[Providence] is a meta-film, a film about the making of films, a work of art about the fabricating of art works…. It is a film dependent more upon the mechanics of the medium than upon any simple mimesis….

Because a meta-film implies a simultaneous observation of the world and a meditation on itself, there is an unspoken tension, never resolved, within the work. Or, if resolved, it is only because the two functions have converged. The final scene of Providence is the only 'pure' scene in the film. We meet the real offspring of Clive Langham …, famous writer, liberated for the first time from his creative imagination. That liberation also implies the old man's death. The release of tension, on a structural level, comes from the fact that the spectator finally observes the author whose meditation is ended. If we use the mathematical construct of a topology, we...