Paul Schrader Archives

Review: ‘Oh, Canada’ (2024), starring Richard Gere, Uma Thurman, Michael Imperioli and Jacob Elordi

December 19, 2024

by Carla Hay

Richard Gere and Uma Thurman in “Oh, Canada” (Photo courtesy of Kino Lorber)

“Oh, Canada” (2024)

Directed by Paul Schrader

Culture Representation: Taking place in 2023 in Montreal, with flashbacks in the U.S. and Canada from the 1960s to the 1990s, the dramatic film “Oh, Canada” features an all-white cast of characters representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: A famous documentary filmmaker, who is terminally ill with cancer, confesses his past misdeeds during a documentary interview conducted by two of his former students.

Culture Audience: “Oh, Canada” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners, filmmaker Paul Schrader and meditative dramas about people looking back on their lives.

Jacob Elordi in “Oh, Canada” (Photo courtesy of Kino Lorber)

“Oh, Canada” doesn’t reach its intended impact as an important movie from filmmaker Paul Schrader. However, this drama about a flawed documentarian looking back on his life has interesting performances from the cast members. This is the type of movie that isn’t horrible, but viewers should not expect “Oh, Canada” to be among the best films from Schrader or the main stars of the movie.

Written and directed by Schrader, “Oh, Canada” is based on Russell Banks’ 2021 novel “Foregone.” “Oh, Canada” had its world premiere at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival and also screened at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival and the 2024 New York Film Festival. The movie takes place in Montreal, on December 23, 2023, but the story’s protagonist tells memories (seen in flashbacks) that go back to the 1960s.

“Oh, Canada” begins by showing three documentarians setting up a library/study room for an interview in the Montreal home of acclaimed documentarian Leonard “Leo” Fife (played by Richad Gere), who is terminally ill with cancer. (The movie never says what type of cancer he has.) The interview is for a CBC documentary about Leo’s life. Leo says he wants to give final confessions about his life for this interview.

The people conducting the interview are two of Leo’s former students, who are also successful documentarians on their own: Malcolm (played by Michael Imperioli) and his wife Diana (played by Victoria Hill), whom Leo jokingly says are the “Mr. and Mrs. Ken Burns of Canada.” Malcolm and Diana are accompanied by their 24-year-old assistant Sloan Ambrose (played by Penelope Mitchell), who is star-struck by Leo.

Also present during this interview are Leo’s wife/producing partner Emma (Uma Thurman) and Leo’s nursing assistant Rene (played by Caroline Dhavernas), who are there to observe and to make sure that Leo doesn’t overexert himself during this interview. Emma was a student of Leo’s at the same time as when Malcolm and Diana were Leo’s students. Although Leo’s voice can be heard for the movie’s narration of his internal and external thoughts, another narrator can be heard in the movie: Leo’s adult son Cornel (played by Zach Shaffer), whom Leo abandoned in 1968, when Cornel was abut 4 or 5 years old.

The year 1968 was a pivotal year in Leo’s life. It was the year that he became a draft dodger during the Vietnam War by moving permanently from his native United States to Canada. Jacob Elordi portrays the young Leo in flashback scenes. Because Leo’s story is told from his perspective, viewers can speculate that he is an unreliable narrator. Leo makes unflattering confessions about himself that he knows will upset Emma, but he seems to want to ease his conscience before he dies.

“Oh, Canada” jumps around a lot in the timeline, but viewers essentially find out that Leo abandoned his first two wives and children. His first wife Amy (also played by Hill) was 18 years old when she had an unplanned pregnancy. She and Leo apparently had a quickie marriage, she gave birth to a daughter named Heidi, and the marriage ended in divorce after Leo abandoned them.

In the interview, Leo would rather talk about his time with his second wife Alicia Fife (played by Kristine Froseth), the mother of Cornel. Alicia was pregnant with another child in 1968. Alica and Leo were visiting Alicia’s wealthy parents in Richmond, Virginia, and were planning to buy a home in Vermont, where Leo had been offered a teaching position at a university. Flashback memories show that Leo and Alicia were excited about her pregnancy and about their planned move to Vermont.

However, during this visit, Alicia’s businessman father Benjamin “Ben” Chapman (played by Peter Hans Benson) and Ben’s brother Jackson Chapman (played by Scott Jaeck) offered Leo a job as CEO of the family business, which would require Leo to remain in Virginia. Ben and Jackson tell Leo that they want to keep their business in the family. They think Leo is the only suitable candidate because Ben’s and Jackson’s other children (all daughters) are married to men who “aren’t fit to run a lemonade stand.” Leo asks for a few weeks to think about this job offer.

Meanwhile, flashbacks of Leo’s memories reveal that he is a serial seducer of women and committed infidelity for some of these seductions. In 1968, he became a documentarian as a “fluke,” when he was working at a trucking farm in the Canadian province of New Brunswick, and he filmed crop duster planes dispensing chemicals on the farm crops. This chemical turned out to be Agent Orange. Leo’s footage was used for his breakthrough 1970 documentary “In the Mist,” which established Leo as a documentarian with a specialty in exposing corruption.

“Oh, Canada” shows snippets from Leo’s other documentaries, but “Oh, Canada” is more concerned with Leo exposing his own personal corruption. The movie shows the events leading up to Leo deciding to permanently move to Canada as a draft dodger. Although Sloan tells Leo that she thinks he’s a “hero” for being a draft dodger to protest the Vietnam War, Leo’s confessions reveal that his reasons for dodging the draft were actually selfish motivations to abandon his family and to start over with a new life.

Emma knew that Leo was previously married with children, but it upsets her to hear the candid details about just how much Leo hurt other people with his self-centered and reckless actions. At various points during the interview, Emma wants the interview to stop because she claims Leo is “confused” because of his medication and his illness. However, Leo wants to continue and finish the interview.

“Oh, Canada” has a narrative that is purposely disjointed, as if to depict the hazy memories of a terminally ill cancer patient. During some of the re-enactments, Leo sees himself in his youthful memories either as his youthful self or as his current elderly self. Leo also remembers Sloan as looking like Alicia. And memories of time that he spent in 1968 with an artist painter acquaintance named Stanley Reinhart (played by Jake Weary) and Stanley’s wife Gloria (also played by Thurman) are also fuzzy. Leo remembers Gloria (one his sexual conquests) as looking like Emma.

“Oh, Canada” uses these twists of memory and perception in a way that might be considered artistic or might be considered off-putting to viewers. A flashback scene with Leo, Emma and an adult Cornel suggests that Emma already knew that Leo was a deadbeat dad, but Emma just doesn’t want Leo to make confessions about it on camera for a documentary about his life. There are also interpersonal dynamics at play between Malcolm, Diana and Sloan that affect what happens in the story.

“Oh, Canada” doesn’t have any major surprises, but the cast members give performances that are compelling enough if viewers to want to know how the movie ends. Gere is quite skillful at portraying a world-weary, jaded person who is coming to terms with his shortcomings as a form of self-reflection and perhaps to seek a little bit of redemption. Elordi, Thurman and the other cast members capably handle their roles in “Oh, Canada,” but don’t do anything outstanding that takes the movie to a higher level of quality.

“Oh, Canada” makes astute observations about how fame affects what famous people choose to convey about themselves for public perception and how the private reality might be very different. There is also some irony toward the end of the movie about documentary ethics and Leo as a “role model” for the type of exposé filmmaking that made him famous. “Oh, Canada” effectively shows how this documentary filmmaker tells his life story when he knows his life will soon end, but he still can’t resist the urge to make selective edits.

Kino Lorber released “Oh, Canada” in select U.S. cinemas on December 6, 2024.

Review: ‘The Card Counter,’ starring Oscar Isaac, Tiffany Haddish, Tye Sheridan and Willem Dafoe

September 3, 2021

by Carla Hay

“The Card Counter”

Directed by Paul Schrader

Culture Representation: Taking place in various parts of the U.S., as well as in Iraq in flashback scenes, the dramatic film “The Card Counter” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some Latinos, Arabs and African Americans) representing the middle-class and working-class.

Culture Clash: An ex-con, who has a dark past as a U.S. military officer, is now a gambling addict facing a moral dilemma on whether or not to get involved in a deadly revenge plot.

Culture Audience: “The Card Counter” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in neo-noir dramas that explore issues of military PTSD and the fallout of extreme actions made in the name of anti-terrorism.

Oscar Isaac and Tye Sheridan in “The Card Counter” (Photo courtesy of Focus Features)

“The Card Counter” (written and directed by Paul Schrader) is a raw and unflinching portrait of a man tortured by his past and using his gambling addiction as a way to cope. On a wider level, this neo-noir film is a scathing view of the “war on terror” and abuse of power. Oscar Isaac gives an absolutely gripping and fascinating performance as a protagonist struggling to find a sense of morality in a world where many people are rewarded for crimes and punished for trying to do the right thing.

It would be an understatement to say that William Tell (played by Isaac) is feeling spiritually and emotionally bankrupt. Now in his 40s, William spent 10 years imprisoned as a dishonorably discharged ex-military officer in the U.S. federal penitentiary Leavenworth in Leavenworth, Kansas. It’s eventually revealed in the movie’s several flashback scenes why William was imprisoned.

The main thing that viewers find out in the beginning of the movie, which has constant voiceover narration by William, is that he learned to count cards in prison. After he got out of prison, he became a professional gambler (mostly in poker and blackjack), who counts cards to have an advantage in the games. It’s a risky activity that could get him banned from casinos, but so far William hasn’t been caught.

The name William Tell is most associated with the early 14th century Swiss folk hero William Tell, who was a rebel and an expert marksman. It should come as no surprise that the gambler named William Tell in “The Card Counter” is using a partial alias. The William character in this movie changed his last name to Tell after he got out of prison. His real last name is also eventually revealed.

In “The Card Counter,” William is a never-married bachelor with no children and no family members who are in his life. William is currently based in New Jersey, where he spends more time in Atlantic City casinos than he does at home. It’s made apparent very early on in the movie that William is a gambling addict. And, just like most addicts, he uses his addiction as a way to deal with past traumas.

It’s mentioned several times in the movie that William’s past traumas have given him intimacy issues. He’s a loner who’s been celibate by choice for several years. He also has severe nightmares about things that happened in his past when he was a private first-class special ops solider during the Iraq War.

The flashback scenes of what William did as a solider and as a military police officer might be too difficult to watch for viewers who are very sensitive or squeamish. The production notes for “The Card Counter” have a very accurate description of how these disturbing flashback scenes were filmed: writer/director Schrader “wanted the nightmarish scenes to feel like immersive virtual reality—an effect in the movie that feels like descending first-hand into a Hieronymus Bosch-like hellscape. [“The Card Counter” cinematographer Alexander] Dynan employed VR technology to present a flattened, equirectangular version of the standard image.”

One day, while William is hanging out at an Atlantic City hotel/casino, he notices that there’s an industry convention called Global Security Conference that’s taking place at the hotel. One of the keynote speakers is John Gordo (played by Willem Dafoe), a retired U.S. Army major, who now owns a private and lucrative security consulting company that has the U.S. government as its biggest client. When William finds out that John is in the same building, it triggers William into a cascade of negative emotions that he tries to hide. However, William’s curiosity gets the best of him to see John’s speech.

There’s someone else who isn’t happy about John being a lauded speaker at this convention. Unbeknownst to William, there’s someone in the audience during John’s speech who has noticed that William is there and will soon seek out William for a face-to-face meeting. During his speech, John promotes a new product from his company called STABL, which is facial recognition software that’s supposed to be able to detect truth-telling. This technology is supposedly designed to help during interrogations.

After the speech, the person who observed William from afar finds William and introduces himself. His name is Cirk (pronounced “Kirk”) Balfort, a guy in his mid-20s whose deceased father had something in common with William, besides being dishonorably discharged from the U.S. military. While having drinks together at the casino, Cirk tells William how the troubles of Cirk’s father have affected Cirk. After his father’s disgraced military career, his father became an oxycodone addict who regularly abused Cirk and Cirk’s mother. His father eventually committed suicide.

Cirk believes that his father’s downward spiral was the direct result of something that John did. For reasons that are later revealed in the movie, Cirk also believes that William has a grudge against John, so Cirk proposes that he and William join forces to torture and murder John. William immediately says no to this proposition because he doesn’t want to do anything that would put him at risk of going back to prison.

However, William is emotionally touched by Cirk, who seems aimless and depressed about his life and in need of a father figure. Cirk makes it clear that he isn’t the type of person to want to go to college or work in a boring office job. And so, William offers Cirk an opportunity to let William mentor Cirk on how to be a professional gambler who goes on tour, with William paying all of Cirk’s expenses for this training.

How is William going to pay for this road trip? It just so happens that within the same 24-hour period of meeting Cirk, William met a gambling agent named La Linda (played by Tiffany Haddish), who works with a network of mysterious and wealthy people who like to invest in professional gamblers and get a cut of the winnings. Her job is to find talented gamblers to sign with her as their agent, so she can pass on some of the prize money to these rich investors, who fund the gambling tours for her clients.

La Linda has been observing William for a while and admires his talent. And when she approaches him to become his agent, it’s in a flirtatious but business-minded manner. At first, William turns down her offer to become his agent because he prefers to work alone. However, after William gets the idea to mentor Cirk, he tells La Linda that he’ll take her up on her offer because he needs the money for this mentoring road trip. (Although “The Card Counter” is supposed to take place in various states, the movie was actually filmed in Mississippi, mostly in Gulfport and Biloxi.)

Much of “The Card Counter” is about this road trip and the friendship that forms between William and Cirk. Eventually, William is hired to enter a major poker tournament. Viewers see that when William checks into a hotel room, he has a habit of covering all of the furniture with bedsheets and using gloves. It’s as if he’s paranoid about leaving any fingerprints and DNA behind in these hotel rooms. Is he trying to hide something or hide from someone?

Even though Cirk and William learn to trust each other, Cirk can’t let go of the idea of murdering John. Cirk repeatedly brings it up, as a way of trying to wear down William to get him to agree. It’s eventually shown if William caves in or not to Cirk’s persistence.

William’s life is also altered when he becomes closer to La Linda. Their sexual tension with each other is evident in their first meeting, but they keep things strictly professional during their first several meetings. One of the more visually stunning scenes in “The Card Counter” is when William and La Linda go on a platonic date to what looks like the Gulfport Harbor Lights Winter Festival, which is known for its elaborate lights displays that evoke a magical aura. It’s here that La Linda and William hold hands for the first time.

Whether or not William and La Linda become lovers is revealed in the movie’s trailer, which unfortunately gives away a lot of moments that should be surprises to viewers. In other words, it’s best not to watch the trailer before seeing this movie. “The Card Counter” has a tone and pacing that are very reminiscent of noir films from the 1940s and 1950s, especially in William’s voiceover narrations, which are often taken from the journals that he meticulously keeps.

Some of the movie’s dialogue that doesn’t involve cursing sounds very much like it’s from the Golden Age of Hollywood, especially in the flirtatious banter between William and La Linda. That’s not the only old-fashioned aspect of the film. As well-crafted as the movie is overall, “The Card Counter” still perpetuates outdated stereotypes that movies like this often have: Only one woman has a significant speaking role in the film. And the main purpose of the woman is ultimately to be the love interest of the male protagonist. All the other women in the movie are essentially background characters or just have a few lines.

Haddish usually plays loud-mouthed, vulgar and unsophisticated characters in raunchy comedies, but with “The Card Counter,” she attempts to break out of that typecasting by portraying someone who is intelligent and is a combination of being upwardly mobile while still being street-smart. However, Haddish still seems a bit uncomfortable playing this type of serious character. It’s not a bad performance, but it’s not as believable as Isaac’s performance.

La Linda is someone who is from East St. Louis and is trying to make a better life for herself while becoming an empathetic friend to William. Unfortunately, Schrader did not develop La Linda’s character enough for her to have a backstory. The closest that viewers will find out about Linda’s past is that she drops several hints to William that she’s used to dating men with prison records. When they first meet, she correctly guesses that William spent time in prison. La Linda also tells William that she doesn’t care about anything bad that he did in his past.

However, William cares a lot about what he’s done in his past because he’s wracked with guilt over it. As much as he’s trying to move on to his new life as a professional gambler, he’s still haunted by his past sins. He reaches a point where he has to decide if participating in an act of revenge will bring him some relief. His fatherly relationship with Cirk is William’s way of trying to get some kind of redemption within himself.

Sheridan is perfectly fine but not outstanding in his role as the emotionally damaged Cirk, who’s hell-bent on carrying out a vendetta. Because the movie is told from William’s perspective, viewers aren’t really privy to a lot of Cirk’s thoughts, except his revenge plan. Cirk also has lingering resentment toward his mother, whom he hasn’t seen or spoken to in quite some time because Cirk thinks his mother should’ve protected him more from Cirk’s abusive father. It’s easy to see how William would want to take Cirk under his wing, because he’s trying to prevent Cirk from experiencing the same regrets that plague William.

Although the “The Card Counter” has several scenes of William gambling, this movie isn’t about who wins or how much the prize money is in these casino games or tournaments. What the movie shows so well is that William has learned the hard way that people’s souls and self-respect can be destroyed not just by abusers but by people doing damage to themselves. In that sense, William is taking the biggest gamble of his life in facing his fears and regrets, because he doesn’t quite know if he should bet on forgiving himself.

Focus Features will release “The Card Counter” in U.S. cinemas on September 10, 2021.