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Oh, Canada is an artist toying with their own mythology. Writer-director Paul Schrader—known for collaborations with Martin Scorsese (1976’s Taxi Driver, 1988’s The Last Temptation of Christ) and titles such as American Gigolo (1980) and First Reformed (2017)—has increasingly softened in recent years. It is as if time has worn away his most forceful ideological tendencies, only to expose a confused, angry, bleeding heart, one still intent on searching for answers, pondering the silence on the other end of life’s ever-present questions, but more inclined toward love. In Oh, Canada, Schrader now contemplates his own legacy and the legacy of all artists, and experiments with strands of truth, hubris, and humility.
Leonard Fife (Richard Gere, reuniting with Schrader 44 years after Gigolo) is a famed Canadian documentary filmmaker on the brink of death. He agrees to a final interview by two of his former students, Malcolm (Michael Imperioli) and Diana (Victoria Hill). Fife insists it be filmed with his wife, Emma (Uma Thurman), present, as he’s intent on exposing himself as the man she married. Schrader toys with the audience’s point of view as Fife (his younger self played by Jacob Elordi) recounts his life story, transplanting present entities into past and blurred timelines.
More stylistically honed than his previous effort, Master Gardener (2022), Oh, Canada manages a fluid consistency within an often purposefully obtuse narrative structure. It would be simplistic to say Gere acts as a stand-in for Schrader; there is more here than narcissistic reflection. Oh, Canada is just as interested in the discrepancies and imaginative flourishes of recollection and retribution as it is in the authenticity of legacy. In examining art as inherently political, it too examines the artist’s default to activist amongst the pratfalls of personhood. With truth shrouded in mythology, another reality is born, one where the idealization of the artist joins the decaying entity itself. 94 min.
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