What can Camus’s The Stranger teach Gen Z?

Can Francois Ozon’s sleek adaptation inspire this lot? I hope so. Cinema needs new audiences as it faces its own existential crisis amid this current generation’s migration to streaming, content and Tik Tok, the alienation of the phone screen, the atomisation and disconnect of social media. 

Their young presence in the Curzon foyer gave me flashbacks, to my own A-level self, when Camus certainly changed my life, inspiring in me a lifelong devotion to French culture. So much so that I’m actually here not just to watch this movie (again) but to meet with the film’s star Benjamin Voisin to discuss casting him in the film I’m now producing, an existential tale of a young Englishman’s search for authenticity gained through his work in a Paris restaurant.

But, as the students file in, I’m told by an apologetic and slightly hassled publicist, that Benjamin lost his passport and couldn’t get on the Eurostar, so will instead be on video call for the post-screening Q&A with a now-solo Ozon.

Film producing, eh? Since taking up the role, the phrase I’ve heard most often used to describe its inherent vagaries is: “pushing the rock up the hill”. I wonder if everyone who says it knows they’re quoting from Camus himself, from his The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), written at the same time as L’Etranger, in 1942. 

Yes, it’s a tough gig prone to ups and downs but as I always counter, Camus did conclude: “Il faut imaginer Sisyphe heureux” – we have to imagine that Sisyphus is happy in his task.

And I am, deliriously so. And while I watch the film again, having first seen it at the Venice Film Festival at the end of last summer, I ponder the plight of Meursault and his actions in colonial Algeria, viewing through the modern interpretation of the excellent Voisin and Ozon’s version.

Ozon hasn’t changed much, capturing the ruthless precision of Camus’ prose more in the crisp, monochrome cinematography than anywhere else. Voisin’s moody on-screen handsomeness is charismatic enough to keep us gripped while we try and fathom his character’s inexplicable, disaffected behaviour.

Why make this film now, why play this part? Existential questions, indeed, but how does it speak to these students, these young people who are our future? I don’t know – they were too shy to put their hands up in the Q&A.

It strikes me that, since my first viewing, the world has definitely got even more absurd – and we could do with a dose of adherence to individual authenticity and self-determination amid the mass of pile-ons, cancellations and group-thinks on everything from politics to war, race and celebrity.

However, at the centre of the book and this film, Meursault does kill an Arab for no real reason, a scene expertly directed and paced by Ozon. The colonial elements are subtly brought to the fore, a notion of ‘white privilege’ that isn’t so pointed in the book. It’s interesting, too, how cinema gives a face to this young Algerian, allowing him a dignity and emotional connection with the viewer that is absent for the reader in the novel.

Why would a rising star such as Voisin want to go there, kill an Arab and be associated with this figure for a new generation? 

“It’s that phrase, ‘Il faut imaginer Sisyphe heureux’, that got me,” he tells me when we do eventually catch up. “I thought about it every day as I was playing this guy, how to get across the slow burn, the restraint of someone who really doesn’t care what people think of him.”

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Voisin, who shot to fame in France in Ozon’s gay romance Summer of 85 before winning a Cesar for Balzac adaptation Lost Illusions in 2021. He’s now internationally recognised for Napoleonic-period chef drama Careme on Apple and, having embodied this unknowable icon of French literature, he’s preparing to play the inexplicable French pop icon Johnny Halliday in a new biopic.

“I see how many people struggle to be true to themselves today, and wanted to get that determination in Meursault across. There’s something admirable in that, even if he does a very bad act. 

“I don’t want people to like him, but I had to find a way to inhabit him as authentically as he does himself. It was actually a real pleasure to act it, even if it doesn’t look like I’m enjoying it. You have to imagine that I’m happy.”

By his own admission, Voisin was withdrawn on the set, kept himself apart from the rest of the crew during the shoot in Tangiers, which stood in for 1940s colonial Algiers. “That was really tough, but it was the only way – I really did want to be mates with everyone and have fun and explore Morocco, but I just needed to get into Meursault’s head, inside the wall he puts around him.”

It must have been hard because in real life, Voisin is a jumpy, cheeky presence, funny, playful, and chain-smoking, even during the Zoom on the cinema screen. When I’d met him in Venice, he had two packs of cigarettes on the table in front of him for a morning of interviews. 

He’s an instinctive sort of actor, but tells me in his solitude, he did develop a passion for existential philosophy during this job. He quotes Schopenhauer, and Robert Bresson’s 1976 book Notes on The Cinematographer, but not in a pretentious way, with a twinkle.

“The absurd really interests me now, because I think that’s where are all living still,” he says. “It’s very hard to find meaning in modern existence if you start thinking about it, and I did. I’d lie in my room, like Meursault does in prison, and wonder ‘what’s the difference between my ceiling and the sky?’ It’s heavy stuff.

“You’re born, you grow, you die – what’s the point? I still don’t have the answer. But at least with this film, with this character, I was constantly asking myself that question. 

“I was glad to be able to get back on set and disappear into the work, to be honest. Working is a response, if not really an answer. But it’s 85 years since the book, and I think the new generation can find their own answers, starting with this movie.”

What did he take away from the experience of being inside that head, I wonder. And does he think his Meursault, this cool anti-hero, can teach the new teenagers something, then? 

Benjamin twinkles again and takes a drag on his cigarette. He pauses. “You know what I learned, and what is the most useful advice? That if I don’t have an opinion about something, I should just shut up.”

That’s good advice for a film producer, too. But of course I’ll let you know if he takes the part in my film…

The Stranger is in UK cinemas from April 10