Oh, Canada

After completing his recent crime thriller trilogy with The Master Gardener, old-established writer and director Paul Schrader turns his hand towards more placid climes with contemplative drama Oh, Canada.

Cancer-stricken non-fiction filmmaker Leonard Fife (Richard Gere) agrees to an interview, conducted by some of his former students: the “Mr and Mrs Ken Burns of Canada.” Try as they might to speak to Fife about his refusal to be drafted for the Vietnam War by fleeing north and his political engagements, he has entirely different plans for the conversation. With his health in rapid decline, he sees this last interview as an opportunity for a deathbed confession, seeking absolution from his wife Emma (Uma Thurman).

Schrader adapted the screenplay from Russell Banks’s 2021 novel Foregone, and foremost attends to the notion that to a dying man – no matter how successful – career is the furthest thing from his mind when looking back upon his life.

The detailed set-up of the interview and its muddled recounted past events allow for sufficient variation in what otherwise may come across as a commonplace biopic – despite the character’s fictitiousness. As Fife’s history and body of work is treated with the complexity of a Lydia Tár, it would come as no surprise, if audiences are tempted to look for copies of his acclaimed documentary Suffer the Innocents. The flipside is that, if he were real, perhaps viewers would be immensely more invested in the annals of his philandering, and his struggle to reconcile his acts of dodging responsibility – something he now perceives as cowardice – with his masculinity.

While the story touches upon important elements of mortality and de-mystifying idolised figures, in the end, it is the performances that ultimately make the selling point for Oh, Canada.

Fife is alternatingly portrayed by Gere and Jacob Elordi – occasionally within the same scene, making for a particularly resourceful approach to the instability of memory. Both men have their own irrefutable understanding of Fife and his decisions, but the two coalesce in some of the more physical details, such as the way their cheeks crinkle towards their eyes when they smile and make this protagonist more than the sum of his parts.

Oh, Canada may be unlikely to become one of the unforgettable pieces of the year, but its top-notch acting makes the piece worth watching for anybody interested in human stories.

Selina Sondermann

Oh, Canada does not have a UK release date yet.

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