Review: THE STRANGER

Meursault, young, beautiful and carefree is having a week. He goes from meeting his obligations after his mother's death to picking up a new girlfriend, to falling into involvement with his neighbour's affairs over an Arab woman, to, because the sun was in his eyes, shooting her brother on a beach. It's the Vichy '40s and if you're French you can fly free of the charge of taking out a indigine but at Meursault's trial, the prosecution want to make an example and effectively try him for being disrespectful to his dead mother.

Albert Camus' absurdist story, often entitled The Outsider in English, posits the notion that anyone whose indifference to most of the universe and its team playing crowds will be crushed by them for the insult of refusing to join him. For that reason anyone who reads the novel in their teens or early twenties is likely to identify with every shockingly honest answer he gives to the queries of daily life. His girlfriend asks if he loves her and he rejects the question as meaningless. She then asks if he will marry her and he says sure, why not? and she asks if another woman asked him he'd give the same answers (including the one about marriage) and he says naturally. If this story were told today without reference to Camus' book Meursault might be depicted as being on the austism spectrum. That was never Camus' point. So, how does contemporary auteur Francois Ozon handle it?

Going from the surface, it's set in 1942 and it's in black and white. There is a class divide between the French colonialists and the Algerians. Meursault lives and moves through his days with as little engagement with the rest of humanity as he can manage. He is not a misanthrope nor a Dostoyevskian Underground Man, just someone who communicates only when he has cause and avoids the general annoying flow of life. While Ozon manages to drain the humour from what is a frequently hilarious book, he nevertheless offers a sincere depiction of Meursault's state. 

The indifference which readers for generations have registered as both comical and alarming is splashed across the screen, told not only in Meursault's own evident moment to moment disdain of physical discomfort (the heat is more painful to him than the effect of his mother's death), and the interactions with those around him. Ozon builds this and takes his time. By the scenes where he is publicly reviled for this indifference more violently than his act of murder we are left concerned at his failure to make a case for himself that would not only infuriate the judges and witnesses in the courtroom. 

But then, by the scenes where he grows to understand his relation to the universe and it indifference to anything it contains he finds a kind of perfection that perplexed readers and now audiences of his tale. And what, I wonder, would younger audiences who have not encountered this accessible book make of this film? The trailer that looked like a cosmetics ad with lean and photogenic young people in the sun told nothing of the story. The film itself which works like a Trojan to dispell the impression of the trailer by dumping Meursault into his daily life where we see his detachment and its strange effect. A young man with clear prospects of advancement has so little so say for himself that when he does speak, his lack of connection can startle. Benjamin Voisin in the role uses his prefect beauty for blandness for most of the first half of the film; a man who takes pleasure in wine and sex and the Mediterranean beaches but when annoyed by the blinding glint of a knife, plugs another man with bullets.

In the final act where Meursault gets the chance to broaden and set fire to his self-ideas to reach his state that might be self-negation or cosmic acceptance, he has become straggle-bearded and wild, only very superficially a Jesus but more profoundly a prehistoric figure recognising his place and welcoming the hatred of the world of joiners and judges.

Ozon's insistence on a tension between the growing blandness of the beauty we see and its undercutting existential tension can feel draggy. You can simply sit back and wonder at the richness of the monochrome landscapes, beaches and city life. Indeed, it can feel as though you are invited to. But the Givenchy ad aesthetics here are the decievers, do you fold yourself into that smoothness or work to discern the grind beneath? How close do you get to feeling the apparent ease of Meursault's expressed ennui?

I hate comparisons but there is one worth making here as it is with a very distinct approach. Luchino Visconti's 1967 film presents a much more adamant character. Played by Marcello Mastroiani (who even looks a little like Albert Camus), Meursault is fiery. It works because the readers of the book want that mix of stoicism and passion. Ozon's delay of the latter might feel like a drag but it is truer to Camus' purposes. It means that this newer take with its etheral electronic score (and needle drop treat for those who know over the end credits) allows audiences to take it away and let it bake. And it will taste of bread either nurturing or over processed but bread all the same.

CARRIE @ 50

Carrie White is not having a good day. First, she flubs a catch at volleyball and gets bullied by the other kids. Then, in the shower after the game, everything is going fine until she starts bleeding. She's seventeen which seems late but there's no rulebook for menstruation. That's not the bad bit. The bad bit is her mother not telling her anything about it. At all. You'll meet her mother in a minute. Meantime, Carrie heads to the rowdy crowd of teenage girls as though she might be dying, holding out her bloodied hands in horror. Well, they're teenagers and their ridicule is a babel of taunts and jibes accompanied by a hail of tampons from the shower room dispensers. The PE teacher breaks it up and takes Carrie aside, dispersing the rabble. She takes Carrie to the principal for a day pass. While he means well, he fumbles every attempt at soothing the girl including getting her name wrong so many times that her psychic tolerance meter bursts and she breaks an ashtray. Really, really, really, not a good day.

Her mother Margaret is doorknocking for The Lord. She gets past the mat at one of her daughter's schoolmate's place and is dismissed with a palpable embarrassment. Oh, that's why Carrie never expected what her body was about to do. When both are back home and Margaret gets a call from the school about why Carrie's back early, she flies into a religious rage and punishes her daughter with a spell in the household solitary. Meanwhile, the rest of the girls in the team get detention and one incorrigible loudmouth gets her prom ticket withdrawn. She storms from the scene plotting revenge. So, now the crazy religious parent is blaming her for the sins of all the world and the alphachick is blaming her for missing out on the school's big night and all Carrie ever did was start her period.

Brian De Palma's adaptation of Stephen King's book is one of his most blatant genre films but also one of his most nuanced and deep. What looks like male gaze fetishism in the slomo credit sequence with the rich strings and frontal nudity of people meant to be seventeen is completely undercut by Carrie's menstrual flow. De Palma knew perfectly well that any frat boy or suburban dad getting off on all the flesh and play was going to get the ick as soon as Carrie's pubesence gets real. You would be on a surer bet to accuse the detention workout scene with its sassy music and PE teacher banter but by then the rules have changed. If you really want to get aroused by the girls in their gym outfits moving their bodies so stridently you're probably better off going to a specialist cinema. It's not that it isn't there (it clearly is) it's just that it has more context now. 

De Palma was no hack by this stage, having cut his teeth on a good number of apprentice and journeyman titles to reach the high variety rap sheet that included Obsession, Sisters, and Phantom of the Paradise. Carrie was his first outright horror tale but he clearly enjoyed the kind of suburban darkness of King's style. While the dastardly arc of the revenge plot is writ in giant letters of blood, the development on the ground is Sue's genuine remorse for her part in tormenting Carrie. Sue's insistence on getting her jock boyfriend to ask Carrie to the prom is part of this and offers the possibility that there might be more Christian sacrifice here than in all the operatic blustering of Margaret White.

Then, of course, Margaret's big key to sancitmony is her guilt at the sexual pleasure she felt which she associated with facing life as an abandoned mother to a freak of nature. Her evangelistic Christianity is an unpoppable bubble. Piper Laurie's task in playing this is a tough one. She needs to rail and harrangue as though she means it but to show compassion for her daughter in constant battle with her revulsion. Her dialogue doesn't always allow this but there are scenes in which her torment rises to the surface and the loud robot that results is terrifying.

On the other side, the perfectly cast Sissy Spacek, pale and frail with ragged hair and freckles emerges from the shock of discovering menstruation to a being more determined than ever to declare her independence and will. This, however, does not stem the strength of her psychokinetic powers. As we see the prank in construction in the middle act we tense up at its effects. Spacek plays things raw as though the acts of compassion she does encounter from the likes of the teacher and Tommy Ross (a naturalistic and believable nice alpha boy from William Katt) are scarcely credible miracles. She sees them but is ready for pain. If Spacek's mumbling small town girl in Badlands a few years before was the promise, this credible incredible turn is the fulfilment. Both she and Piper Laurie were nominated for Oscars.

On the lesser side of ethics, the baddies also get good casting. Nancy Allen as uber bitch Chris and her minion Norma (a sneering PJ Soles) do their work but show the vulnerability of their characters' age. Chris's boyfriend is a rising John Travolta who was about to have a very good late '70s. His Billy is comedically macho, thick as two planks but in service to Chris's manipulation, a laughing monster.

When prom night rolls around and all the players and their designs start converging we get a Carrie ready to break from her mother's control. Chris's horrible prank is set to go. Those who know and those who don't flood the venue with the urgency of kids on their night of nights. Tommy is convincingly and touchingly kind to Carrie but knows how to play it for real. And then it's time and it happens.

And then De Palma goes into his own mode of split screen and slow mo to draw out the violence of the prank and Carrie's automatically ruthless and instant revenge. Blood bath after blood bath. The setpiece is part of cinema history and deserves its place. The genre would soon shy from large budgets after the success of a mouse that roared (John Carpenter's Halloween) as keeps happening, but until that time the cinema of the suits could produce this biblically proportioned spectacle. It's a wonder.

I won't spoil the final shot nor the showdown between mother and daughter as they are best seen without prior knowledge. What I will say is that from a culture that was busily deconstructing its cold war puritanism with films that exposed it like Network, Taxi Driver and Carrie, we can heed the call as a warning as we witness the rise of authoritarianism, ruling cynicism and unbound bronze age inspired sloganeering. We'd do well to witness and remember Tommy Ross taking Carrie White by the hand to the dance floor, regardless of the ridicule surrounding them as decency (even that required by others) is still the better choice.

Viewing notes: I watched the magnificent 4K treatment of Carrie from Scream Factory. There is an equivalent local release from Imprint but it costs a bomb. There might well be a more afforabvle standard edition down the road, though. Prime offers it with a subscription.

THE OTHERS @ 25

Grace and her two children live in a mansion on Jersey. It's just past world war two and the Nazi occupiers have left but so have the servants of grace's mansion house. Three locals knock on the door and offer their domestic services and, after some confusion, are let in and start work. But there are restrictions. The windows of the rooms are to be curtained off at all times when the children are in them. The children are allergic to light. When one door is open, the other door must be locked. There are sounds of movement in the house when no one should be there to make them. Grace's daughter Anne claims she sees a boy her own age called Victor. The house is bound by fog.

This is a tale of whispers and shadows, of memory recorded and repressed. And it is a story of responsibility. But none of that is served up front. We need to take our time following Grace and her observations of what is happening in her house. We need to listen to the conversation between her children and observe all of their relations with the servants. We are going to be led on a strange journey which won't make sense until the end (beyond its twist) and then will probably stay unsettled in any thoughts you have of it afterwards.

The look of the piece is a kind of magic hour gothic with deep black shadows and golden tones. The score is spare and quite conventional with slight screeching strings stabbing and discordant swells for momentum. But this feels appropriate. There are no jump scares to warrant orchestral explosions. This situation keeps things on a constantly uncertain balance.

Nicole Kidman as Grace gives us a parent on continuous alert. The order she seeks in the running of the day to day keeps dismantling delicately. She doubts her children's claims of what they have seen but has nothing to replace the stories with. It's a strong, sustained performance which can break into operatic histrionics but mostly kept in uneasy restraint. An old acquaintance of mine who had acted in theatre told me that her director told her to imagine that a pearl necklace had broken and scattered around the room and that she should be constantly examining the carpet for the unrecovered gems. Kidman's turn is like that, she attends each sound and quirk of light, thinking it might contain the solution to mysteries. That she never allows this to stretch into viewer fatigue is testament.

The three servants are led by Irish veteran Fionnula Flannagan whose patience and concern boast a gravitas which can only be understood as the darker details appear. Comedy veteran Eric Sykes reels all of his lifetime career's phsyicality to a hulking silence. On silence, Elaine Cassady's mute Lydia is given the thankless task of recieving information she does not like but cannot convey. If they feel clumped there is a reason for that. The story must have them and have them like this.

I'm going to leave one performance out as mentioning it would constitute a spoiler and I want you to see this film. I'll go straight to the children, instead. Nicholas, the boy with the unearthly pallor, is constantly puzzled to the extent of his sleep being dependably uneven and his queries frustrated. His older sister Anne has a wicked cheek, happily taunting her brother's worries and feeding disinformation like a learned brat. But she is also witness to the shapes of the goings on and her accounts of them are true. When she shows her mother what the figures she has seen look like in her drawing, Grace must admit that it does not feel like a child's fabrication. Anne has dealings with the others, most memorably in a scene which breaks the ambiguity. She, herself, is not afraid but is to receive a shock (beautifully played in a double take) in good time. Alakina Mann and James Bentley give us upper crust kids who are resolutely in their childhood, even when it would have been more convenient for them to grow up a little to aid the narrative.

As I say, I will not spoil this one. It's recent enough to discover anew. In the several rewatches I've done of it, I have found fresh details that only deepen the horror of the situation. Like The Innocents or Dark Water, all good ghost stories should haunt us. This one does.

Viewing notes: I watched my local 4K of this and, most recently, introduced it to two friends who enjoyed it. The 4K is gorgeously renedered and supported by an effective 5.1 audio track. It is currently streaming with a subscription on Stan.