“Oh, Canada” Review

As a refreshing break from Paul Schrader’s films about flawed-men-writing-and-turning-violent trilogy (First Reformed, The Card Counter, Master Gardener), there’s a bitter beauty much different within Oh, Canada. Though still poetic, there’s a freewheeling nature to how the picture bats around the lingering notions of regret and unease that fester with age. It’s the type of film that Schrader could easily pull off, being an old guy himself, but, wow, he still manages to surprise with some deeply moving and cerebral moments of stunning drama.

Richard Gere takes up the screen as the aged filmmaker Leo Fife, willing to appear on camera to tell his life story. In his twilight years, Leo realizes this might be the last time to speak openly about his history, much to the chagrin of his third wife, Emma (Uma Thurman), who is present throughout the filming. She knows Leo’s sordid past involving lost love and dodging the draft. She also knows he lies a lot, which might be why he wants her present for the filmed interview.

But Leo has spent so much of his life lying that the truth has become almost obscured in his memory. The film often diverts to flashbacks with a young Leo (Jacob Elordi) trying to find himself in the chaotic 1960s. But the visions keep shifting between various aspect ratios and colors. Even Gere stumbles into the role of Elordi a few times. So, what is the truth? Even the present feels like a mystery, as the old Leo finds himself getting lost in thought and losing track of who is or isn’t in the room with him. That creepy sense of uncertainty and losing your past can be felt in every scene.

There are familiar sensations that do come to Leo during this day-long interview. He acknowledges that the interviewing filmmaker, Malcolm (Michael Imperioli), is a former student who holds Leo in such a high regard. There’s a bitterness Leo has for this young fan when the discussion draws to an interviewing technique that Leo perfected. Also present on the set is Leo’s assistant, Sloan (Penelope Mitchell), a young woman who conjures ugly thoughts on his head. She reminds him of his first wife, considering Mitchell also plays this role. He views her as a ghost of the past, reborn to clean his soul for the best film. Leo is so bitter he starts wondering what this woman must think of his awful smell.

It’s fitting that on Leo’s deathbed, we get some closure as to the truth about his departure to Canada, seen through Malcolm more spying than filming directly. There is some comfort in this revelation but also a realization of why it remained hidden for so long. Leo’s odyssey was one of rebirth, where the past is too brutal to keep set in stone. There was so much regret within his lifetime, ranging from theft to dating his students. He told people one thing and did another. We choose to remember what we want, and Leo’s history remains personally jumbled, like a puzzle that seems to increase in pieces and get lost in the shuffle. Putting that puzzle together is challenging and mesmerizing to watch in its shaky assembly.

Paul Schrader packs so much into Oh, Canada, about how we struggle to write the lives we want and the memories we choose to hold. Richard Gere delivers a career-best performance, on par with his previous collaboration with Schrader’s American Gigolo. It’s a film so sobering that it darts between the nostalgic recollections of young defiance and the decay of feeling so helpless that going to the bathroom feels humiliating. Schrader’s film manages to swirl all of that together with such earnest emotions that never make the movie so simplistic as either a mystery of memory or a contemplation of the past. There’s a constant challenge to the viewer to see beyond the facts and find the feelings that coat our histories with uncertainty, proving that Schrader’s filmmaking has aged like the finest wine. At a mere 90 minutes, it’s also a film that is so brisk and beautiful that you can drink full rather than patiently sip.