When we watched the film, “Trust” after reading Camus’ “The Stranger”, I think myself and a lot of my peers were probably struck by many of the parallels that seemed to exist between the book and the film. After all, the movie has a very mundane and depressing tone for a lot of its duration, just like “The Stranger”, where lot of events seem to happen that would be best explained through an absurdist world devoid of meaning. For example, at the beginning of the movie, Maria’s dad just suddenly collapses and dies. It is explained as a result of many problems her dad had, but it is presented in the movie as a totally inexplicable, random event that happens to occur at just the right moment for Maria’s mother to unleash all of her wrath onto Marie. The whole film takes on a gray, monotonous sort of feeling while details like Matthew having a grenade and a baby being kidnapped seem to be presented rather bluntly; there are things that just happen or exist and are portrayed in a rather straight forward way not unlike moments in “The Stranger” where domestic violence and murder are also described as something that just sort of happens and is experienced by Meursault; not in a particularly emotional way, just as a reality of the absurd world he lives in.

Despite these similarities, an interesting difference I saw between the two, especially towards the end of “Trust”, comes in the form of how some of the morals or ethics shown in both. Something I found striking is that although Matthew is a very smart guy and can fix all kinds of electronics, part of the reason he keeps quitting/has difficulty coming to terms with his job is because he sees it as unethical. The company he works for makes defective products so that they will get clients to come back and pay for them to be fixed. The company wants Matthew to keep his head down and just do his job, but it becomes clear that Matthew feels strongly against this so much that he keeps quitting. When reflecting about this moment I thought this showed an interesting divergence from “The Stranger”. If this were Meursault’s job, in my opinion, Meursault would absolutely not care if he was scamming people or not. We see that Meursault barely has a moral pulse throughout the entire book, for example when writing the letter for Raymond or when murdering someone.

In contrast, in “Trust”, the movie actually ends with Matthew and Marie sharing a genuine moment at the computer-repair shop where their love for each other is evident and Marie saves Matthew from his own suicide attempt. Marie and Matthew don’t really have much in terms of power or money to gain by loving one another, but over the course of the movie they seem to find that they really do genuinely love and understand one another. Meursault doesn’t really ever feel that emotional towards other characters, usually valuing people in a more materialist sense. While the movie ends in uncertainty for Marie and Matthew, it is clear that they have broken through the mundane world with their genuine emotions for one another, creating a world between the two of them that is dynamic enough to dispel any ideas about an absurdist existence. Ultimately, one story features a man arrested, contended, and alone on death row with another also arrested but clearly discontented and wanting to be with Marie. Despite many of the apparent similarities between the novel and the film, “real”, emotional, love is responsible for revealing some very stark differences between “Trust” and “The Stranger”.