In Paul Schrader's 'Oh, Canada,' Richard Gere Does the Most Intimate Thing a Person Can Do: Confess
What’s more intimate than a confession? And what’s more important: legacy or truth? In Paul Schrader’s film Oh, Canada, Richard Gere plays Leonard Fife, an acclaimed documentarian who’s dying of cancer. When he agrees to be the subject of a documentary by his former students paying tribute to his work, he turns the interview into a chance to set the record straight about his life and legacy. Masterfully weaving together flashbacks and multiple narrators, reliable and otherwise, Oh, Canada explores themes of memory, forgiveness, and redemption. But it’s not your typical life story. By choosing confession as his storytelling medium, Schrader gives us something far more intimate.
Based on the 2021 novel Foregone by Russell Banks, the film opens by establishing Leo’s physical state. Wracked by cancer, wheelchair-bound, and heavily medicated, he has nothing to lose. So while his mind is seemingly still sharp, he agrees to be the subject in former students Malcolm (Michael Imperioli) and Diana’s (Victoria Hill) “protégés’ homage.” But ever the filmmaker, Fife directs from the other side of the lens. Instead of recounting his career, he purges all of his life’s sins in front of his wife, Emma (Uma Thurman), and what forms is a very different picture than the man Malcolm and Diana deem worthy of tribute.
Played by Jacob Elordi, young Leo is revealed to be a heavily flawed character. He’s a serial philanderer who’s cheated on, and then abandoned, multiple pregnant wives. He dodged the Vietnam draft under questionable conditions. Even his relationship with his current wife, who he’s coming clean to, had sordid beginnings. But Schrader unfolds these pivotal chapters in Leo’s life unchronologically and in fragmented starts and stops, creating a sense of uncertainty. And as one unsavory confession crashes into the next, Leo’s story raises questions. How accurate is his recollection? Is old age muddling facts? Are the meds augmenting his memories? Desperate to find closure, Leo can see penance in front of him, but the path is foggy.
To create the aching intimacy of a final confession stretched over a lifetime of personal myth is no easy feat. It takes a true master.
In this exclusive behind-the-scenes featurette, cast members Richard Gere, Uma Thurman, Michael Imperioli, and Jacob Elordi talk about what it was like working with the incomparable Schrader, whose singular vision and directorial style made this remarkable cinematic achievement possible. For Gere, the beauty lies in how Schrader treats his characters. “Paul’s got a thing in his storytelling,” Gere says. “Which is honoring the complexity of people in relationships, complicated people who have trouble engaging the world.”
For Elordi, who was working with Schrader for the first time, a new bar had been set. “What was really interesting to me at the table read was when we got this color-coded schedule which laid out what memories were which and how they were going to be filmed and the style they were going to be shot in,” he recalls. “That attention to detail you don’t often get to experience or be a part of.”
“It’s really gratifying to work for a master with a discerning eye,” Thurman praises, before adding a noteworthy observation: “There’s something wonderful about working with someone who knows what they wrote.” Unlike Leo, Schrader’s storytelling is unquestionable, and certainly worthy of tribute.
Stream Oh, Canada on Kino Film Collection now.
