The profound philosophical current of existentialism, once a cornerstone of film noir, the French New Wave, and narratives exploring the moral quandaries of fictional hitmen, appears to be experiencing a resurgence. Prepare to dust off your turtlenecks, as upcoming films such as Sirāt and a fresh adaptation of Albert Camus’s classic novel, The Stranger, are poised to reintroduce the concept of existential ennui to contemporary audiences.
Albert Camus’s searing conclusion to L’Étranger (The Stranger) — “For it all to be consummated, to feel less alone, I had only to wish for a big crowd on the day of my execution, and for them to greet me with cries of hate” — stands in stark opposition to the superficial “life advice” often found in today’s social media landscape. In an era dominated by vapid self-help trends, François Ozon’s unexpected new film adaptation of this existentialist masterpiece emerges as a formidable cultural statement. Eighty-four years after the novel’s initial publication, this revival is quite surprising; indeed, L’Étranger was likely not high on the film industry’s list of properties ripe for adaptation. This prompts the question: Does this signal a genuine return to vogue for existentialism, or is the film merely a nostalgic tribute to a philosophy frequently cited by angst-ridden students?
It’s worth noting that Ozon’s interpretation represents a significant improvement over Luchino Visconti’s ill-fated 1967 cinematic attempt at Camus’s novel, Lo Straniero (the only other direct adaptation). Filmed in an elegantly detached silvery monochrome, the new movie offers a refined yet potent reading of the source material. Newcomer Benjamin Voisin delivers a superb performance as the antihero Meursault, a character famously indifferent to his mother’s death and who attributes his fatal shooting of an Arab to the sun’s blinding glare. Voisin’s Meursault embodies a stark, unyielding nonconformism, at times resembling a sociopathic, colonial-era Patrick Bateman, contrasting with the novel’s more quietly acquiescent figure. Furthermore, Ozon adopts a politically assertive stance, explicitly re-centering the narrative on colonial power relations from the very beginning. This is underscored by a cheerful, newsreel-style propaganda film featured in the prologue, which audaciously describes Algiers as a “smooth blend of Occident and Orient.”