Short Film Review: "The Purgatorist" by Maurice Jovan (2017)
The short film is a funny beast to try and pin down. Sometimes it’s a marketing tool for a bigger concept the creator wants to make on a grander scale (Saw, Mama, The Babadook). Other times, it’s simply a short and concise idea realized fully in miniature before other hands get in the cookie jar and skew the original vision. Still other times, it’s an expression coming from a deeper place and looking to make you feel what the creator feels. There’s no right or wrong way to do it, per se. Practically every filmmaker has a short or two in their collection.
Maurice Jovan is a Tampa Bay area host of an FM talk radio show. He’s a funny cat; even the likes of Kevin Smith think so. On top of that, however, he’s a stand-up comedian, a novelist (A Portion of the Eternal, This Plane is Going to Crash), and a screenwriter who wrote the story for the 2013 horror film, Stitch, starring Edward Furlong of Terminator 2: Judgment Day fame. He’s got something to say, and people (like the aforementioned generational icon from New Jersey) are noticing. In speaking with the “Cat named Mo” recently, I was asked to take a look at his ten-minute short film from 2017, The Purgatorist.
What I saw affected me enough that I decided to give it a review and let you know about it.
The Purgatorist is the story of Julia (Elayna Clair Drooger) and Max (Seth Goodfellow; The Purge TV series), a couple of young soulmates that find themselves in a very eternal situation. Julia has committed suicide, and Max is bereft at the loss of his true love. As her story unfolds (along with what this did to poor Max), the power of love and the power of the mind to literally change our reality becomes clear.
The Purgatorist isn’t dancing around a host of hard topics- suicide, abuse, lifelong trauma, and what happens to our souls when we die. Frankly, it’s a stark contrast to the jovial sense of humor usually on display from its creator. That’s not a bad thing. This is a case of that time when a short film wants you to feel what it’s feeling. Everyone has a dark side, and Maurice Jovan’s isn’t fucking around.
The Purgatorist is also plainly beautiful in the starkness of its black and white imagery of two people stuck in the afterlife that have to face what their lives have really been and what they mean to each other. It’s a darker and less hopeful but ultimately romantic and heartfelt take on the classic Richard Matheson story, What Dreams May Come. Julia and Max (in particular Max’s sacrifice for love) speak powerfully about what true love really is. I say that with the utmost of earnestness- I married my high school sweetheart 21 years ago, and she is still my best friend to this day. I’d rather spend an eternity in Hell with her than go into the light without her. True story.
The film’s aesthetic of black and white contrast plays very well with the “all or nothing” power of true love. The music is a bit jarring at times, but it’s by no means a mood killer. Both actors bring the right gravitas to the subject matter while keeping a hauntingly distant quality that makes it seem a bit like a fever dream. There’s real technical artistry there and a flair behind the camera.
The quote at the beginning of the film is from John Milton’s Paradise Lost. It says, “The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.” The Purgatorist is deep and serious stuff, but we’ve all got that at our core. Even the funny men do.
Scratch that last- the funny men ESPECIALLY do.
