Director: François Ozon
Writer: François Ozon
Stars: Benjamin Voisin, Rebecca Marder, Swann Arlaud
Synopsis: In 1930s Algeria, the daily life of an indifferent Frenchman is shaken by the death of his mother and a fateful encounter on a beach.
This year (in Québec, at least), we will have the privilege of seeing two adaptations of literary masterpieces that not only continue to be taught in schools worldwide but also stand the test of time within contemporary society. You can always discover something new while re-reading Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (which looks to be desecrated by Emerald Fennell in her upcoming 50 Shades of Grey-esque adaptation, though none can fully judge the work without having seen it), and the same can be said with Albert Camus’ The Stranger (L’étranger).
This might be a controversial opinion, but since Wuthering Heights has been adapted to film time and again (to middling results), transposing The Stranger to the screen seems like a more daunting task, especially because the few that dared (Luchino Visconti, most notably) failed miserably. Camus’ book asks its readers to put themselves in the shoes of a man with little to no emotions, feeling indifferent (or bored) about his mother’s death, and the eventual killing he will commit under the sun.
The first-person narrative, which creates a discordant connection between the protagonist and the book’s readers, is the most essential element of Camus’ masterpiece, but does it seem fully suited to filmic proportions? This is the question François Ozon asks himself as he transposes the novel to the screen, and while many creative liberties are taken to deepen the sociopolitical context of Meursault’s (Benjamin Voisin) killing and change the perspectives of the story, the end result still ends up being nothing short of masterful, which feels like a miracle given how someone who, like me, had a profound epiphany while reading Camus’ book in school, doesn’t feel one ounce of anger towards the changes made in his version of the text.
In fact, many of Ozon’s permutations broaden our conception of the character, without employing a first-person device to put us in Meursault’s shoes. The political context – in particular, French-occupied Algiers – imbues the atmosphere with a disquieting tension that never really leaves the audience or the protagonist, who wanders through an environment he feels a stranger in. Meursault has never really “fit in” with the places he has lived, but feels more uncomfortable being in a country that isn’t his, which is occupied by colonizers from his birth country. Camus never really deepened this context in the book, nor does he give the Arab Meursault killed during The Stranger’s midpoint a name, while the context is the text of Ozon’s film.
The first hour or so of Ozon’s 122-minute psychological drama puts us in the middle of Algiers’ disquieting atmosphere. It’s often a silent introductory half, as the protagonist barely speaks. When he does, it’s usually to say variations of the sentence, “I don’t know.” Manu Dacosse’s (one of the best cinematographers working today) visual language completely absorbs us in the internal and external tension that lies within Meursault’s very being, rendered in a stark, almost classical black-and-white.
We sit with Meursault as he contemplates not only what his mother’s death means for him, but what it means to live in an occupied state as an occupier. He’s a stranger in a land that doesn’t belong to him, and, in fact, doesn’t even know if returning to Paris would ease him of the internal suffering he clearly feels (without showing an ounce of exterior emotion), attempting to fabricate a life in Algiers with his girlfriend, Marie Cardona (Rebecca Marder), without fully having a connection with her, or anyone around him.
It’s a miserable existence, sadly worsened when he kills an Arab who pointed a knife at him and his friend Raymond Sintès (Pierre Lottin), and is condemned to a trial not on what he did, but on who he is. This is also the second part of the novel, but it is far more psychologically active in Ozon’s hands than when Camus wrote it in the first person. The French filmmaker attempts to excavate the very nature (more aptly, Camus’ conception) of Meursault within the confines of a thrilling courtroom drama that rarely questions his actions (when it should be the heart of the trial), but examines his lack of human emotions as the heart driving the murder he committed.
Of course, like in Camus’ book, we don’t have an answer that lies at the heart of his quiet nature, but Meursault seemingly feels more three-dimensional in the hands of Ozon and Voisin, whose second collaboration with the director is an even bigger winner than Summer of ‘85. In fact, The Stranger might be Ozon’s most artistically and thematically compelling work, whose modifications he makes to the source material enhance our understanding of who the character might be (since Camus leaves much to interpretation), much further than how he was written (the millisecond of homoeroticism, for example, seems insignificant, but it may provide a broader key to Meursault’s complex inner feelings).
The black-and-white looks utterly spectacular on the biggest possible screen, and the atmospheric sounds envelop the bleak environment that has been stripped of its color ever since France colonized it, creating a landscape that feels somehow more textured than how Camus described the Algiers Meursault lived in. Then comes the final scene, which sees the protagonist reckon his (lack of) spiritual beliefs with a priest, played by Anatomy of a Fall’s Swann Arlaud. It might run a little too long, but the way in which Ozon wrestles with theology and the great mystery – and certainty – at the heart of being human (death) could be the best thing he’s ever written. When one knows they are going to die, the most profound spiritual experiences usually occur, even in people who consistently want to reject them.
Meursault is faced with a push-pull that says more about his character than anything Camus wrote in The Stranger, transcending it from mere literature to a text that allows us to understand what lies at the very heart of being human. Not only does Ozon do the work justice with his adaptation ofThe Stranger, but he may even surpass it by cogently interpreting what was initially written as the smaller part of a big sociopolitical problem. And by giving the person Meursault killed a name at the tail end of the film, the context (and the protagonist’s place within it) becomes the most important element of the character study at the heart of the source material.
The Stranger is currently playing in several Québec cinemas, but should Ozon’s film ever be released in other parts of the world, it’s one that demands your attention.
