mother’s friends and what they have to say, or in a man who calls himself her fiancé and grieves for her.

A relationship without meaning

Back in Algiers, he meets Marie (Rebecca Marder, A Radiant Girl), a typist who used to work at his company, and they spend the day together at the beach and the movies, drifting into a sexual relationship. When she asks him if he loves her, he says he doesn’t; that love means nothing to him.

As is not uncommon, she still hangs around him, and when she asks if he wants to marry her, he says he will if she wants to, because it makes no difference to him.

So, the dream of love and having a family means nothing to him, although he clearly enjoys sex. This may make him not unlike many commitment-phobic, taciturn guys. But where he differs becomes clear in his relationship with his volatile neighbor, Raymond (Pierre Lottin), who may or may not be a pimp.

He has beaten his Arab girlfriend, Djemila (Hajar Bouzaouit), whom he suspects of cheating on him, and wants to lure her back to see him again so he can insult her one more time. But he needs Meursault’s help to write her a letter.

Meursault complies, not sympathizing with either Raymond or his mistress, in a storyline that demonstrates how the colonials could take advantage of the impoverished indigenous population. A drunken, elderly neighbor (Denis Lavant) who beats his dog also latches on to Meursault, evoking the same indifference.

When Meursault commits the murder, seemingly on impulse, and is apprehended, he is as detached as he had been in all the previous scenes. He only shows real emotion, anger, when a priest comes to console him against his wishes.

The trial is the core of exploring the novel’s message, and the prosecutors spend more time on whether Meursault, who doesn’t deny his guilt, cared about his mother’s death than anything else, as his own lawyer knew they would.

Not caring about the loss of one’s mother is seen as a worse crime than taking the life of an Arab, and no one seems to think Meursault will pay a heavy price. In contrast to the book, the Arab characters have names, and the script is critical of the lack of concern for them on the part of the prosecutors and other characters.

While this may sound heavy, the movie is engrossing from start to finish and gets across the message about the exploitation of and disregard for the Arab population effectively.

My main criticism is that the film’s black-and-white cinematography and Voisin and Marder’s good looks combine to make some scenes seem like a perfume or cologne commercial, because we have seen so many similar images in such ads.

The adaptation will make you want to reread the novel. It will also make you think. It brings to mind a quote from Pauline Kael’s review of the great new wave classic Breathless by Jean-Luc Godard, also concerning a murder which evokes no feeling in the murderer, and which was doubtless influenced by The Stranger.

Kael wrote, “They just don’t give a damn. How do we connect with people who don’t give a damn? Well, is it really so difficult? Even if they weren’t all around us, they’d still be (to quote Double Indemnity) ‘closer than that.’”

The Stranger is a classic of modern French literature, and adapting it for the screen must have been daunting, but Ozon, an eclectic and often playful and original filmmaker who has made such movies as the Mystery Swimming Pool and the drama about sexual abuse by priests, By the Grace of God, is up to the task.