Directed by: Paul Schrader
Written by: Paul Schrader, based on Russell Banks’ book
Starring: Richard Gere, Jacob Elordi, Uma Thurman, Victoria Hill, and Michael Imperioli
Runtime: 91 minutes
‘Oh, Canada’ travels on an arthouse journey north and into a man’s internal war
Leo Fife (Richard Gere), a revered documentary filmmaker, is nearing the end of his life. He’s battling cancer but agrees to an on-camera interview to reflect on his career.
His former students, Malcolm (Michael Imperioli) and Diana (Victoria Hill), prepared a list of questions, 25 or so, to ask, but Leo seizes control of the discussion as he deep dives into his personal history, an odyssey that led this American to move to Canada during the Vietnam War.
Director Paul Schrader’s “Oh, Canada” is based on his friend Russell Banks’ 2021 book “Foregone”. Schrader also adapted the screenplay and called Banks’ work a “mosaic.” The official definition of one is “a picture or pattern produced by arranging together small colored pieces of hard material, such as stone, tile, or glass.”
This critic didn’t read “Foregone”, but Schrader takes an unconventional, arthouse perspective in revealing Leo’s path by offering fragments of the character’s memories during his most consequential years.
This movie is a confessional, and rather than ponder grandeur and glory, Leo professes his trespasses and regrets. Indeed, Leo’s blatantly candid disclosures were not Malcolm and Diana’s vision for a celebratory interview in which his wife (Uma Thurman) was also present. Still, our lead’s exertion toward exposing his truths makes for a worthy and complicated watch over a 91-minute runtime.
Gere is convincing and compelling as a man riddled with the troubles that have weighed on his conscience for decades. Leo insists that he must articulate the decisions that shaped his life. His feelings gush from his throat with the hope that he exhausts his innermost secrets before he dies. Leo is determined but vulnerable. He is an esteemed celebrity, but makeup artist Scott Hersh ensures that Gere’s Leo looks sickly and frail with a grayish complexion and a balding hairline. Schrader even includes a scene where Leo needs a nurse to help use the restroom in a moment that is not graphically portrayed, but the indignity of the moment is clear, a microcosm of his larger acknowledgment of self-perceived shame.
The film sometimes plays in black and white but mostly in color, but it’s not readily determinable why the on-screen hues change. Perhaps Schrader and cinematographer Andrew Wonder devised a way to define absolute accuracy with the former and shades of foggy memories with the latter, like Christopher Nolan’s applications to “Oppenheimer” (2023). However, that is a guess.
Wonder, costume designer Aubrey Laufer, and production designer Deborah Jensen often present convincing visual time warps or “wonders” during the frequent vibrant flashbacks to the 1960s (and possibly) 1970s, as a 20-something Leo, played by Jacob Elordi (“Saltburn” (2023), “Priscilla” (2023)), is a sensitive, caring father and husband.
He plans to establish roots in Vermont for his family, but his father-in-law proposes “an offer he can’t refuse,” which establishes a conflict between Leo’s version of happiness and someone else’s ideals for his future. The screen completely resembles the period, including a trip on Eastern Airlines and the stark contrasts between a bright, warm kitchen with Leo’s mother-in-law and a shadowy office with his father-in-law.
Leo struggles with his parents and his in-laws’ aforementioned financial proposal. He plunges into an ardent affair and more. Schrader cuts the narrative non-linearly and purposely, which makes Leo’s journey challenging to follow as we skip around various flashbacks to yesterdecade and then cope with our lead’s dilemma in the immediate present. We wonder what is the truth and what is fiction. Our memories can play tricks on us, and Leo is no exception, but he’s physically declining, and perhaps, he’s mentally diminishing as well.
However, Leo, Schrader, and Banks seem to declare that the sum of a man’s life is not his accomplishments. Instead, at least for Leo, his life can be defined by the choices made at several crossroads, ones about intimate, personal connections. For him, they warrant an on-camera admission to release his hidden distress into the universe.
This includes his emigration from the U.S. to Canada during the Vietnam War, and according to Google, that number is between 20,000 and 125,000 Americans. Since the BBC states about 60,000, that’s as valid a statistic as any.
No matter the exact number, thousands of men have thousands of individual tales, and Leo addresses his internal war.
Jeff’s ranking
2.5/4 stars
