It all began in a monastery. Devan Scott, an SFU film studies graduate, was helping out a friend with a documentary being shot at a monastery. After living with the monks for three days, an idea was formed, and Paradiso was born.
Scott’s grad film, a black-as-night comedy, follows two brothers after the sorting of the second coming. Cain is sent to heaven — mistakenly — and his brother to hell, a slip-up that Cain spends the span of the film’s 13 minutes trying to remedy. Joined by St. Peter, a scruffy, white robe-clad, foul-mouthed angel of sorts, Cain confronts God and tries to set the record straight: he was not meant for heaven, but his brother was.
The short film has been selected for the Toronto International Film Festival’s Short Cuts Canada Programme, a feat that only a handful of SFU film grads have achieved. “It totally blindsided me. I didn’t think it was programmable; it’s profane yet deals with religious iconography. It was a film I made just for fun for myself,” Scott says.
The film is a manifestation of Scott’s ideas about existentialism and religion at the time, his visit to the monastery acting as a sort of incubation period.
“It really changed my view on religion. I used to think not only that the whole thing was based on fiction, but that the entire lifestyle based on it was kind of stupid. Seeing these people . . . they’re very content and are really hurting the planet less than I am and are really having a higher standard of life doing it. It made me think ‘maybe it isn’t so bad,’ but at the same time it got me thinking: if god existed I’d be really, really screwed.”
The end result is a film tinged with the existential terror of living in an indifferent universe where there are no real choices. “The thing about Cain is he never has much agency. He kind of gets tossed into heaven and he only has one option, and that’s to try and talk to God. St. Peter is the one who either has to help him escape or not. He represents the kind of natural, logical conclusion to there being an all powerful God, where he’d have to have people who have no choice but to help him, regardless of what they think,” Scott says.
If god existed I’d be really, really screwed.” – Devan Scott, director and screenwriter
The chilling ending of the film — which I won’t give away here — demonstrates this thinking, a visual narrative indicating that there’s no way out: “I think the ending is a case where it’s me following the idea of heaven to its conclusion. In the more pop cultural forms it’s this green field, in others it’s literally whatever makes you happiest. What if what makes you happiest is rebellion? And not being in heaven? Then the only definition for heaven would be a lie. You would have to literally live a lie.”
Paradiso’s place in TIFF’s scheduling may have something to do with the very personal quality of the film. It’s possible it’s this very reason that “a lot of people who make shorts [with the express purpose of] festivals . . . don’t tend to get in. Often the films kind of lack soul.”
As for Scott’s own success, as well as his filmmaking philosophy, it’s all very close to home. “The ones [I’m most proud of are] where I just hit on something really personal for me. They’re almost mischievous, where I feel like I’m gonna get away with something. If I feel like I’m being told not to make something, I’ll make it; I have a rebellious streak that only manifests in movies, apparently.”
Next he’ll be working on a project based on a recent news article about a white supremacist who is trying to take over a small town: “I thought, that’s incredible, it’s basically a political zombie movie.” Before he turns his “five pages of word vomit” into a script though, he’ll be seeing as many films at TIFF as he can.
“We bought tickets to [Alfonso Cuaron’s] Gravity and [Errol Morris’] The Unknown Known. There’s also the new Kelly Reichardt film, the new Claire Denis film, so I’ll be busy.”
