Diaries are written in secrecy, free-flowing thoughts anchored to the page as if the ink could stop memories from vanishing through the hands of time. Filmmaker Paul Schrader understands the lingering, often quiet desperation of journaling like few filmmakers do. From “Taxi Driver” to “Master Gardener,” the director’s work returns time and time to a man sitting by a desk with only an open journal, his words, and a small lamp for company.
“Oh, Canada” is, in a sense, another film about a man and his diary. Leonard Fife (Richard Gere) is dying of cancer when he agrees to let two of his former students back into his home. They are to shoot an in-depth documentary about his life story as a pioneering documentarian and left-wing draft evader who fled to Canada as a young man to avoid serving in Vietnam. What they don’t know is that they agreed to shoot Fife’s final confession, which is dedicated to his loving wife and creative partner of thirty years, Emma (Uma Thurman).
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Schrader’s adaptation of Russell Banks’ 2021 novel “Foregone” captures the principal dichotomy of memory like few others: how can the past be at once so elusive and yet unyielding? As cancer violently satiates its cruel hunger, eating away at his body and pride, Fife is left to contemplate how legacy is a future that never comes. In death, all we have is the past. And so, to the past, he returns, grabbing at the chance to come clean to his wife before his looming death.
This truth is a murky one, made even murkier by Fife’s wavering lucidity. Sitting in front of a single camera in the darkened chamber next to his bedroom, the frail-looking man fluctuates between speaking from a place of solid conviction and falling into a pit of confusion. Schrader emulates this seesawing in how the story is told, not necessarily non-linearly but scattered. The film travels from Vermont to Montreal, traversing aspect ratios and color palettes, moving from the past to the present, from the dying Fife to the young, virile man he once was.
Jacob Elordi plays Fife in the late ’60s, towering over the frame with his lengthy limbs and curling into himself whenever he needs to walk through a door. Elordi bears little resemblance to Gere (he’s at least one full head taller than the veteran, to begin with), but for all he lacks in physical likelihood, the Australian actor compensates in charm. It takes little effort to understand why Schrader chose to cast the rising star as his younger Gere, Elordi exuding the kind of easygoing, cocky confidence that made the “Pretty Woman” star a bonafide sex symbol. There’s a sensual quality to the way he moves, from how his lanky body slithers atop the sheets to engulf a woman in pleasure to the way he holds himself against the stern sergeants while wearing nothing but a doodled jockstrap.
Having Elordi play Fife also makes for an interesting reflection on the slippery nature of deflection. How could this man with legs able to get from Massachusetts to Vermont in two wide steps have been lost to the system? How could he have slipped away from home, from others, from the idea he created of himself? And then there’s Gere, ever-imposing on screen but made small in this gentle drama, confined to cushioned chairs and mechanic beds, unable to tend to his hygiene or nutrition. Schrader prods at the inaccuracy of memory by having the two men play a poignant game of musical chairs, one sliding into the place of the other, Fife seeing his old self in once ordinary moments made immense by the type of perspective only a whole life lived can give.
Schrader’s gaze is patient — tired, almost. He frames Gere’s aged face in tight close-ups, and it is as if we are seeing him for the first time, wrinkled and ragged and oh so very beautiful. His eyes are met by Emma’s, a calming love after a life of restlessness and his one final shot at redemption. He sees her through a monitor, the graininess of the screen freezing her in time, at once his young student and his wife of thirty years. Looking at the camera, Leo tells a tale of guilt and deceit but also his one great love story, born out of lust, shame, and omission and still so dearly treasured.
There was a moment during the press tour for “Master Gardener” where Schrader’s decaying health put into question whether he had another film in him. “I used to be an artist who never wanted to leave this world without saying f*ck you, and now I’m an artist who never wants to leave this world without saying I love you,” he said at the time, his raspy voice denouncing fragile lungs. “Oh, Canada” further underlines this sentiment and plays not as a statement of repentance but as an exasperated, impossibly moving love letter from a dying man. Here’s hoping Schrader still has many of those to share. [A-]
