‘Oh, Canada’ Review – A Clunky, Yet Powerful Look At Memory And Regret [NYFF 2024]

Almost everyone I’ve ever met has felt some sense of regret throughout their lives. Regret for things done or not done, things said or unsaid. A lifetime of overthinking and reflection leads us to this almost remorseful feeling that can plague the mind and numb the heart. As he continues to age, renowned filmmaker Paul Schrader has been obsessed with making films about men of various ages reckoning with their past. From Ethan Hawke’s brilliant Reverend Ernst Toller in First Reformed to Joel Edgerton’s Narvel Roth in Master Gardener, Schrader has been hitting on similar themes for the better part of the last decade.

His latest film Oh, Canada, starring Richard Gere, Uma Thurman, and Jacob Elordi, provides a unique twist on this now-familiar approach from the director. The film follows Gere as fictional documentarian Leonard Fife, an American who fled to Canada in protest of the military draft during the Vietnam War, now the subject of a documentary on his life being made by his former university students. Schrader can’t seem to escape the constant narration of his lead in this film, but at least this time it’s in the form of making a documentary instead of drawing from the same well of lonely men journaling in solitude. Gere’s narration feels different, more lively than Schrader’s previous protagonists due to him having an audience to speak to. 

Oh, Canada features a plethora of flashbacks in which Jacob Elordi plays a young Leonard Fife, and the height disparity between Elordi and Gere must be noted. This doesn’t take away from the film but is hilarious to think about 6’5” Elordi one day morphing into a 5’10” Gere. While Elordi certainly has a powerful screen presence, his scenes are consistently weaker than Gere’s in the present day. The mosaic style in which this story is told begins to paint a picture of the kind of man Leonard Fife was but doesn’t fill in enough of the portrait to provide us with much substance. 

Gere’s performance as the sickly, confused Fife is tremendous. The makeup team does a great job of making him look even older than he is, and he plays the part extremely well. This role, and the film as a whole, is an exciting juxtaposition against the classic documentary or biopic we get where the subject remembers things perfectly and a linear outline of their story can be easily traced to who they are in their latter days. What happens when our mind is foggy, and chronology gets jumbled around? Fife is desperately attempting to confess the sins of his past while not being able to recall what’s real or separate memories from one another. 

This confusion is seen visually as the flashbacks to his youth change the aspect ratio and alternate from color to black and white. It’s clear that Schrader is trying to communicate something about each of these scenes with these shifts in ratio and color, but we are never told which is real and which is imagined. Fife also inserts an older version of himself into these memories at certain points, rotating between remembering them as he was and seeing them anew as he is now. What results is a powerful conclusion showing a man at the end of his life with something to say but lacking the ability to say it coherently. It’s easy to imagine how frustrating that might be, especially when the lights are dimmed and the camera is pointed squarely at your face just waiting for you to speak. 

Oh, Canada is admittedly Schrader’s weakest production in recent memory but is still packed with moving ideas of mortality, memory, and reckoning with what we have done in our past. Leonard Fife has been heralded as a hero by many for his work in documentary filmmaking and his protesting of the Vietnam War, yet he feels none of this praise is warranted. His warped view of his past decisions leads to this self-effacing perspective that he expresses in the documentary. The themes Schrader attempts to explore in this film are well worth wading through the murky script and stiff supporting performances and is another solid entry into his vast filmography.

Oh, Canada held its U.S. Premiere as part of the Main Slate section at the 2024 New York Film Festival.

Director: Paul Schrader

Writer: Paul Schrader

Rated: NR

Runtime: 95m