OH, CANADA - Mark Reviews Movies

Oh, Canada, Kino Lorber

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Review by Mark Dujsik | December 5, 2024

Everything's confused for Leo Fife (Richard Gere), a man dying of cancer and given the opportunity to tells his story for a documentary about his life. The pain, exhaustion, mental fog, and regimen of drugs associated with his disease are a major part of Leo's memory problems, of course, but soon into Oh, Canada, it becomes apparent that Leo's uncertainty about his own memories is founded in another issue: He has never been really honest about himself or his life.

Writer/director Paul Schrader's adaptation of the late Russell Banks' novel comes across as confused itself. The movie isn't just the story of Leo's life as seen from the man's own perspective. It's also the story of that uncertain point of view, meaning that the character's lies and the truth of what actually happened in his life merge in such a way that the movie itself is unable to communicate the distinction between the two. One walks away from it not entirely certain if Schrader himself really knows which is which.

The other possibility, of course, is that the filmmaker does know but takes that knowledge for granted on the part of the audience. The biggest issue, perhaps, is that we're never certain what the official record of Leo's biography actually is. It comes in fits and spurts, offered by the two documentarians interviewing their former professor for a project meant to honor their hero, who doesn't particularly like either of them. That complicates matters even further, because now a significant element of Leo's internal monologue and external storytelling has to do with how these two upstarts aren't living up to the ideals of documentary filmmaking he has championed throughout his career.

Basically, the movie is a muddle of narrative, character, ideas, critiques, and hypocrisy. Schrader undeniably gets the mood right here, while his formal experimentation puts us within the confounded and agonized mind of the movie's central character. Story-wise, though, the whole thing is simply confounding.

We meet Leo, given a brief reprieve from lying on his deathbed to speak with Malcolm (Michael Imperioli) and Diana (Victoria Hill), those former students of his who have found considerable success as documentarians and want to return the favor to their mentor. Sitting in a wheelchair in the lounge of his grand manor, Leo sets off on telling the story of his life, which has become something of a legend in his adopted home of Canada.

Also present are Leo's wife Emma (Uma Thurman), to whom the man wants to tell his story directly, and his nurse, keeping tabs on his physical and mental state, and the filmmakers' assistant Sloan (Penelope Mitchell), whom Leo finds appealing and he fears finds him to be a sad, pathetic man on the verge of death. Even now, how Leo feels about women and how they perceive him are at the forefront of his mind. It makes sense, considering that his love life is a major part of the mystery of who this man was.

There's a list of women here, including Amy, who's also played by Mitchell, and the family he abandoned after her father tried to make him a deal that was impossible to pass up, as well as Gloria, also played by Thurman, and how he betrayed an old friend just before starting a new life in Canada. Why did the man, originally a native of the southeastern part of the United States, go to Canada in the first place? Well, the official record is that he went there to evade the Vietnam draft, and that has made him a bit of a legend among the left-wing arts and culture scene of the country.

By the very end of the movie, we realize the reality of his relocation is a bit different from the myth, and the fact that it's the final, anticlimactic revelation of the narrative affirms how unfocused the entirety of the movie seems. We follow a younger Leo, played by Jacob Elordi and occasionally replaced by Gere for key moments, connect with various women, either through committed relationships or brief affairs to try to put an end to those commitments, and gradually make his way toward Canada. Meanwhile, the dying Leo rails against everyone and everything in his head or aloud, finds his memory too messy to keep track of what happened and what he has said, and even forgets or imagines that people have left him alone in the room with his thoughts.

There are hints of the filmmaking and teaching careers he had, as footage from one of his movies plays out and he recalls how much he distrusted Malcolm from the man's start as one of his students. None of that part of his life is in any doubt, apparently, so Schrader, apparently, doesn't appear to feel the need to communicate it to us. It's a significant gap in letting us understand Leo, his story, and the many lies he has told himself and others over the course of his life.

It all becomes a jumble, which certainly says something on a foundational level about Leo's state of mind and his character, and Schrader's enigmatic approach to both shows some skill. However, Oh, Canada feels like a puzzle with far too many pieces missing to get the full picture.

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