Rating: NR | Runtime: 91 minutes
Release Date: December 6th, 2024 (USA)
Studio: Kino Lorber
Director(s): Paul Schrader
Writer(s): Paul Schrader / Russell Banks (novel Foregone)

How can so much suffering have no meaning?

On his literal deathbed, renowned documentarian Leonard Fife (Richard Gere) agrees to sit down for an interview that two former students (Michael Imperioli’s Malcolm and Victoria Hill’s Diana) plan to turn into a film about his life and career. His main motivation to do so is initially because his wife (and their former classmate), Emma (Uma Thurman), said she’d be at his side for the duration. Malcolm promised it’d be a legacy piece shining Fife in the best possible light and, perhaps, the catalyst for a retrospective worthy of his status in Canadian cinematic history (despite being American). Well, once Leonard sits down, his motivation changes.

Adapted by Paul Schrader from his friend Russell Banks’ novel Foregone, Oh, Canada begins with the decision to use the camera as a confessional. Fife has never been one not to recognize that his art as a filmmaker used the tools of psychology to silently goad his subjects into revealing truths they never intended to share, so it’s only fitting that he intentionally turns the tables on himself. This is his last time to set the record straight, after all. Not for the public as Malcolm and Diana hope. Nor for his wife despite constantly saying that his goal is to ensure she understands who he really is. This is the last time to remind himself that the life he lived might have come at the cost of his soul.

And it all hinges upon his decision to leave America as a means of avoiding the draft to Vietnam. That’s what Malcolm seeks to use as a centerpiece to the film—expressing the anti-war sentiment and heroics his mentor stood for. Leonard decides to ignore all his questions, though, choosing to weave a tale that starts in Richmond, VA instead. Yes, it will eventually also lead him to that fateful border crossing, but not before Emma hears more details than she ever had. Because while she was always aware he was married before, discovering he had a son came later (and unplanned). So, it stands to reason more lies of omission remained shrouded in mystery … until today.

The result is compelling both because of Gere’s performance and the fact that the narrative is inherently balanced upon Fife’s unreliable narration. This is a man drugged to high heaven in order to dull his pain. A man whose usual lack of filter has been removed even further—going so far as calling Malcolm a fraud to his face. One isn’t wholly independent of the other, though. Are we watching a delusional man spouting whatever comes to his head regardless of veracity or validity? Or is this a guilty person bearing his soul? Emma believes it’s the former. Heck, even Malcolm does—although he doesn’t care as long as it makes for good footage. And the person we hope to rely upon can’t stop mixing up faces in the retelling. Even Leo’s own face gets jumbled.

Oh, Canada must therefore be taken with a grain of salt if your hope is to follow a cohesive trajectory with concrete answers. Schrader is less interested in the truth here than he is the fiction of self. Because whether the things Leonard admits happened doesn’t matter as much as the sentiment that what the world knows about him didn’t. Maybe not for everyone. Emma says she “knows all she needs to know” and you can’t blame her for that. Regardless of previous wives, children, and lives, she’s only known Leonard the filmmaker and that’s who she’s loved for three decades. But it does matter to those wives and children. It does matter to the idea of God and judgement. Can an identity built upon lies ever truly be real?

There’s stuff about artists in there too. And reinvention always being steeped in fear. Fife is a complex and flawed human being who has cultivated a sense of self through his work as much as had it formed by that work. Where does one begin and the other end? Well, that varies on perception. In the end, the film isn’t even really about Leonard at all. It’s about culture and history and how all of it is colored by the desires of the people documenting it for the future. That’s why I love how Schrader homages “Rosebud” with the penultimate image—a word that means so many things to so many characters within Citizen Kane and viewers outside it. Leonard’s words are just words until someone else ascribes them meaning. The only part of any of our stories that remains ours is death.

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Richard Gere and Kristine Froseth in OH, CANADA; courtesy of Kino Lorber.