I thought I would take a break from heavy film watching and enjoy a movie with dashing Richard Gere as lead in “Oh, Canada.” Frying pan into the fire.
This film is as complex, studied and deep as they come. Gere is masterful as a dying man, Leonard Fife, who wants to make a full confession, particularly to his wife, on camera, about his true history. Being that he made a living as an exposé documentarian, it is only fitting.
But as he is in late-stage cancer, the truth is foggy business. With time to lay in bed for days to contemplate his life, he feels tremendous guilt. He wants to come clean.
“Oh, Canada” is based on the novel “Foregone,” written by the acclaimed best-selling Russel Banks. It’s about a man who earned fame as one of the approximately 60,000 American draft dodgers who moved to Canada. By some serendipity, within days of arriving Fife ended up filming a plane emitting orange plumes of smoke. He was thinking it was cool – psychedelic – until he found out the plane was American and testing out Agent Orange. A career was born.
A short time later, Fife had the opportunity to record what was occurring in Canadian boarding schools for Indian children. Then there was the slaughter of animals in the Arctic. Soon Fife became a Canadian hero and renowned social justice filmmaker. But he wanted everyone to know, in the end, that there was another side to him and his life that no one knew. The story isn’t pretty.
Campaigning for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Lead Actor (Gere), “Oh, Canada” is going to be a hard sell because it has incorporated some tremendously experimental techniques. For example, 27-year-old Jacob Elordi and 75-year-old Gere alternate playing the young Fife. Perhaps this accentuates that in his reverie, Fife is moving in and out of who he is and who he was. But it is unsettling to see the switches, especially when a 75-year-old plays a husband to a young woman in her 20s.
Sometimes, we see Fife’s story one way, and then in a moment, it is retold in a different way. What really happened? Did he escape to Canada to escape the draft or did he foil the draft authorities in the US with a trumped-up identity? One side of it gives him honor in Canada for a great risk.
The stories go on – which one is true? It’s a tricky business for director Paul Schrader and his editor, Benjamin Rodriguez, Jr.
Uma Thurman is beautifully sensitive as Fife’s wife, but I’m never sure what she believes to be true about his past – but does it matter? She and a coterie of filmmakers who film his last testament are devoted to who he became.
Credits
Director: Paul Schrader
Writers: Paul Schrader (screenplay) and Russell Banks (book)
Cast: Richard Gere, Uma Thurman and Jacob Elordi
Editor: Benjamin Rodriguez, Jr.
Release: Dec. 6, 2024
Official Website: https://kinolorber.com/film/oh-canada
. . .
Join us on Facebook at
http://www.facebook.com/itsjustmovies!