There are probably dozens of films titled The Stranger, or variations of it. Some are called The Strangers, plural, while others do away with the ‘the’ altogether — as Justin Timberlake once said, it’s cleaner. But The Stranger is the kind of movie title that comes across like a last-minute studio mandate, and not something that you’d ever read on a first draft. It’s vague enough to suit all sorts of stories, and it also implies a certain diceyness that might be alluring to some audiences.
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But another thing happens when you come across a film called The Stranger. You subconsciously assume that it’s going to be mediocre. This is probably because the title positively screams of generic sameness. Plus, how cool could a movie that shares its name with a Stone Cold Steve Austin vehicle even be?
All of this is to say that the latest film to have inherited this moniker, a bleak Australian crime drama that premiered at this year’s Cannes Film Festival before debuting this week on Netflix, didn’t deserve this sort of treatment. That title hardly represents the kind of slow-burn, arthouse death stare into the heart of the abyss that this film is.
Joel Edgerton plays an undercover cop named Mark, who befriends a shady guy named Henry, played by Sean Harris. Henry was suspected of killing a young boy in the year 2002 — the movie is largely set in 2010 — and has since been wandering around Australia, keeping to himself, and looking for a fresh start. Mark shows up in his life, pretending to be a member of an influential crime syndicate, and offers him just that.
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When you condense the premise of this film down to its bare essence, it certainly sounds a lot schlockier than it actually is. Directed by Thomas M Wright, The Stranger can hardly be described as a cousin to Martin Scorsese’s The Departed. In narrative scope, it’s a lot like Bong Joon-ho’s Memories of Murder; it goes back and forth in time as the investigators crack open an old case. And in tone, it’s darker than Cary Joji Fukunaga’s True Detective; there’s a lot of philosophical introspection about the nature of evil. The Stranger is also a great new entry in a turn-of-the-century wave of hopeless Aussie movies that includes titles such as Sleeping Beauty, Snowtown, Animal Kingdom, and the recent Nitram.
The first time that we see sunlight in the film is well past the 30-minute mark. Having been welcomed into the mob with a shrug and a handshake, thanks to Mark’s intervention, Henry has a reason to feel hopeful again. “I’ve never felt more free,” he says, squinting at the sun, as the man tasked to elicit a confession from him looks on silently.
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While it is initially suggested that Mark and Henry might eventually develop an actual friendship despite the circumstances, the movie never really takes the story down that road. Wright, who also wrote the screenplay, keeps cutting back to other investigators working in the shadows, hoping for Mark to have a breakthrough that would enable them to close in on Henry once and for all.
Artistic as Wright’s filmmaking is — the experience is similar to watching an Andrew Dominik movie — The Strangers is, at its core, a procedural. You can sense the effort that goes into a decade-long manhunt for a child-murderer, and just how many moving parts (and resources) an investigation like this requires.
The character work is subtle, without pushing against the forward momentum of the plot. Consider Mark’s scenes with his son. He’s clearly out of his depth as a single dad — Mark is short-tempered, and seems generally distant — but he is also visibly concerned about the boy. For the investigating officer to have a child of the same age as the one he is fighting to get justice for borders on self-parody, but somehow, the movie manages to make you briefly forget that this is a cliche at all. This is perhaps because we meet Mark’s son before we are given more details about the child that Henry supposedly killed. A lesser movie would’ve done it the other way around.
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Which brings us to the sneaky depth of the film’s seemingly uninspired title. The Stranger could, of course, be a nod to either Mark or Henry — that is essentially what they are to each other, despite how close they eventually become — but it could also be a reference to that old warning that mothers give to their children, a warning that the child Henry is said to have killed probably ignored. And although the film is based on a real incident, it steers clear of giving any details about it. Nor does it identify the victim or their family in any manner. There is no doubt as to where its allegiances lie.
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But underneath the film’s procedural plot, there unfolds a more abstract fable. The Stranger opens with a voiceover of Mark teaching his son to meditate the darkness out of his body. Perhaps he is concerned that by spending too much time with him, he is poisoning his own child with the same venom that he is forced to absorb from people like Henry. But there isn’t a single moment in the film where you’re on the fence about your feelings for the suspected killer. Harris is a singularly sinister screen presence, and there’s something about the hollowness in his eyes that removes any possibility of empathy. He’s incredible, as is this film.
The Stranger
Director – Thomas M Wright
Cast – Joel Edgerton, Sean Harris
Rating – 4/5
