Synopsis
Laced with black humor, The Patron Saints is an unorthodox documentary about a home for the aged and disabled. By turns lyrical and unsettling, the directors eschew more traditional approaches to the subject, opting for a mesmerizing atmospheric treatment and turning narration over to the home’s youngest patient and his candid confessions.
A word from Tënk
Shot over five years, The Patron Saints draws us into the strange world of a facility for the aged and the disabled. Adopting an unconventional and poetic approach, the documentary favours an observational perspective that emphasizes unreserved and spontaneous responses from its subjects. Avoiding the clichés typical of both healthcare and nursing home documentaries, Cassidy and Shatzky instead create a new world which exists in a realm beyond space and time – evoking a paradoxically strange and banal universe that seems both self-contained and limitless. Intimate and stark, the film invokes discomfort without treading too deeply into either exploitation or sentimentality. While occasionally dark in tone, it is injected with lightness and humour, particularly through a playful narration from Jim, a young paralyzed resident who has been in and out of homes his whole life. In blending the poetic with the observational, The Patron Saints offers a haunting meditation that highlights the fragility of existence where time loses meaning, looping and dissolving within the repetitive rhythms of institutional life.
Justine Smith
Programmer
Montreal's Critics' Week
