Providence [VHS] [1976]

In Alain Resnais' solitaire of a movie the multi-layered cosmos of a family comes to life. Every time I watch it I feel myself drawn into the twilight zone of its multiple realities, effortlessly crossing the borderline between its own worlds and mine, pulled deeply into the story of 5 troubled souls meandering through each others lives. A splendid cinematic landscape unfolds, deliciously designed by its creators for an emotional survival trip.

Mr. Gielgud - the father, Ellen Burstyn - Bogarde's wife, Elaine Stritch - Bogarde's mistress and David Warner - they all unite their magnificent talents to create that surreal world called Providence.
Mr. Bogarde, then. His face. The eloquent backcloth of the unspeakable. His eyes. The portrait of the invisible.

An old family patriarch and famous writer conjures up images of his past while lying in his night of fatal illness. Confronted by death, the father is re-inventing his family. Subconsciously his brutal reflexions are posing the question if a moral language has to form the superstructure of human life.

„The facts are not in dispute!"
Dirk Bogarde enters the scene. We are witnessing a courtroom sequence, he is prosecuting an alleged killer. Razor-sharp voice, icy demeanor, menacing presence, he is oozing moral superiority in a mega overdose. But it is deeply unsettling, this lawyer's charismatic artificiality - is he the singer or the song? Mesmerizing.

A spacious villa on a sun-drenched mediterranean cost. An ideal backdrop for a relaxing gathering of family and friends I think. I feel the ice melting. I am caught in a trap.
On closer look the villa is a fata morgana of a home, its cold splendor mirroring the empty inner world of its inhabitants. A giant dollhouse, erected by the old puppeteer as a permanent home for his creatures.
Bogarde commandeering the house - watch him sit in a revealing shadow. A cigarillo. Elegant toy. Waiting to exhale.

The kitchen serves as the stage for the next act in the daily drama of Bogarde and Burstyn. The kitchen, a healing garden. The tongue tasts it. The tongue kills it. The couple moves in a brilliant choreography around this wasteland of a kitchen, starving in front of food. Class acting, shattering to watch.

Last set: the park of a huge country estate in England. The old man presides over his birthday table, surrounded by his family. But nothing is the way it seems. Bogarde, looking at his father with a kind of loving, melancholic resignation, eyes full of wounds unhealed. They are aliens to each other. The moral code of Bogarde - in antithesis to his father: „ Honesty, scrupulousness, discrimination, protectiveness, tenderness. Aversion to violence and a constant practice of terror."

It is a timeless, ageless work of art. It is tempting you to rewatch it, not by forcing you to take its view of the matter but by setting your imagination free. I truly recommend it.