OH, CANADA Reviewed by GREG KING
Director: Paul Schrader
Stars: Richard Gere, Uma Thurman, Jacob Elordi, Michael Imperioli, Victoria Hill, Kristine Froseth.
Paul Schrader is one of Hollywood’s top screenwriters, with films including Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The Mosquito Coast and Affliction to his credit. His films often follow lonely and desperate men on the fringes of society whose world is crumbling around them, and many are quite bleak in outlook. Many of his characters are often angst ridden and driven by their troubled pasts. His latest film deals with themes of mortality, memory, truth and the legacy we leave behind.
The film Oh, Canada is based on the 2021 novel Forgone, written by the late Russell Banks (Schrader previously adapted his novel Affliction for the screen in 1997). This unflinching character study of a flawed artist is a deeply personal film for Schrader who is contemplating his own mortality after bouts with COVID. It also reunites him with Richard Gere, who starred in his American Gigolo forty-five years ago.
Gere plays Leonard Fife, a famous documentary filmmaker who is dying of cancer. He decides he wants to tell his life story on film, to set the record straight for posterity. Malcolm (Michael Imperioli), one of his former film students and an Oscar winning filmmaker in his own right, is tasked with shooting this recounting of his life. Leonard is determined to reveal harsh truths about his life and insists that his wife and filmmaking collaborator Emma (Uma Thurman), also a former student, is present to hear his confession.
Although Malcolm is more interested in hearing about Leonard’s filmmaking career Leonard says that he only became a filmmaker by accident and prefers to talk about his early life and how events shaped his career. Unfortunately, though, Leonard’s life story is not all that interesting.
His story unfolds in a series of extended flashback sequences in which the young Leonard is played by Australian actor Jacob Elordi (from Saltburn). We learn how he felt stifled by his in-laws and his life in Virginia and fled, leaving his wife Alicia and young child Cornel behind. He drifted through America and pretended to be gay to avoid being drafted to fight in Vietnam. Eventually headed off to Canada where he lived and taught for many years and became an acclaimed documentary filmmaker with a social conscience. Many of his documentaries exposed injustices and corporate malfeasance. But his on-camera confession often contrasts with the public persona. Emma insists that these contradictions are due to his medication and the ravages of his illness.
Schrader’s approach to the material though is disconcerting – the film is fragmented and doesn’t follow a linear narrative as it jumps back and forth between time frames, a device that is intended to mirror Leonard’s fractured state of mind. Cinematographer Andrew Wonder hails from a background in documentaries, and he alternates between black and white and colour stock and uses different aspect ratios to depict the different time frames. And at times Gere pops up in scenes replacing the young Elordi, a sometimes confusing artifice that adds nothing to the narrative.
Gere is good and brings gravitas to his role as the elder but unlikeable Leonard. However, Elordi has a bit of a bland presence as the younger and restless incarnation of the character. Thurman brings a quiet authority to her performance as Emma.
Musician Matthew Houk (aka Phosphorescent) provides the evocative, haunting and mournful soundtrack.
Overall Oh, Canada is a bit of a mess and a slog to sit through. The film lacks the emotional resonance that it could have had with a stronger structure and focus.
★★
