The profundity of reflection and the damning pain of regret and self-hatred are at the core of Paul Schrader’s latest work, Oh, Canada. Based on the 2021 novel, Foregone, by Russell Banks, Schrader’s latest finds its dying lead character losing control of his legacy and confronting a past that is a tattered trail of fractured memories and clouded truths. This is a raw and vulnerable work from a filmmaker who finds himself at a meditative time in his own life, where (at 78) one’s past stands waiting, standing shoulder to shoulder with a present that holds the unavoidable realities of the human condition. 

Oh, Canada focuses on respected documentary filmmaker Leonard Fife (Richard Gere) in the final days of his losing battle with cancer. Fife has found himself at his most vulnerable as he describes having to rely on his hospice nurse to bathe and wipe him. The man who once commanded is now reduced to a wheelchair and bed-ridden helplessness and wonders how this tireless worker perceives him. The end of a full life upon him, Fife is a man ready to release his secrets and make his past clear for those he leaves behind. Confronting the ugly truths of the decisions he has made, Fife is his own prosecutor, seemingly dedicated to damning himself, forgiving not his trespasses nor forgiving himself of the hurt he has caused to those who loved him. 

Leonard Fife’s testimonies will be captured in a documentary about his life, directed by his former film students Malcolm (Michael Imperioli) and Diana (Victoria Hill). The two shoot their doc in the style that Fife created, by the filmmakers sitting off to the side and their subject speaking directly to a camera that has become a confessional. Of course this is the style perfected by filmmaker Errol Morris, whom Fife references. The characters played by Imperioli and Hill represent the type of opportunism that is a black spot on so many of today’s journalist intentions. They aren’t there to get the truth. It is the juicy bits they seek and the hot button success that will follow. Both actors do well with their supporting roles, although the script doesn’t give them much beyond what they represent. Perhaps this is a purposeful design, as Malcolm and Diana are, for Fife, unmemorable footnotes in his own history, save for his affair with a young Diana when she was his student.

Fife’s recollections of his life play out in a non-linear fashion, both in his mind and in Schrader’s direction. As a filmmaker of advanced age with a cancer that is eating him from the inside, Fife’s memories begin to bleed into a strange collage of truth and fiction, represented by great work from cinematographer Andrew Wonder, who gives the film a unique visual rhythm to Fife’s memories.

As he frustratingly struggles to keep his testimony factual, Fife insists that his wife Emma (Uma Thurman) be there, just off camera. It is not the documentary that is the reason for his participation, it is Emma, the woman who has carried the baggage of her husband’s pain for far too long. The camera will be the microscope to his true confessions, projecting the minute realities of Fife’s memory and catching him if he strays from the path of honesty.

Jacob Elordi proves himself the perfect choice to play the young Leonard. The actor gets Gere’s mannerisms and speech patterns down, but makes his own mark in finding the proper dramatic spark to portray the young Fife’s shaping of his future. As the film progresses, Schrader masterfully presents an aging man’s memories by inserting the older Gere into Fife’s flashbacks. Be it the power of regret or the inevitability of death, it is only the older man that can respond to these memories. As one ages, memories are no longer as fluid as they once were. Time flows on, but some remembrances fade or become tangled in how our older minds wish to present them. Casting Fife’s memory as fractured time shifts enhances the frustrations of Oh Canada’s lead character while cementing the pain of his loved ones who bear witness to the weight of his mortality.

Reuniting with his director of American Gigolo after 44 years, Richard Gere is devastatingly profound. Leonard Fife is not only the actor’s best performance in decades, but one that allows him the deepest and most reflective canvas on which to create. Always a fine actor, as Gere aged, he was awarded the deeper roles that sometimes eluded him. As he reaches his late 70s, this could be the performance that finally makes the Academy stand up and allow him to be recognized. There is a comfort to his portrayal, finding Fife accepting the pain he has caused to others and to himself. Leonard is a man who abandoned his wife and young son, walked out on many relationships, and rebuked all who loved him for his twisted idea of what was right. Already hating himself for the emotional detritus he left behind, failing to acknowledge his own son when he meets him as an adult is the sin that stays the clearest and stings the most. Gere traverses this pain with gutted line delivery and a face beaten by its memory. The cancer is trivial when the sharp focus of this most unholy of betrayals comes to Fife’s mind in such a clear form. Richard Gere’s work is one of reflection and introspective judgement that stands among the best of his decades-long career.

In Schrader’s best films, he chooses music that becomes a dark troubadour to the lead character’s journey. Here, with the great work of music supervisor Dina Juntila, the properly ambient sounds of the group Phosphorescent are used to soulful levels. Blending with carefully chosen songs by Hannbal, Lonette, and Sunn Cycle, the music of Oh, Canada imbues the melancholy of a man in a final state of somber contrition. 

Mortality and regret come for us all. In Paul Schrader’s long life, he has come face to face with both. The filmmaker has spoken of his personal remorse over his treatment of his brother Leonard (who died in 2006) and now he is husband to an ailing companion, as his wife (actress Mary Beth Hurt) suffers from Alzheimer’s. As Leonard Fife is haunted by his past and seeks to bring it into perspective, it makes the filmmaker’s latest all the more devastating. This could be Paul Schrader at his most vulnerable. 

Oh, Canada is a film of reflection that parallels the hopefulness of the younger self with the finality of life and one’s coming to terms with regret. We are what we have made ourselves. If we embrace the good and bad contained within us, there are no excuses to be made. In our lifetime, we smile and laugh, we betray and break hearts. In the end, there can be a final comfort to accepting our imperfect souls.  

Oh, Canada

Written by Paul Schrader (based on the novel, Foregone, by Russell Banks)

Directed by Paul Schrader

Starring Richard Gere, Jacob Elordi, Uma Thurman, Michael Imperioli, Victoria Hill

R, 91 Minutes, Northern Lights Films, Exemplary Films Corporation, Getaway Entertainment, Kino Lorber