Providence

A film that runs across a single night. Clive is an old novelist. He is ill, in pain, drinking heavily, and cannot sleep. Lying in bed he constructs a novel. He takes his characters from his own family and stages the events in his head. From there the film shows that imagined novel. A courtroom, a wood, a house, a football stadium and a military zone. In the novel his son Claude is a prosecutor. Cold, sarcastic, and merciless to his wife. There is his other son Kevin as well. He is the man on trial and Claude is trying to crush him. Then the scenes break down. As Clive's pain rises the characters forget their lines, the places change, and the same speeches repeat in different settings. What the narrative is interested in is not the novel but the writer: the man loads onto fiction what he cannot say to his family and draws everyone according to his own anger. There is unease in the city too. Soldiers move through the streets, people are rounded up, and what this is is never explained. The last section changes entirely. Morning comes, the invention ends, and the family really arrives; the same people turn out to be completely different. This was the first film Alain Resnais made in English. The music is by Miklós Rózsa and was deliberately written in the manner of old Hollywood; the mismatch with the image is part of the narrative. John Gielgud, Dirk Bogarde, Ellen Burstyn and David Warner are in the cast. Alain Resnais directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes difficult films moving between fiction and reality. Who it is not for: anyone looking to follow easily; the narrative is deliberately inconsistent and for the first ninety minutes it is unclear who is real.