Old lion of the New Hollywood, Paul Schrader is not done roaring. In May, the Cannes competition welcomed the American’s twenty-fourth feature film, Oh, Canada. Be it an adaptation of the penultimate novel of his friend and compatriot Russell Banks (1940-2023)translated by Actes Sud in 2022. Met during the Cannes Film Festival, the 78-year-old filmmaker returns to the shadows that run through this ambiguous and sepulchral work.
Your film defies classic biographical principles. Can we talk about an “antibiopic”?
I must remind you that this is primarily a story imagined by Russell (Banks). He got sick, I read his book and it became my idea. Russell called it his “Ivan Ilyich” (reference to a short story by Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, published in 1886) ; it became mine “Ivan Ilyich”. I wouldn’t have written it myself, because I shy away from movies where the protagonist is in the cinema. I was looking for an escape, after three relatively simple films (On the way to salvation2017; card counter, 2021 ; Master Gardener, 2022). Oh, Canada it seemed different enough to work on adapting it.
You still have 77.8% of this article to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
