A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints (2006)

Directed by: Dito Montiel | 98 minutes | drama, crime | Actors: Robert Downey Jr., Shia LaBeouf, Dianne Wiest, Chazz Palminteri, Melonie Diaz, Rosario Dawson, Julie Garro, Eleonore Hendricks, Adam Scarimbolo, Peter Anthony Tambakis, Channing Tatum, Anthony Tirado, Erick Rosado, Steve Payne, Tibor Feldman, Martin Compston, Marc Castle, Steven Randazzo, George DiCenzo, Olga Merediz, Teresa Kelsey, Sammy Rhee, Jermel Wilson, Michael Rivera, David Castro, Federico Castelluccio, Anthony DeSando, Scott Michael Campbell, Kyle Benitez, Iraida Polanco, Gilbert Cruz, Eric Roberts, Chance Kelly, Angela Frye, Yetta Gottesman, Chris Nunez, Jeff Skowron

A confrontational film about friendship and loyalty and about taking responsibility. Scene 1: A mother (Dianne Wiest) leaves her son’s answering machine, begging him to come back home, because his father is ill. Scene 2: Writer Dito Montiel, played by Robert Downey Jr. reads from his own work in California. Beautiful semi-dark shots, lots of close-ups, arty, but not poche. Scene 3: Young Dito (Shia LaBeouf) stands alone in the picture and says, “I’m gonna leave everybody in this film.”

In the first three scenes they even betray who will all die and that’s how the film is given away, you think. Fortunately, nothing could be further from the truth. Because it is not so much about the exact events as about their consequences and especially the underlying motives. In this film, men (and women) walk around who don’t talk about their feelings. And everyone is so preoccupied with their own problems, their own (negative) fixations, that listening to what the other is saying is a rarity. And then it is also difficult to see who or what is really important to you. Incidentally, we see in the background the situation in America, where the slums of the big cities serve as a hotbed for frustration and violence, because of poverty and sheer emptiness in existence. Not exactly a motivating environment. Nobody cares about anyone and if you have a big mouth you get a bang.

Dito, convincingly portrayed by Shia LaBeouf (the young version) and Robert Downey Jr. (the older version) tries to escape this world. He meets a Scottish boy who offers him a way out, with music and poetry. Together they start a band. What is strange: we never get to see or hear the band. Not really a big minus for the story, but weird. We’ve seen movies about a difficult childhood in Brooklyn, The Bronx, or any other American metropolitan hell. And we know where that often leads from the many gangster epics in film history. Director Dito Montiel (also the main character of the story), however, refrains from the romantic cinematic coloring of most of his predecessors.

The film is most reminiscent of ‘Mean Streets’ (1973), by Martin Scorsese. In ‘A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints’, scenes are only supported here and there by sober music, just right and there are no major mafia-like scenes. It all stays a little closer to home and therefore becomes all the more poignant. The film is not an indictment of violence or poverty, or ‘social injustice’. It is a personal portrait of a man who grows up in a difficult world and wants to escape it, but does not succeed. He leaves his family and friends in the misery for which he was more responsible than he cared to admit. And that is a confronting mirror for Dito Montiel, who exposes his buttocks in an honest and unadorned way with this autobiographical story, written and directed by himself. A brave film, and that for a debut.