“I want to tell everything, for the record.”
Now that Paul Schrader has completed his loner trilogy that began with 2018’s First Reformed, continued with 2021’s The Card Counter, and concluded with 2023’s Master Gardener, the writer/director has taken a different route. In Oh, Canada, Schrader does revisit the topic of isolationism but explores it through various other motifs including age, perception, country, and memory. The film became notable before the cameras started rolling as it was announced that Richard Gere was cast in the lead role, reuniting him with Schrader over 40 years after their first collaboration, 1980’s American Gigolo, put them on the map. It’s fitting that the two should reunite for Oh, Canada. The film quickly proves to be an outing that sees these two indelible artists, both known for taking the film world by storm in their own unique ways, embrace a story that’s more elegiac and poetic than any they’d tackled in either of their legendary careers.
In Oh, Canada, renowned documentary filmmaker Leo Fife (Gere) is nearing the end of his life due to cancer. Before he passes, however, he agrees to be interviewed on camera about his life and career by former student Malcolm (Michael Imperioli), much to the disapproval of Leo’s wife Emma (Uma Thurman). Through flashbacks, the film shows a younger Leo (Jacob Elordi) and his various encounters and experiences, including escaping to Canada to avoid being drafted.
Any film trying to balance both the past and present will always face hurdles when it comes to establishing the two sides of the same world. With Oh, Canada, Schrader has looked this challenge square in the face and rewritten the rules by having two versions of Leo telling his story. The younger version played by Elordi takes on most of the flashback sequences, showing Leo in key moments in his life, such as when he’s offered a high-powered job, or when he attempts an Army discharge. But Schrader also has the healthy version of Gere’s Leo (or the most recent healthy version he remembers himself as) appear in past scenes alternating with his younger self. In every flashback we see Leo running from whatever life is ahead of him, almost as if he were too afraid to see what he might become. The device seems unorthodox and jarring at first, but the device works in the context of the dying Leo retelling his experiences. He can picture himself then and there as if an event that took place in the 1960s just happened yesterday. Some exquisite cinematography, including a Renior-inspired look for the present, and a mix of earth tones and black and white for the past, give the film a literary feel and an intimacy that’s just stellar. The clear work done to establish both worlds only serves to highlight some of the film’s main themes. Chief among them is the questioning of what all of Leo’s experience amounted to in the end, and whether or not it was all worth it.
The question of memory plays a huge role in Oh, Canada, as everything we are being informed of and let into is being relayed to us by a dying man. Illness plays a factor here, especially when it comes to the film’s structure. The events in Oh, Canada aren’t always told linearly and there are aspects about them that beg certain questions which Schrader has no interest in answering. He doesn’t need to, quite frankly. This is a film about a person remembering the moments and the incidents that have lingered, that have defined them in both expected and unexpected ways, fuzzy details and all. There’s a Jacquelyn Mitchard quote I’ve paraphrased before that says we tend to define ourselves by what we remember, by the memories we keep. Schrader’s film matches this philosophy perfectly. This is a story about the experiences that have imprinted themselves into this man’s soul, taking their place within him and never leaving. Again, Oh, Canada may not be a film made to be told in a linear fashion, but then again, the story of our own lives tends to feel less linear, especially as we get older. The need to investigate those experiences, to exorcise his past may be what’s driving Leo to give his final interview. The character faces some questions throughout the interview regarding certain discrepancies, making him something of an unreliable narrator. However, in actuality, every person telling their own story is both an unreliable narrator and, quite possibly, the most reliable one in the room.
Gere’s work here is just phenomenal. Ever since he ditched studio films for smaller-scale productions, the work he’s turned in has shown him to be one of the most underrated actors of his generation. His turn as Leo in Oh, Canada continues the trend and he gives great vulnerability and conflict to the character, making him a mystery that’s worth solving. Elordi matches Gere as the younger Leo, likewise turning a performance that’s complex and compelling. Finally, although one would think Thurman was saddled with just another “wife” role, her interpretation of Emma brings out great depth and soul, making you realize how much less Schader’s film would be without her.
Oh, Canada represents another reunion besides that of Gere and Schrader. The film marks the second time the director has adapted a novel from the recently departed author Russell Banks, the first being 1997’s Affliction. A great admirer of his work, Schrader has dedicated Oh, Canada to Banks. It’s fitting that this gesture be made as it’s somewhat representative of the film itself. While one could make the case that Schrader’s film is about the fear of never really having existed, reading into that notion’s real-life parallels what you will, the passing of Banks speaks to something greater, namely the end of a certain part of history. With a lens that’s both pensive and reflective, Schrader has made a film about the death of an era, of a time that was still considered somewhat modern in some people’s eyes and that wholly defined the world as they knew it.
