To be told to be understood. Narrate to invent, reconcile and explain. Sit in front of a camera to confess, share and recognize yourself. This is the exercise carried out by Leonard Fife, a film director who, terminally ill, decides to give one last interview to two of his students. On one condition: that your partner is present. The result is a kind of exercise in redemption, a confession under the spotlight, a review of his life in which memory and fiction intermingle in a confusing, complex, obtuse story. Richard Gere is in charge of playing this repentant filmmaker in Paul Schrader’s film Oh Canadawhich has just arrived in theaters after being presented at the last Cannes Film Festival.
“Documentaries are interesting because people think of them as something real, as if they always give you a version of reality. And it is a camera, a montage,” the actor explains to this newspaper, who in turn acknowledges: “I live in a documentary of my life all the time.” The interpreter thus reflects on his career and biography, which combine as happens with the character he plays in the drama. Richard Gere began his career as a performer early, although without great expectations. “I thought about retiring when I was 25, I never thought this would be for life,” he admits. But he continued and, at 75 years old, he has accumulated a filmography behind him that has expanded with titles such as American Gigolo, Pretty Woman, King David, Chicago and The fraud.
Of course, he reveals that the films he likes to shoot the most are independent ones, “about ideas that question reality.” “And because they shoot very quickly, there is almost no time,” he describes. “I maintain childlike enthusiasm when filming,” shares the actor. In his case, unlike the character he plays in Oh Canadahas reflected and become aware of what spending so much time in front of the cameras has caused him. “It teaches you to focus. There is a moment when one thought dissolves and before the other comes in, there is a small hole. And in that hole, there is something that you can go through to reach another possibility of the self, which is more inclusive,” he considers.
“Like a medication, it makes us focus on the now. It’s funny, because the moment you say action! Even cut!, we are aware of ourselves, our thoughts, of trying to achieve what we are exploring,” he reflects on the background of the film. “Leonard can’t handle all his truth without the camera, or his version of the truth. Without it he feels like an absolute liar,” he describes. And he states, as happens to his alter ego in the feature film: “I am simply a fictional character, I am nothing more. And by extension, are we all? Are we a projection of an idea of self? Are we a fiction?”
Oh Canada He plays with it, through flashbacks in which Jacob Elordi plays his character in his youth, in which different relationships and an abandoned son are mixed. In addition to the trauma and guilt of having fled into exile to Canada during the Vietnam War. The film, which is based on the novel by Russell Banks, traces his internal and external journey, also focusing on the relationship between art and fame, creation and ego. And death, whose proximity is what makes the protagonist rethink the steps taken until then, the deceptions, victories and lies that have accompanied him throughout his life.
“I hope we are all concerned about death, but not in a morbid way, but simply understanding that everything that is born, dies. It is a very healthy perspective,” he recommends, highlighting that “no one knows when they are going to die.” The actor jokes about the passage of time, comparing his experience in Oh Canada with King David, released in 1985, because when they ‘aged’ him, it was more difficult to achieve than in his last feature film. “I remember spending twelve hours in makeup, putting on all kinds of prosthetics that didn’t work because I had super young skin, now it’s super easy to make me look super old,” he jokes.
Wisdom as a form of activism
Richard Gere combines his profession as an interpreter with activism, although he defends that the first step is knowledge to speak out and take sides for causes. “We need wisdom. If we have it, that is when perhaps activism helps, but it is not that easy. The impulse to have a positive effect, to be responsible, is something very healthy and necessary,” he maintains. A wisdom that begins with oneself, as it explains: “It starts from knowing things as they are and knowing us, as we are. That’s where altruism and compassion come in, making wisdom mean something to the world.”
In this process, he affirms that, currently, at a global level, the focus of the debate is confused: “We are too worried about certain things, and it is very difficult to divorce yourself completely and be absolutely independent from achieving things. Whether it’s money, power, a certain position or fame. Even decrease the urge to be attracted to these things.” In fact, he laments that “the disparity in economic security, from the richest to the poor, is worse than ever.” And a reality that no one can escape.
“It affects everyone’s happiness, people who have all that money spend a lot of time and energy trying not to take it away from them. People who don’t have it are trying to achieve a certain level in order to survive,” he comments. For this reason, the actor invites us to look at the past with affection. “When you look back at what you have done, there is guilt, remorse, and an underlying tenderness,” he explains, expanding his argument to the ‘selves’ of twenty and thirty years old, ages at which he defends that one continues to be “a child learning to function in the world”: “How to receive love, how to give it, how to accept yourself for who you are. That tenderness is a very beautiful moment to be in.”
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