'Oh, Canada': Experimental biopic goes out of its way to confuse

The movies they’re making or talking about in movies about movies often look like they’re not very good movies. In “The Fall Guy,” they’re making a sci-fi adventure called “Metalstorm” that looks like a big-budget bomb. In Robert Altman’s “The Player,” the studio exec played by Tim Robbins develops a legal thriller, “Habeas Corpus,” which will eventually cast Julia Roberts in the lead. Among the fictional films tucked into the Roberts-starring “Notting Hill” is the space epic “Double Helix.” All these films appear to be quite terrible.

That also appears to be the case with the documentary-within-the-movie in Paul Schrader’s strange and convoluted and maddeningly opaque “Oh, Canada.” More than 40 years after Schrader and Richard Gere teamed up for “American Gigolo,” director and star are reunited for an experimental biopic about an acclaimed, fictional documentary filmmaker named Leonard Fife, who is terminally ill and in the final days of his life agrees to have the cameras turned on him. From what we can tell, this “movie” feels like it’ll be more on the level of a dullish TV newsmagazine profile than a full-fledged documentary.

Based on the novel “Foregone” by Russell Banks (Schrader previously adapted Banks’ “Affliction” for a 1997 film starring Nick Nolte and Sissy Spacek), “Oh, Canada” has present-day scenes set in Fife’s paneled and tastefully appointed Montreal mansion, where he has agreed to be interviewed by an Oscar-winning, husband-and-wife team of filmmakers (Michael Imperioli and Victoria Hill, both terrific) who are his former students. Fife has put no restrictions on the interview, other than to insist that his wife Emma (Uma Thurman), who was against this idea in the first place, be in the room with him. Speaking straight into the camera, Fife cajoles and belittles Imperioli’s Malcolm, who is directing the documentary, complains to Emma about the grilling he’s receiving, and is a most unreliable narrator of his own life. (No doubt the pain medications Fife is taking are contributing to his confusion.)

In flashbacks, Jacob Elordi plays the younger Fife, and that’s a serious case of miscasting. Not that it should be a lookalike contest, but the talented and charismatic Elordi is a good seven or eight inches taller than Gere, and he does a kind of half-hearted imitation that never quite resonates, as we learn that Fife was a brooding, self-involved, irresponsible hedonist who always puts himself first. (The story is kind of like “All That Jazz,” without the Ben Vereen Factor.)

In the late 1960s, Fife was in his 20s and an aspiring writer who was married with an infant son (this was already his second marriage) and was about to take a teaching job in Vermont when he ghosted his family. After faking a horrific, stereotype-ridden gay identity to delay his draft into the Army and a possible tour of duty in Vietnam, Fife heads to Canada. Is it an act of courageous protest heroism, or a coward fleeing his responsibilities? Whatever Fife’s motivations for fleeing, it’s clear that he wasn’t making some grand statement at the time. He just wasn’t ready to grow up, wife and child be damned.

Settling into a bohemian lifestyle that includes numerous affairs, Fife eventually turns his interest to filmmaking, becoming something of a national Canadian treasure for his hard-hitting documentaries shining a spotlight on injustice. (The snippets of Fife’s documentaries-within-the-documentary-within-this-movie look like something out of a Christopher Guest satire.)

Writer-director Schrader, a heavyweight who wrote “Taxi Driver” and “Raging Bull” and in recent years has written and directed a knockout trio of films in “First Reformed,” “The Card Counter” and “Master Gardener,” has long been fascinated with themes of redemption, and “Oh, Canada” feels almost like a semi-autobiographical confession. There are some moments of profound insight, and the camerawork is stylish and creative, but this is such an unnecessarily confusing story. At times, the narration shifts to Fife’s grown son (Zach Shaffer), whom he hasn’t spoken to in 30 years. In certain flashback scenes, Gere rather than Elordi plays the younger Fife. There’s also a bizarre interlude in which Fife has an assignation with his artist friend’s wife Gloria, who is played by ... Uma Thurman.

One supposes these gimmicks are intended to illustrate how Fife’s memories are betraying him in his final days. The problem with that is the viewer isn’t entirely sure that what we’re seeing is essentially true, or a jumbled and incorrect version of events. Either way, the documentary they’re making about Leonard Fife doesn’t look like anything we'd want to watch.