By Jonathan Monovich.
An enthralling existential piece by one of cinema’s greatest talents.”
Oh, Canada, Paul Schrader’s latest film, continues his ongoing exploration of the transcendental style. Schrader’s monumental book, Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer, recognized that cinema and spirituality were interconnected via style, time, and movement. It’s an ideology that Schrader associated with the work of his idols; it would later define much of his oeuvre.
Schrader unsurprisingly returns with a Bressonian picture that sees a troubled, contemplative man. In Oh, Canada, that man is Leonard Fife (Richard Gere, the star of Schrader’s American Gigolo, 1979), and his inner thoughts are expressed by employing narration as a meditative device. Like Schrader’s many “man in a room” films like Taxi Driver (1976), American Gigolo (1980), Light Sleeper (1992), First Reformed (2017), The Card Counter (2021), and Master Gardener (2022), Oh, Canada concerns introspection, regret, and redemption. This jagged narrative structure can be likened to Schrader’s Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985) and Affliction (1997), with a focus on memory. Uncoincidentally, Oh, Canada’s source material, the 2021 novel Foregone, comes from the same author as Affliction—Russell Banks. In returning to Banks, Schrader approaches Oh, Canada as a mosaic, connecting bits and pieces of a fragmented life from every angle.
In Oh, Canada, a dying documentarian beholden to a life behind the camera, Leonard Fife (Gere), says “when you have no future all you have left is your past, and if your past is like mine, especially to those closest to you, a fiction, then you can’t exist except as a fictional character.” This assertion drives the film. Plagued with a terminal cancer diagnosis, Fife agrees to turn the tables and appear in front of the camera for an interview with former students Malcolm (Michael Imperioli), Diana (Victoria Hill), and their assistant Sloan (Penelope Mitchell). Following in Fife’s footsteps, Malcolm and Diana, jokingly deemed “Mr. and Mrs. Ken Burns of Canada,” have garnered success as documentarians. Knowing his days are limited, Fife agrees to the interview to cleanse his soul, reconcile with his complicated past, and aspire to document the truth. When the cameras begin rolling and Fife begins talking, his third wife, Emma (Uma Thurman), becomes frustrated by the revelations that come about, asserting that he is confused and misremembering. Emma at first seems to protect her husband, but it’s clear that she wishes to cancel the interview; her frustration comes from a place of denial about her husband and fear of how this will taint her image. But Malcolm and Diana push for Fife to complete the interview as they see the award potential in the project. In between this tension, Fife, relatively calm and collected, recants his youthful years. Schrader chooses to insert rising star Jacob Elordi as Fife’s younger self. Interestingly, Gere also appears in some flashbacks, as if Fife relives the memories as his current self. Thurman, Imperioli, Hill, and Mitchell also find their way into these reenactments. To further blur lines, Thurman and Mitchell play multiple roles.
Schrader approaches Oh, Canada as if it were a mosaic, connecting bits and pieces of a fragmented life from every angle.”
With Oh, Canada’s timeline nonlinear, Fife’s recollection of his memories from 1968-2023 do not come sequentially. Rather, these remembrances build off of each other. With a crafty structural scheme by Schrader, the film’s scenes use realism to depict an aging mind too wise to forget yet old enough to require extra time in assembling the puzzle pieces. At times, Schrader switches from color to black and white in looking to the past. Again, this feels like a recognition of the mind’s intricacy and the diversity of memories. Some are more muted and repressed than others, while others are vivid. Schrader also plays with aspect ratios in Oh, Canada with cinematographer Andrew Wonder, often making the present physically smaller than the past, reiterating that it’s all Fife has left. Tired of hiding from his past, Fife is literally dying to tell his story; he describes it as his “final prayer.” Much of Fife’s history involves infidelity, abandonment, and an avoidance of responsibility. Fife leaves Alicia (Kristine Forseth) and Amy (Penelope Mitchell), his first two wives, and their children behind. The film’s narration sometimes switches to Fife’s son, Cornel’s (Zach Shaffer) point of view, increasing the narrative’s intricacy. At one point, Fife says that “things get left behind like people you once loved.” Such a statement seems like he brushes these memories aside, while moments where Fife’s pain cannot be hidden show him gazing at his younger self. Fife works as a professor who became a documentarian by accident; he yearns to write, or at least that’s what he once thought. With age, Fife understands that he had grown infatuated with being known as a writer, rather than actually writing. He also discerns that he hadn’t truly loved anyone before Emma. This is yet another statement used as a crutch in rationalizing Fife’s questionable decisions.
During the Vietnam War, Fife dodges the draft by fleeing to Canada. Despite Fife’s efforts to bring forth the truth and consider his regrets, his story remains incomplete to those in the room and those who will eventually watch Malcolm and Diana’s documentary. One scene shows Fife discussing the significance of Eddie Adams’ Saigon Execution photograph, suggesting that even though the picture captures a moment just before death, its subjects will live through the photograph, to which Emma disagrees. Viewers can apply the same dilemma to Oh, Canada, questioning whether it concerns life, or death. Given Schrader’s increasing age and his recent health ailments, it’s as if the question has been weighing on his own mind, inspiring him to look back at both his life and career.
As a whole, Oh, Canada is an enthralling existential piece by one of cinema’s greatest talents. With the help of casting directors Scotty Anderson and Avy Kaufman, Schrader’s ensemble, especially Gere, Elordi, and Thurman, aids his vision. And yet Schrader’s outlook on existence makes Oh, Canada a worthwhile entry in what may be the final chapter of his esteemed filmography.
Oh, Canada opens exclusively in theaters today, via Kino Lorber.
Jonathan Monovich is a Chicago-based writer and a regular contributor for Film International. His writing has also been featured in Film Matters, Bright Lights Film Journal, and PopMatters.