A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints

It is not uncommon for a film to show a young man or woman growing up in a dead end situation who manages to escape to a better life and success. It is a heartwarming story that is told over and over in both literature and film. In A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, that is only half of the film. The other half is returning to the old neighborhood after many years and the memories and meanings that can be found there.

Guide is a semi-autobiographical film by Dito Montiel, based on his memoirs of growing up in a rough section of Queens in the 1980s. There is a certain coming-of-age theme in the film as we see him trying to come to grips with who he is distinct from his family and his friends. He feels stifled by his father and the expectation that he will just stay around without dreams of a better life.

Many years later, he is called by his mother to come home because his father is sick. When he returns to the old neighborhood, much seems to be as it always has been. But of his old friends, two are dead, another is on drugs, still another is in jail. He's not kept in touch with that part of his life. It seems to be a depressing trip home for him. But the more time he's there, the more he remembers. Although the memories aren't happy ones, they still allow Dito to see the ways his early life had value he's never recognized. Indeed, he begins to discover that the people from those years have shaped him and saved him.

The "saints" of the title does not refer to people of exemplary virtue -- far from it. They are ordinary people with some very rough edges, but it is they who in hidden ways have brought some measure of grace and blessing into Dito's life, even if he hasn't recognized it. Even when it seems that there is no blessing to be found in his early life, the trip back to the neighborhood opens his eyes to the many ways he has been richly blessed by these people who have loved him in the ways they were capable of loving.

This is very much Montiel's story. He directs the film (his first), wrote the script based on his book. He doesn't even bother to change his name in the story. Yet, he also recognizes that in turning his story over to others the story takes on a life of its own. In this case, I think the gifted ensemble cast (who won a Special Jury Prize at Sundance) makes the story even more than Montiel could have hoped. Just as those people in his early life have given him unknown blessings, the people who bring life to this film add unexpected blessing to the story.

For me, this is one of the most powerful films of this year. It is not a rose-tinted view of life. This is a story that is filled with grime. Dito's memories are not the stuff that nostalgia is made of; they are reminders of the great pain that led him to leave home. Yet amidst all that grime and pain there is a story of redemption through reconciliation. The very thing that Dito has been running from all these years is really what he needs to see the beauty that is in his life.

We too have grace in our lives waiting to be recognized for what it is. We may discover it comes from very unexpected sources -- people whose lives have touched ours in unseen ways. That in itself is an enormous blessing.