Recensioni de* critic*

Oh Canada is too disjointed and feels too rushed for its own good, like a film made out of its maker’s urge, with little reflection. We can only hope Paul Schrader has one more, better movie left, so it could serve as his testament.

First Reformed was the perfect synthesis of the slow cinema from his college film critic days and the sleazy violence of the long career that followed. Oh, Canada is too buttoned up with a first-draft script to be more than a curiosity when stacked against Schrader’s odder, more fearless oeuvre.

There’s a sense here of Schrader wanting to pare back his customary aesthetic even further than it’s already been parred over the last several films and speak plainly, with as little scrim between the audience and himself as possible... The present tense of Oh, Canada finds Schrader and Gere... at their peak of their powers.

[Oh, Canada] is a messy, melancholic, and meandering work that has Schrader looking backward while he pushes forward into new thematic territory... Though [this] isn’t Paul Schrader’s most successful work, one can only hope this isn’t his swan song.

Despite attempts to elevate the source material, Schrader’s telling falls flat, floundering in its attempts to translate literary looseness into a coherent, or even engaging, work of cinema. Oh, Canada feels less a deep rumination at the last moments of an artist’s life, and more the confused ramblings of an irascible, self-important character surrounded by sycophants unable to stand up to his unreasonable demands.

While the story touches upon important elements of mortality and de-mystifying idolised figures, in the end, it is the performances that ultimately make the selling point for Oh, Canada... Oh, Canada may be unlikely to become one of the unforgettable pieces of the year, but its top-notch acting makes the piece worth watching for anybody interested in human stories.

Oh Canada may be verbose, but its rather minimalist set-up assures all the feelings are nicely boxed up, until they can no longer be contained... [The film] is not just about filmmaking, it is a homage to storytelling as a lifeline.

[The film's] brutal honesty about the indignities of old age is one of the main reasons to see Oh, Canada. The other is Richard Gere, who gives what might be the most psychologically bleak and demanding performance of his career.

While Oh, Canada is narratively bleak, it’s stylistically quite light on its feet, almost airy... Oh, Canada might be a movie that was conceived in the long dark night of the soul, but it moves towards brightness and possibility.

“Oh, Canada”... 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.

With its thoughts on films and filmmaking, and especially the possibilities of ever really capturing truth on film, it’s all a bit inside-baseball, which limits its appeal. It’s not as if cinema questioning itself is an especially fresh perspective, or that Schrader has anything especially original to say about that either.

For a film about big themes like mortality, memory, truth and redemption, Oh, Canada feels both slight and stubbornly page-bound, too unsatisfyingly fleshed out to give its actors meat to chew on.