“Be all my sins remembered“ –Hamlet Act 3 Sc 1
Written & Directed by Paul Schrader and based on the novel Forgone by Russell Banks. Young men create memories their older selves must atone for.
With: Richard Gere as Leonard “Leo” Fife, a Canadian-American filmmaker selfish rat-bastard dying of cancer. Jacob Elordi as the younger and much taller flashback Leo. Uma Thurman as Emma, Leo’s third wife. Thurman also plays Gloria, the wife of Leo’s friend Stanley (A cost saving measure? Or is Schrader trying to tell us something? Hmmm. François Truffaut condemned Julie Christie to two roles in Fahrenheit 451 and it helped drive him to ruin.)
Victoria Hill as Diana, Malcolm’s producer and Leo’s former student. Michael Imperioli as Malcolm, a filmmaker interviewing Leo for a documentary, and Leo’s former student. I suspect Malcolm is just not paying attention. Caroline Dhavernas as Rene, Leo’s nurse. Penelope Mitchell as Sloan, Malcolm’s production assistant.
Presbyter Schrader has been drawing water from the deep well of guilt for several decades now. At first he was content with a wooden bucket, which he abandoned in favor of a hand pump. Technology has provided him with a sump pump. It sucks all the sins up outa of his damp basement, but leaving the despair behind and creating a pond suitable for fishing in his spacious back yard . “Are they bittin’ there, Pauli?”)
Flannery O’Connor is his favorite writer. I’m betting he screens Ingmar Bergman films in order to cheer-up. Has Marty over for a fish fry, complete with forbidden brewski.
Schrader became famous for his Taxi Driver script. The veneration people have for that movie is a mystery. Director Martin Scorsese and Schrader strike me as the kind of guys who were daily pantsed in front of girls in high school. Taxi Driver‘s Travis Bickle is the sort of silly avenging angel a candy-ass might dream up, one armed with a big .44 magnum (boys attempting to make up for the depravations of cruel nature?)
O Canada takes the form of an on camera confession. Leo is compelled to filter it through the lens of a video camera, a serious upgrade form the one he used after answering the call of his true vocation, that of documentary filmmaker, making him an unreliable narrator. Making a record of the sins of others while putting his own on the back burner so to speak.
Wife Emma is his Mother Confessor. He needed not worry of her absolution, he had that upon saying hello (Good looks take a guy a long way). My guess is that cancer is God’s penance.
In one of a series of flashbacks (though no Citizen Kane this) we learn Leo was, and I approach this will all the Fear and Loathing you might feel, an English Major (which as you know makes him an authority on filmmaking, like all English Majors. Schrader himself was a Philosophy major until he answered the call of celluloid).
Jacob Elordi stands in for the young flashback Leo, except when a spray looking Richard Gere gets the duty. I could detect no rhyme or reason why the switch. Perhaps Elordi’s name was just left off that shooting day’s Call Sheet. But I must admit, after seeing him in Frankenstein he emotes with the best of them. Well close, but he’s no Brando.
Leo’s enjoying a slice of pecan pie and a cup of joe while seated in a cafe when a crowd of regular citizens are carried in an explosion of light, giving Leo an epiphany that Canada is the place for him. A heavenly DisneyLand for the reborn liberal arts major. Yippie!
Leo parks his Detroit iron on the sin side of the border and wades across the Rubicon to his new and improved life, leaving a few women and a couple of kids behind. There is some out of the blue narration from his discarded son you can ignore.
In a couple of ways Oh, Canada reminds me of that late 1970s sitcom Ivan the Terrible set in a crowed Moscow apartment. Lou Jacobi kept shouting “confess! confess” like some modern day NKVD Chief Lavrentiy Beria.
Confess Leo,
“… if your past is a lie, then you cease to exist.”
I’m not complaining.
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