As one of many West’s most well-known Buddhists, and an in depth good friend of the Dalai Lama, Richard Gere has thought lengthy and arduous in regards to the ethical quandary on the coronary heart of his new movie “Oh, Canada”.
Gere performs Leonard Fife, a revered documentary filmmaker with a murky previous, who’s hailed as a hero for his refusal to battle within the Vietnam War.
“Whether it is a just or unjust war, can I kill someone? What do I do to defend our family?… We all ask ourselves that question,” Gere stated at Cannes Film Festival on Saturday.
According to his Buddhist research, “from an absolute point of view, if you either are to be killed, or kill someone else, better that you be killed,” he informed AFP.
But “it’s very hard to exist that way”, Gere admitted.
As the movie opens, Leonard is frail and at loss of life’s door. Determined to unburden himself of his previous deceits, he agrees to be interviewed about his mysterious previous.
It quickly emerges that his total, profitable life has been constructed on a collection of lies. His true causes for fleeing from the United States to Canada because the Vietnam War raged are simply the tip of the iceberg.
Based on the novel “Foregone” by Russell Banks, “Oh, Canada” is Gere’s second movie with Paul Schrader, the screenwriter of “Raging Bull” and “Taxi Driver”.
It comes greater than 4 many years after Schrader launched Gere into Hollywood’s A-list by casting him in “American Gigolo”.
If that position was chargeable for positioning Gere as a world-famous intercourse image, his look in “Oh, Canada” couldn’t be additional faraway from that glamour.
The movie finds Gere sporting blotched pores and skin, restricted to a wheelchair, and carrying a urine drainage bag.
“It was kind of freaky when we going through the process of aging,” stated Gere. “I saw myself some years from now, what I’m going to look like. It’s a very odd thing.”
The actor drew on his personal father, who handed away just lately.
In the movie, it’s by no means clear whether or not the reminiscences Leonard is recounting are correct, or the warped results of his guilt, highly effective most cancers medicine, and the prolonged passage of time.
“I saw that with my father when he was dying. He had memories that were completely false, that he was absolutely certain they happened,” he recalled.
The movie jumps between the current and previous. Modern-day heartthrob Jacob Elordi, of tv’s “Euphoria,” portrays a youthful Leonard.
But even within the flashbacks, Gere typically seems on display screen as his youthful self, including to the sense that our narrator might not be dependable.
“Things are all over the place. I think you’d take a couple of screenings of this to make more sense of it,” stated Gere. “It’s a complicated piece.”
© 2024 AFP