A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints

by Ari

A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints is the semi-autobiographical drama about the gritty experiences that changed writer-director Dito Montiel’s young life when he was coming of age in Astoria, Queens circa 1986. Fueled by raw energy and emotion and the visceral intensity of spirited independent filmmaking, Montiel’s debut has the ingredients for something explosive, but never fully reaches its ambitions. The story is marred by uneven pacing and some baffling stylistic choices (dialogue appearing on-screen is particularly unnecessary), along with a questionable thematic arc that never fully connects. Montiel’s film is either on the verge of being emotionally affecting or suddenly spiraling out of control, and it’s a testament to the young actors for maintaining a dramatic line to invest in. The performances are quite strong for a young cast, especially the talented Shia LaBeouf who provides depth and compassion in the lead. The adult cast lead by Robert Downey Jr. is mostly wasted in material that comes off as standard and tedious.

Montiel wisely trusts his young actors to recreate the authenticity he’s striving for, but poor structure prevents the story from being as compelling as it would like. The direction switches from bittersweet sentiment to angry aggression (and vice-versa) in a matter of seconds, making it difficult to put a finger on what exactly Montiel means to express about his memories. It’s admirable to approach life-altering events with complexity, but translating his feelings into cinematic terms results in a somewhat jumbled and elusive thematic narrative. It’s difficult to tell which characters Montiel sympathizes with at certain moments, only adding a sense of confusion to sequences that should be direct.

The adult Dito (Robert Downey Jr.) is a successful writer in California, celebrated for his autobiographical tale A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints. He gets a call from his mother (Dianne Wiest) that he needs to come home and take his sick father (Chazz Palminteri) to the hospital. So Dito decides to confront the family, friends and home he abandoned as a boy, telling the story of his childhood along the way. As previously stated, the structure is all too familiar, with the Dito eventually coming to terms with his past. The events of his youth are obviously the most interesting sequences of the film. The young Dito (LaBeouf) lives in a tough neighborhood with his equally tough friends, most notably the muscular, trouble bound Antonio (Channing Tatum), who seems more interested in releasing his aggression than anything else. Dito is easily the brightest and most sensible of the group, but he enjoys their company and loyalty. His father loves him, but has troubling communicating with him, and his mother does whatever she can to smooth things out.

The most effective aspect of his young life is the neighborhood itself. Nothing exists beyond his home. Dito wonders about the city outside Astoria, but his father never respects his interests. The New York that surrounds him is completely alien, limiting Dito to this chaotic and dangerous domain. Being tough is a necessity at his age, and Montiel does reasonably strong work at presenting the lifestyles of people living in less fortunate conditions. Montiel clearly draws cinematic inspiration from Martin Scorsese and Spike Lee by having the environment act as a character, something that greatly adds to the overall emotion of the story. The streets of Queens don’t exactly have the same level of intense heartbreak as something like Fernando Meirelles’ City of God, but they certainly come alive with culture and violence. Dito and his friends have a particularly dangerous feud with another gang of young and aimless men, something that becomes deadly. About halfway through the story, Dito befriends a new classmate who moved to Queens from Scotland, and it's the source of the film's best material. His new friend Mike (Martin Compston) helps him get a job and proposes the idea to leave everything behind and move to California. Their friendship is the most fully developed emotional arc in the film.

Thematically speaking, Mike was the actual Saint in Dito’s life, the one who helped him overcome his fears and insecurities and provided a sense of understanding to a troubled young man. Which is why Montiel’s conclusion strikes me as so thematically uneven. The adult Dito visits his old neighborhood and confronts his father and ex-girlfriend (Rosario Dawson), where it seem as though his choice to leave violence, drugs, and a dead-end existence for a real and prosperous life was wrong. His ex-girlfriend accuses him of killing his father because he left, and it seems as though Montiel is sympathizing with her instead of himself. Their conversation seems strangely unfair to a character who had every right to abandon his awful situation. Montiel also shows a particularly strong loyalty and compassion for his friend Antonio (who the film is dedicated to), the hot-tempered troublemaker who eventually winds up in prison for his violent behavior. On one hand it’s interesting that Montiel explores the complexity between himself and his friends, but his emotional expression as a writer feels unfocused as a movie. Montiel attempts to balance his love/hate relationship with his friends and family, but the film’s final note leaves more questions than it does emotional understanding. He has the right ideas, but never reaches the completeness he aims for.