December 19, 2024
by Carla Hay
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.
“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.
