- 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.—TIFF
- Bold and unremitting in its depiction of the elderly, The Patron Saints eschews our hyper-individualistic culture obsessed with youth. Taking a head-on approach, husband-and-wife duo Brian M. Cassidy and Melanie Shatzky peer with fly-on-the-wall access into the beige, featureless corridors of a nursing home, presenting an uneasy yet impactful 'portrait of fading bodies and minds.' Forgoing conventional documentary modes for a poetic treatment of the aging, the residents here, shot over the course of five years, are captured with a disconcerting deadpan realism-candid depictions not unlike Larry Clark's bruising sexually active teenagers in Kids (1995). Jim, the youngest resident, a paralyzed man who has been in and out of institutions his entire life, is our humble, wisecracking narrator and guide. A startling wake-up call that takes up permanent residence in the mind, The Patron Saints unearths a rare beauty in the bleakest of places.—Justin Mah, DOXA
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