A GUIDE TO RECOGNISING YOUR SAINTS

US, 2006, 98 minutes, Colour.
Robert Downey Jr, Shia La Boeuf, Dianne Wiest, Chaz Palminteri, Rosario Dawson, Channing Tatum, Eric Roberts.
Directed by Dito Montiel.

No, this is not a film about saints or holiness. In some ways, it is the opposite, although by using this title, the writer-director of this semi-autobiographical piece is asking audiences to look at who the influences for good and bad in one’s life really are. It is an independent American film acclaimed at the Sundance Festival and then at Venice.

This is a small-budget independent film, a first film by Dito Montiel. He takes the liberty of employing all kinds of techniques and experiments in shooting and editing to make it more offbeat than the standard studio production and to provide audiences with a broken narrative and different ways of looking at and reacting to the events in his life.

Dito Montiel grew up in Brooklyn, one of the kids in the 1980s in New York City, full of talent but pressured to conform to the low expectations of the neighbourhood. School was a drag. Clashing with gangs, graffiti gangs, was taken for granted. Sexual experimentation, sometimes brazen, sometimes tentative, was expected. Life was hanging-out. If you had a good family, you were lucky, but there was a culture of violence, especially from fathers.

His novel of the same name and this film are autobiographical although Montiel stresses that the Dito of the fiction is fiction. Be that as it may, he captures the rough and never-ready lives of his friends in those days, the saints he is guiding us to recognise, their waywardness, their language, their pressures, the sudden irruptions of violence and the need for some to get away.

When a film is set on the streets of New York, there is the temptation to refer to Mean Streets or Kids. So, that is done!

These mean streets are in Queens, in Astoria, in the summer of 1986. Dito (Shia LaBoeuf) has friends, tough friends, especially the abused Antonio (Channing Tatum) who is welcomed in the Montiel household and who finds a father figure in Dito’s father (Chazz Palmentieri). The friends prowl. They are becoming sexually aware and active. They clash with gangs in the neighbourhood – and the ever-present drugs. But Dito dreams of getting out – and eventually leaves for California to become a writer. He has clashed deeply with his father and stays away for twenty years, returning only when his father is ill.

The film captures the gritty atmosphere of Queens in those days and immerses the audience in it.

Shia La Boeuf (Holes, Bobby) plays the teenage Dito with sensitivity. The middle-aged Dito is Robert Downey Jr who brings intensity and anguish to the adult who has avoided his family, especially his father, for fifteen years while attaining celebrity in California. The friends are well cast with Channing Tatum as the ultimately tragic figure who cannot escape the brutality of his own father, his brother’s violent death in a prank in the subway, despite the support of Dito’s father and mother. Amongst the girls, Rosario Dawson gives another sympathetic performance as the adult woman whose life turned out so drably and not as she might have imagined it.

Chazz Palminteri is very good as Dito’s father who is kind to the kids in the neighbourhood. We see him as loving his son. However, Dito does not see this and they have a terrible falling out. When he returns as an adult, his father is ill and he has to deal with how he handles meeting him again, his resentments from the past and the possibility of some kind of forgiveness and reconciliation. Antonio (Eric Roberts) is in prison. Can he come to terms with his past? What loyalty has he to his friends? Can he reconcile with his father? His mother is played with feeling by Dianne Weist.

While this is a film that is firmly set in a particular time and place and captures the feelings of people in this environment, it is able to move to more universal understanding of human nature. These themes are played out in an unvarnished and deeply emotional way.

1. An autobiographical film? Portrait of the writer-director? Portrait of character and characters? Feeling? Revelation of himself and his family, his friends?

2. The screenplay, the verbal power? The structure, the introduction with Flori on the phone? The appeal to Dito? The two different time zones, the parallel stories? The visual style for each? The general naturalistic style, the silent scenes, the audience observing action rather than listening to the words? The possibility for reflecting? The editing, various techniques like the blacking out? The musical score and the range of songs, especially from the 1980s?

3. The title, the invitation to the audience, Dito and his recognition and lack of recognition of the significant people in his life? His search for truth in writing the book? In making the film? The ironies?

4. The portrait of Dito Montiel, his having written the book, celebrity on radio, his reading texts? His mother’s phone call, Nerf and Antonio ringing, listening to their pleas, his father ill, his decision to go, the flight?

5. 1986, life in Astoria, the detail of life in the streets, the shops, the cars, the subway, the noise, the music, writing graffiti, the apartments, the swimming pool, the school? An authentic re-creation of the period? Situating the characters well?

6. Young Dito and his age, part of the group, friendship with Antonio, Giuseppe, Nerf? At home, his relationship with his parents? His mother’s care, his father fixing the typewriter, always talking positively? The underlying feeling that his father did not recognise him? His needing his father’s love? His father’s continually talking about Antonio and his needs, his father bashing him? At school, Mike’s arrival, the friendship with Mike? Nerf nude outside the window? The relationship with Diane, Jenny, especially Laurie? The sex talk – and the lack of sex action? The Reaper, the clash, his fears? The bashing? Antonio accosting the Reaper’s little brother? All the talk with the friends, the walk, hanging out? Mike and the sniffing of the glue? The meeting with Frank, the walking the dogs, earning the money, Mike’s sudden death on the street? The plan to go to California, getting the money? Asking Laurie – and then forgetting? His being caught up in the high? Her realising he was stoned? Giuseppe’s death, talking with Antonio at the funeral? These formative years, all these people as part of his life – yet his wanting more? To get out?

7. The portrait of Antonio, Giuseppe as his brother, the brutal father and bashing him, his physical strength and tough, physique, wanting to box? Flirting with the girls? His love for Monty, Monty treating him as his son? The visits? The bashing of Dito and the Reaper? Wanting revenge? The episode of Giuseppe’s death, on the railway lines, his reaction? The funeral, talking about the Reaper and Dito’s reaction? The antagonism towards Dito? Their separating? The final confrontation with the Reaper, Antonio going into the shop, bashing him, killing him? Going to prison?

8. Giuseppe, genial, boasting with the girls, following Antonio, the subway incident, his surliness, the ball, his being trapped, killed? The funeral? The shouting and the reaction of the people in the church?

9. Nerf, a follower, driving the car, always around, Dito’s return and his picking him up at the airport? Their sitting in the car talking? Nerf reminiscing about his life and nothing happening, never moving? Dito staying with his mother?

10. The girls, their age, flirting, provocative, their dress, sex talk, frank? At the pool? Their work? The visits to the house, hanging out? Laurie, the attraction to Dito, their talking, his being high, inviting her to California, his later antagonism towards her? Nerf and the throwing of the knife and Laurie not wanting to talk? Sitting at the window, Dito coming to the window? Her visiting the Montiels’ house after the bashing, Dito harsh on her?

11. Mike, from Scotland, jolly, his friendship with Frank, the job of walking the dogs, the possibilities of support for a band, going to California, getting the money from Frank, his sudden death?

12. Frank, dogs, the music world, gay, the clients, his phone calls, his manner? The final confrontation, the gun, giving the boys the money?

13. Flori, a good woman, getting excited, some clashes with Monty, return? Dito coming back, her sitting on the steps with him, happy to be talking with him? The urgency of getting Monty to the hospital?

14. Monty, in himself, at home, work, the typewriter, demonstrative, Antonio’s visits and his liking him, treating him like a son because he didn’t have a father? With Flori, his antagonism at times, his settling down, telling Dito that it was just she was excited? The discussions with Dito, angers, Dito wanting to leave, his father wanting him to stay, telling him not to shout, Monty and his shouting, his physical collapse?

15. 2005, the situation, Monty’s collapse, home from hospital, Dito’s arriving, his father not wanting him in the house, the pain of not seeing him for fifteen years? Dito leaving, going to talk with Laurie, Laurie and the little boy, her reminiscences, saying she was a naïve young girl, the frank statements to Dito, telling him what to do, especially about his father? His return to his father, taking a firm stand? His father going to hospital? His mother glad? His father urging him to go to see Antonio in jail?

16. Dito and his travelling in the bus, going to the jail, sitting in the room waiting, Antonio’s arrival – and the sudden ending of the film?

17. The post-credits sequences with the real Monty filmed by his son, still talking about Antonio and treating him like a son?

18. The overall impact of the drama, the brash and loud American style, life in the streets, young men and women, coming of age, the swagger, the bravado, their having to learn to grow up? Whether they did or not? Staying here, escaping, even achievement? An interesting piece of Americana?