Oh, Canada

Oh, Canada is the newest film from the writer-director Paul Schrader, here reunited with his American Gigolo star, Richard Gere, and once again, as with Affliction, based on a novel by the late Russell Banks, to whom the film is dedicated. With a cast that includes Uma Thurman, Michael Imperioli and Jacob Elordi, this story of a documentary film-maker who has lived in Canada since fleeing there to resist the Vietnam War draft, is one where you can never be sure where truth and fiction meet. It is a film where, sometimes, you will be watching a memory of an early stage of the life of Leonard Fife (Gere) but instead of Elordi, who plays the younger Fife, you will see Gere, and the effect is quite involving.

Courtesy Kino Lorber

This is a film with multiple unreliable narrators. This should be disconcerting or even difficult, but due to the clarity of Schrader’s direction, you are able to both keep track of events and figure out a path through the haze of guilt and self-flagellation. Fife, you see, is not the hero everyone believes him to be, but neither is he the villain he thinks he is. He is not the hero his current wife, Emma, a vibrant Uma Thurman, would have others think. There are times you will wonder if Emma is in denial, or if she simply wants to protect the legacy of her beloved husband, since the premise of the film is that a documentary crew-led by Imperioli’s character-is going to interview the dying Fife.

We are treated to long sequences set in the late 1960s and early 1970s, as well as in Montreal in the present, both in Canada and in the United States, in color and in black and white. The timelines are not only not chronological but occasionally seem to merge and shift within themselves. Whether this is because of Fife’s memory issues or because of his hiding or finally admitting truths, will be up to the viewer to decide. For this reviewer, it appears he is telling a mostly true tale, because he does not come off looking particularly well, and seems intent on letting others know what a fiend he sometimes was. This, of course, is part of how he is unreliable.

Courtesy Kino Lorber

How much of his drive to confess and the confessions themselves, are genuine and how much is him trying to make himself look as bad as perhaps he feels deep down? The film spends the entirety of its brief yet absorbing 91 minutes, accompanied by a wonderful, if subtle score and song selection, backed by careful costuming and other period details, exploring the key moments in Fife’s journey. This is not some action film, with bold moments where he runs across the border. Instead, it is a very quiet, human drama about the decisions we make, sometimes without realizing it, and sometimes in the spur of the moment, which will entirely change the direction of our lives and those we leave behind.

Courtesy Kino Lorber

This is not a plot driven story, because plot is secondary in a Schrader film. Always and first come characters and stories. Usually about unlikeable, guilt-ridden men driven to some sort of atonement for deeds real or imagined. As such, Gere and Elordi do a marvelous job as Fife, with Thurman getting her most complex role in years. Indeed, the film’s run time could have easily expanded with more scenes of Emma, who was unquestionably the film’s most compelling character. Special mention must be given to the cinematographer, Andrew Wonder, who has lensed Schrader’s most gorgeous-looking film of recent times, and who, along with Gere and Thurman, would, in a just world, see themselves in Oscar contention, but who have given such subtle performances as such complex characters, that such honors are unlikely. So, do yourself a favor. Forget the Oscars and see this film instead.

Oh, Canada opens in select theaters on December 13th.