“Whether or not you believe in God, you don’t lie when you pray.” So says Richard Gere who plays aging documentary filmmaker Leonard Fife in director Paul Schrader’s “Oh, Canada.” Schrader’s films have never shied away from depicting how the divine has a role in the innate messiness of human experience. Still, there’s an earnestness and impartiality to his latest that makes “Oh, Canada” feel like a cinematic prayer.
The film is based on author Russell Banks’ novel Foregone. Banks, a close friend of Schrader’s, had requested that Schrader name the film the title he originally wanted the book to be, which was Oh, Canada. Focusing on Gere’s Fife (Gere reunites with Schrader here over four decades later after “American Gigolo”), the filmmaker evaded the draft in the United States during the Vietnam War and settled in Canada, where he enjoyed a successful career. Fife is praised for his anti-war stance and his work has received critical acclaim for its justice-oriented focus.
For the aging Fife, who is unable to distinguish fact from fiction, he knows that the truth is far more complex, and in an attempt to resist the mythologizing of his name and work, he agrees to be filmed by his former students, Malcolm (Michael Imperioli) and Diana (Victoria Hill), so long as his wife, Emma (Uma Thurman) is present for each taping. It acts as a last rite and opportunity for Fife to give an honest account of his story. Jacob Elordi plays a younger Fife in key flashbacks and the film is a journey of trying to reconcile how the Elordi version of Fife sowed seeds that Gere’s Fife now has to reap, penance, guilt, regret, and everything in between.
This is the second time Schrader has adapted Banks’ work, the first being 1999’s “Affliction,” and he knew that “Oh, Canada” had the potential to be more than its seemingly mellow premise. “It was a challenge because this film is essentially one long interview. I wanted to do more interesting things than just having two people in a room facing each other,” he shared. The excitement and variation came in incorporating a variety of different color schemes and aspect ratios into the film to represent the prismatic yet also unreliable nature of trying to remember one’s past life.
He spoke with RogerEbert.com over Zoom about casting actors in multiple roles, a scene he didn’t cut till the film’s final editing stages, and the importance of embracing mystery when making art.
This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
I read that you finished this screenplay two weeks before Russell passed. I’m curious about what the conversations between you two looked like as you were drafting this: did you consult him as you were writing the script? Did he get any say in how he was portrayed given the autobiographical nature of the work?
Russell never got a chance to read the script but during the writing of it, we exchanged a lot of emails and we were guided by a series of questions. In any situation, why is Leonard doing what he’s doing? Why does he say one thing and not the other? It was about digging into the interiority of who Leonard was, and who Russell was, and finding a conversation between the two. Sometimes Russell didn’t have adequate answers to those questions. At one point I felt that Leonard needed to be more cruel than Russell had made him. That’s why I put that scene where he rejects and denounces his now-grown son, Cornel (Zach Shaffer). That wasn’t in the book.
You’ve already mentioned that in reading Foregone, Russell could be very critical when depicting himself. You’ve just touched on this a bit, but how did knowing that about him shape your stewardship of telling this story? Did you feel a tension between adapting Russell’s book accurately and, as his friend, wanting to soften some of his own self-criticism?
On an artistic basis, Russell liked to exaggerate a lot of his bad behavior. So already, when I thought about adding or modifying, I knew the narrative I was working with wasn’t 100% true. I told his widow “I think Russell paints a bad picture of himself because it’s a more interesting picture than the real one.” She appreciated that and laughed and said “I think you’re right.” Back to your earlier question, he did send me an interesting email when he got into relapse where he shared his hopes for writing again but also said that if he did, he didn’t want to write a book about dying of cancer (laughs). So I think anything “wrong” that’s put on screen about his life, especially regarding this story about someone dying from cancer, is another way to honor him in that distance.
On the note of adaptation, there are these very intentional moments where you had Richard play the younger version of Leonard in a scene and Jacob play the older version of Leonard. When did you decide these swaps would happen?
If they swapped too much, it would be too much of a gimmick. It never crossed my mind to have Jacob Elordi’s version of Leonard sit in the recording chair for example. Depicting a swap like this is something you can only do in filmmaking but not in writing. Maybe you could change the font on the page or make someone’s writing in all caps to denote what I tried to do, but there’s not a whole lot you can change in the writing process itself. Here I was able to change the color, screen ratio, and speed. I’m able to make changes with the tools that are already inherent in the filmmaking process that aren’t built into the literary process. Then again, there are unique challenges with time-oriented media like film. It was an intriguing imaginative exercise for me: if Russell had the tools of film to tell his story, what shifts would he have made or could he have made?
I never discussed these swaps with Russell. But I figured it was a way to idea of how we mix our memories with our intentions and perceptions. How do we remember ourselves and how much can we access what we were thinking or feeling when we were of a certain age? I also wanted to show Richard other than just aged and dying and have old Leo remember himself in his forties or fifties. Purely for commercial reasons, you can have this image of Richard, who has been a movie star, moving around and not just looking sickly in a chair.
There’s a sequence where Jacob as younger Leonard is with his wife, Alicia in bed, and then we see a similar scene repeated but this time it’s Richard as older Leonard. I told the wonderful young actress, Kristine Froseth, who played Alicia, “You’re never gonna forget this. It doesn’t get much better than this.”
(Laughs) There’s a whole spectrum there. In addition to these swaps, you also have actors playing multiple characters which further speaks to how past and present get blurred together. Penelope Mitchell plays Sloan in present Leonard’s life but is also Amy, Leonard’s first wife, while Uma Thurman plays Leonard’s present wife, Emma, but also plays a younger woman Leonard has an affair with.
I liked the idea of Leonard having to do these interviews but he’s frustrated that he can’t remember his past despite his best efforts. I imagined that since those people in the room were right there with him, that’s why he took their faces and bodies and puts them in his memories.
As we flow between the agony of the present and Leonard sharing memories, I took note of the way you would break up the rhythm. There’s that pivotal sequence where Cornel tells us via voiceover that he didn’t see his father for another thirty years after Leonard boards his flight and that’s cut immediately to Sloan adjusting the microphone that’s fallen. How did you approach building these pauses?
It was a challenge because this film is essentially one long interview. I wanted to do more interesting things than just having two people in a room facing each other, that’s why I incorporated the Errol Morris Interrotron. It gave me additional paraphernalia to deal with where Michael Imperioli could be looking at one screen and Richard’s looking at another screen. It provides a variety of different angles and offers a sort of uncomfortable immersion that’s organic and alive. In the same way, rather than just have the character of Leonard blitz through his memories in confidence, I tried to think about the ways it would make sense for him to start to doubt his memories. After relaying something so definitive where as a viewer, we’re inhabiting a memory, I wanted to have these moments where we’re back in the present to almost signify that he may not be so sure about what he’s relaying.
It’s almost as if the film is a form of accountability, gently probing if Leonard has it all together. Speaking of interviews, there’s this great line in the film where after Leonard asks why he agreed to be filmed for the documentary, he’s told “Famous people have to make interviews.” As an artist, how do you reconcile the marketing and consumerism side of art-making with the act of creation?
I think this will always be an eternal struggle. Take “Oh, Canada.” I wrote a very solid character and any number of actors could do a great job. Two dozen maybe three dozen actors could knock this out of the park. The thing is you’ve seen Anthon Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce play old. Robert DeNiro was offered the role. But then I was thinking: How can I put buzz on this? Who could I put on this would make people enticed, curious, and ultimately want to see the movie to learn more? Then I realized that Richard’s never played old and that’s added something interesting. So now I’m making a calculation, not on the material necessary because I trust it and not on Richard because I know he can do this well, but on how the film will be perceived by people who may want or may not want to hear more about this film and see it. You need that buzz and curiosity factor and that’s just as much a part of filmmaking as any other part like getting the right actor.
This theme of control is a recurring one throughout the film. I’m remembering that sequence where a younger Leonard is being photographed by a random couple in the airport and then we hear an older Leonard wonder if that photograph exists somewhere. We’re perceived in ways we don’t have control over.
As a filmmaker, how are you thinking about making art, specifically these confessional pieces, but you cannot control the narrative once it’s out in the world? Is it scary to think of it having a life beyond you?
You make it to give it away. I’ve learned that you have to walk away. Some filmmakers have trouble because, in some ways, you’re never finished. You can always revisit and keep fine-tuning, but at some point, you have to say “I’m done” for better or worse. I’m sure in three months I’ll have a great idea and wish I had incorporated that idea, but it’s okay. It’s in the hands of others now and I can trust I did the best I could with the time I had.
Things are due, they’re never done. I read that there was an epilogue that would have seen Cornell and Emma visiting Leonard’s grave, but you cut that at the last minute.
Yeah, that will be in the Blu-ray. The epilogue wasn’t in the book but I felt like the film needed more closure so I argued for it. I also had to argue for it from a budget perspective. We had shot it already and when you’re shooting so close to the bone, you don’t like to waste any set-ups. I defended this ardently especially since we had spent the money to shoot the scene but after talking with cinematographer, Andrew Wonder, I dropped it and haven’t regretted it. The ending as it is now is jarring, but purposefully so and ties the film together as we see a younger Leonard quite literally cross over from one country to the next. So too do we do the same in our passing when we go from life to death.
The look of this film shifts a lot too, thanks to Wonder’s work but also the colors you employ. I think of the scene where young Leonard is confronted by his father-in-law, Benjamin Chapman (Peter Hans Benson). It felt like a sequence lifted right out of a horror film.
When you’re shooting a tightly budgeted film, you have to bundle your locations and put as many locations in the same physical site. There was a pool table in the room where we shot that scene and it was too big to be taken out. I thought it would be interesting to let the green from the table’s felt color the whole room. Even though it was unrealistic, I shot the scene in green because the green pool table was reflecting across parts of the room and I wanted it to be consistent. It was a journey of compromise to work with the spaces you’re in.
These shifts extended to the different formats we’d use for the film too. We had widescreen, 1.85:1, 133:1, and so forth. We can do that now because of digital. I would have wanted to employ these varied formats with “Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters,” but I wouldn’t have been able to. Now that I’m projecting on digital, you can jump from one format to another. The truth is though, not a lot of audiences realize the format is changing! I was watching the new “Nosferatu” the other day and I remember thinking “There’s something strange about this.” Then I realized that I had been trying to fit the film into a 1.85:1 ratio when in fact, the compositions were different; it was in 1.44.
“Oh, Canada” may not get into faith in explicitly the same way as works of yours like “First Reformed,” but the questions and vulnerability that naturally arise from being close to death feel tinged with the spiritual.
I’m fascinated by the question “Is change possible?” I love getting into the tonograph of those themes. There has to be mystery. The problem with many films is that there is no sense of mystery. Their worlds are very simple where they present problems, and then they present solutions to those problems. It’s all a gimmick because they’re setting the terms. In reality, life doesn’t offer us that many problems. Behind every person who is doing you ill is another person who you can identify with and for whom you would do the same thing they’re doing if you were in their skin. For me, what makes for interesting characters is this ambiguity and idea that as people, we can change our narratives if we’re in different situations and switch our clothes, so to speak.