'The Stranger' Review

François Ozon slowly and meticulously reassembles Camus’ The Stranger to create one of the best adaptations put to screen.

Albert Camus’ first novel, L’Etranger, is, by virtue of its philosophy, a tough one to adapt to screen. What is, in many ways, a celebration of fatalism, doesn’t quite gel with the neoliberal inevitability that has sat at the centre of cinematic storytelling in Hollywood for many years. Granted, European filmmaking was a mere 20 years from adopting Camus’ approach; it is only after watching Ozon’s monochrome retelling that the similarities to Godard’s Breathless made themselves known. But even then, the jagged edges of the absurdist pill at the centre of Camus’ philosophy, the absolute meaninglessness and simplicity that Carl Viggiani famously lamented would require a book at least as long as the novel to analyse in full, is given too concretely a beginning and an end.

The task for Ozon and his cast and crew, then, was no mean feat; within this context, however, the resulting film is a laudable attempt. The name itself is already a good indicator; L’Etranger has been variously translated into English as “The Foreigner,” “The Outsider,” or “The Stranger”. It’s in Ozon’s choice to name his adaptation The Stranger that we can see the core of his approach. Benjamin Voisin’s dreary, yet enduringly mysterious Meursault is not presentless on screen; in fact, the first third of the film doesn’t include many other people at all. But he also isn’t present, creating as much meaning for the viewer as the sand paths and stone buildings of Algiers, with all its colonial-era inhabitants.

The film’s opening is a recreation of a French advertisement to settle in the North African colony. Framed ironically, it brings up memories of Gillo Pontecorvo’s definitive depiction of colonial struggle in Algeria, The Battle of Algiers (1966), where collectivity turns to ambiguity through the manipulation of racial stereotypes for revolution. Though not in this post-colonial context, it is perhaps the most fitting way to describe Ozon’s depiction of Meursault in this liminal state between representation and alienation. While this connection may initially seem short-sighted, it tracks with Camus’ own belief in world federalism—a result, perhaps, of his being born in French Algeria in the early 20th Century. The signal towards the colonial history in this cinematic context sets firm and necessary groundwork to deal with the immensity of meaninglessness in the film, using the same racial tensions created by colonisation as a bannister.

This colonial history even creeps into the film’s narrative movement. This is where Ozon manipulates the pitfalls of cinema to fit the story’s difficult principles. Narrative movement is not intrinsic to the story, but is almost a character in itself. It appears briefly at the beginning, with a flash-forward to Mersault’s imprisonment for “killing an Arab”, before vanishing. The first half of the film, including Meursault’s reunion with Marie, features many unmoving shots, cuts to black, all minimising time in the most wasteful manner.

Narrative movement only creeps back in when we meet Sintès, at which point it shrouds the agentless Mersault, who remains unchanged. It finally rearing its ugly head with the killing itself, at which point the chiaroscuro created by the black and white grading has vanished, leaving him fully exposed to the light of day. In fact, for those who have read the book, it is this light of day that makes him kill—exposure, narrative movement, character development, these are Ozon’s stand-ins for Camus’ concept of death, the absurd fact of life that should be embraced.

The film follows Camus’ story faithfully, ending with the same absurd feelings of despair and liberation. What makes Ozon’s adaptation strong is not an attempt to amend Camus’ philosophy to fit cinema’s historically incompatible mode of representation, but manipulating these modes of representation to fit Camus’ philosophy. Talking about why he worked in theatre for a large portion of his career, he explains that he enjoys how props, lighting and sets can be the route of a work, quoting an old adage: a good director is one who ‘knows the weight of the scenery in their arms.’ It is clear that Ozon is all too aware of this responsibility, evident in the way he has used his cinematic tools to produce a strong adaptation of this difficult text.

The Stranger is in cinemas now.