Steve D
All over the place and rarely interesting.
Rated 1/5 Stars •
Rated 1 out of 5 stars
01/27/24
Full Review
Audience Member
Another of Resnais's peculiar experiments in narrative form, teasing us to separate John Gielgud's creative will (he is a novelist) from his reality. You see, everything that crosses Gielgud's mind, as he comically and profanely suffers terrible gastric problems, appears on screen. These thoughts, enacted by Dirk Bogarde, Ellen Burstyn, David Warner, and Elaine Stritch, involve his closest family members cold-heartedly inflicting terrible lacerations on each other...and on Gielgud himself (to which he often protests -- his mind must be wandering). As in other Resnais films, the viewer must continually struggle to make sense of the proceedings - and I can't quite guarantee that my interpretation is the correct one. To wit: the final act of the film is suddenly an idyll, with all the characters sitting down to a wonderful country luncheon for Gielgud's 78th with friendly frolicking dogs and a glamourous 360 degree camera move to boot. Miklos Rozsa's score here evokes romantic films of years gone by, whereas earlier in the film's first half it was reminiscent of his noir years; in either case, the score is cranked and intrusive, surely another of Resnais's conscious efforts to remind viewers that all is fiction. In the end, you can't quite be sure which half of this story is reality and which is Gielgud's new novel, which is fantasy and which is anxiety fuelled conjuring. Of course, neither may be the truth because the added twist is that Resnais wants us to know that the real "fiction" he is focused upon is our memories of our own lives, even as we submit unto death.
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
02/04/23
Full Review
Audience Member
One of my favourite Resnais movie right behind Last Year at Marienbad.
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
01/24/23
Full Review
Audience Member
Causa uma certa estranheza assistir a um filme de Resnais falado em inglês sim, não nego, depois de assistir à obra prima L'Année Dernière a Marienbad onde a sonoridade desempenha um hipnotizante papel poético em minha percepção. Entretanto, mesmo que estruturalmente complexo, Providence reflete (por vezes através da narração em off) uma certa acessibilidade ao público em relação ao que está efetivamente acontecendo, uma vez que estabelece de modo claro as bases da história, mesmo que gradativamente. O filme trata de um autor às beiras da morte, cujos princípios morais e pilares afetivos- sempre conflituosos em relação aos normalmente defendidos em âmbito geral - que, aliados à idade, parecem propagar um colapso que se expressa fisiologicamente na precariedade de suas condições de saúde e emocionalmente no processo de criação de seu novo livro de cunho autobiográfico (da qual sua família se torna peça - objeto da qual Providence se trata na maior parte do tempo).
Na forma de um quebra cabeças e no cenário proposto pelo brilhante diretor, desfilam cenários surreais, simbolismos, sobreposições de cenas e personagens, compressão de tempo e espaço, dentre outros recursos com uma função construtiva e metalinguística na história. Tal modo de narrar também permite incursões sobre o caráter dos personagens, gerando alguns momentos hilariantes. Belíssimo filme.
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
01/13/23
Full Review
walter m
In "Providence," Ken Woodford(David Warner), a soldier, is on trial for murder. Ken claims that the man he killed wanted to be put out of his misery to spare him an excruciating death. Luckily, for him, the jury believes him. That does not make Claude Langham(Dirk Bogarde), the prosecutor, any happier in losing the case. At the same time, Claude's wife, Sonia(Ellen Burstyn) tries to befriend and then seduce Ken which fails. In response, Claude's elderly father Clive(John Gielgud), a writer, creates Helen(Elaine Stritch) for Claude, who also bears an uncanny resemblence to Clive's late wife.
First the obvious. "Providence" is a weird movie. That just goes to show you what happens when Alain Resnais makes a movie in English about somebody trying to create his own fantasy world like Clive does here, with unpredictable reality constantly intruding. At first, the military dictatorship depicted in the film may seem like science fiction but the mass arrests in the soccer stadium are meant to I think reflect the then current situation in Pinochet's Chile. Overall, the movie takes place nowhere and everywhere with the only clue being that everybody reads New York Magazine. In any case, the absurdist elements do not work anywhere near as well as the average episode of Monty Python in this movie that simply goes on too long.
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
03/31/23
Full Review
eric b
New Wave icon Alain Resnais continues to test his audience with the marvelous "Providence," a surreal tale in which a dying, cantankerous novelist (John Gielgud, never better) uses people from his life as placeholders to map out an unfinished book. The bulk of the film's action is taken straight from the writer's head and thus is pure fantasy. As if Gielgud's presence isn't impressive enough, the cast is loaded with other world-class talents such as Dirk Bogarde (dark and testy as ever), Ellen Burstyn, Elaine Stritch and David Warner. Warner does seem somewhat miscast, mainly seen as a guileless naif -- it's best to view this performance alongside early roles like "Morgan: A Suitable Case of Treatment" and "Work Is a 4-Letter Word" and forget all the sadistic villains he played later.
The internal story is primarily a love triangle in which Burstyn cheats on husband Bogarde with Warner. There's also a bizarre, undeveloped werewolf motif that hopefully was deleted from the book's final draft (this is a work in progress, after all). "Providence" is a delightful brainteaser -- just do your best to ignore how grating the characters' incessant wine-slurping becomes.
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
03/31/23
Full Review
Read all reviews
>
