Fantasia 2024: ‘Oh… Canada’ Review
Stars: Walid Jabri, ‘Spark’ Patty Keach, Joey Mac Intosh, Denis Moreno, Stéphane Picotte, Ryan Stick, Karen Wan | Written and Directed by Vincenzo Nappi
The popular stereotype of the nice, polite Canadian is, like that of the overly gracious Southerner in the US, an artifice that quickly vanishes once you spend some time in either place. People are people, and they aren’t that different no matter where you go.
Oh… Canada, a six-minute short from writer/director Vincenzo Nappi (N.U.N.S. with Nunchucks, Is Your Daughter Home?) that made its debut at this year’s Fantasia Film Festival, is an attempt to subvert that image. You can’t tell that at first, with its semi-animated views of prairies full of bison, woodlands, an anthropomorphized family of beavers and other pastoral delights.
And then an apartment complex erupts Monty Python style from a peaceful meadow, and the film’s tone begins to change. But it’s when O Canada starts to play on the soundtrack that Oh… Canada really starts to turn dark. Unfortunately, rather than the kind of satirical approach that something like this calls for, Nappi delivers a heavy-handed piece that turns into the filmic equivalent of the “Canada is a dictatorship! Trudeau is a tyrant!!!!!” posts you see on Twitter/X.
Something which, as I’ve pointed out to more than one person, would be good for the gene pool, since rather than be allowed to spend three weeks rampaging around Ottawa waving Nazi flags and using war memorials as toilets the so-called “Freedom Convoy” would have been guests of honour at a recreation of The Tienanmen Square Massacre. Because that’s how dictators and tyrants operate.
But even after that very public display of just how tolerant the government is, Nappi uses Oh… Canada to push a narrative of the government as the bloody, violent, enforcers of conformity. Something the screening of his film at a major Canadian festival directly contradicts.
If he wanted to convey a feeling that things were somehow becoming more repressive, or just general dissatisfaction with the current government, there are much better and more pointed approaches to take. But the ham-fisted blood and thunder approach he takes makes, Oh… Canada, laughable rather than ominous.
As if this wasn’t enough of a political screed trying to pass as entertainment, the “Buy your citizenship today” line on the poster echoes other right-wing, anti-immigrant talking points. Ones that, amusingly enough, I frequently hear because since I’m white and speak English people assume I was born here, not that I moved here from the US. Next time maybe he should just post on social media, that seems to be where the audience for this kind of shit is.
Due to other plans, this is the first year in nearly a decade I didn’t actively cover Fantasia. But if this is what they’re reduced to programming, I don’t think I’m missing much.
* 1/5
Oh… Canada screened as part of this year’s Fantasia Film Festival.
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