Memory fails, but so does the truth — or the lies we tell ourselves about ourselves — in "Oh, Canada," writer-director Paul Schrader's complicated, somewhat messy look at a dying filmmaker reflecting back on his own life.

Richard Gere, reuniting with Schrader after the two made 1980's "American Gigolo" together, stars as Leonard Fife, a renowned documentarian who's dying of cancer. A crew of his former students (led by Michael Imperioli's Malcolm) travels to Fife's home in Montreal to film a documentary about his life, using a three-camera Interrotron, a technique Fife founded that has subjects staring straight down the barrel of the camera, the unblinking, all-judging portal to honesty.

As Fife recounts his story, he's played in flashbacks by Jacob Elordi. (It's perhaps the film's first conceit to the truth being a slippery object; the lanky Elordi is at least a half foot taller than Gere.) There are also times when Gere plays himself in flashbacks, the film's way of depicting the faultiness of our memories, and how our minds play with our own visions of our past.

Fife had a wife and child he left behind in Virginia when he fled for Canada to dodge the Vietnam draft and start a new life. His act of cowardice betrays the myth that he came to Canada as an act of heroism. His acclaimed documentary career also has suspect roots, and the scenes from the films he's worked on show he's maybe not the genius artiste he's been painted to be. (That last part may or may not be on purpose.)

The film sometimes shifts the narration to a character that is revealed to be Fife's son (Zach Shaffer). And Uma Thurman, who plays Fife's current wife (and former student), shows up in his shifting memories as another character, the wife of a friend with whom he had an early affair. (Thurman's wig in these scenes doesn't do her any favors.)

Schrader, adapting from a book by the late Russell Banks (who also wrote "Affliction," which Schrader turned into a movie in 1997), is wrestling with a lot, including ideas of legacy, and ideas of his own personal legacy.

But "Oh, Canada" never reaches the heights of his most towering accomplishments, including "First Reformed," which kicked off a new round of appreciation for his body of work and marked a late-in-life comeback for the "Taxi Driver" and "Raging Bull" screenwriter, who turns 79 later this year.

"Oh, Canada" is a jumble of ideas, of mis-remembered or half-invented truths, that still manages to occasionally cut to the core of the human psyche. "What's left of me is in my brain," Gere's Fife says, at war with his own body and struggling with the meaning of his life. "When you have no future, all you have is your past."

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'OH, CANADA'

Grade: C+

No MPA rating (Language, sexuality)

Running time: 1:34

How to watch: Now in theaters

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