By John Corrado

The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival ran from September 5th to 15th, more information can be found right here.

The latest film from Paul Schrader, Oh, Canada focuses on the legacy of a documentary filmmaker who dodged the draft, and how his choice to flee to Canada to avoid serving in the Vietnam War continues to impact him. It’s interesting material for a filmmaker like Schrader to tackle at this stage in his career, revisiting elements of his own filmmaking career.

The film centres around the life of fictional documentarian Leonard Fife, who is played in present day by Richard Gere (reuniting with Schrader over forty years after American Gigolo) and Jacob Elordi in flashbacks. Leonard is facing the end of a terminal illness in Montreal, where he has lived for years, becoming a celebrated documentary filmmaker in Canada.

In his final days, Leonard is allowing former students Malcolm (Michael Imperioli) and Diana (Victoria Hill) to interview him, providing an official account of his life commissioned by the CBC, while his wife Emma (Uma Thurman) watches on. But his memory is fading, and the film segues into flashbacks, where Elordi takes over the role of Fife.

In adapting the novel Foregone by Russell Banks for the screen, Schrader is able to explore and revisit themes of masculinity and cowardice that have shown up throughout his work. There is an element of career retrospective for the fictional Fife as well (we see archival footage of his documentaries, all relevant to Canadian topics).

The film is short at just over ninety minutes, and both halves feel slightly incomplete, but maybe that’s the point. Schrader captures snippets from a life and weight of regret, playing with timelines and aspect ratios. Schrader uses a boxy 4:3 aspect ratio for the present day scenes, while reserving widescreen for the flashbacks. It’s an inverse of what we expect, but makes the past seems wide open, while the present is boxing him in as he reaches his end.

The present scenes are about stripping away the illusion that he led a heroic life, while the past reveals him to be a charmer constantly on the run from responsibilities. Gere gives a textured performance as the older Fife, while Elordi impressively captures his mannerisms as the younger version. The film itself doesn’t leave the same impact as a late-career masterpiece from Schrader like First Reformed, but still builds to one of his characteristically bittersweet endings. I want to revisit this one.

Film Rating: ★★★ (out of 4)