SUPERIOR BEING PART 1 by JAROSLAW GOGOLIN /
Directed by jaroslaw gogolin / Reviewed by Adva Reichman
Do you believe in mystical creatures? Vampires? Mommies? How about God and religion, and the relations between all the above?
‘Superior Being’ opens a gate into a supernatural world where magical occurrences are possible. A world in which humans don’t believe, and might even refuse to, but eventually find themselves dealing with enchanted situations and are forced to navigate their lives with it.
Jaroslaw Gogolin, the talented writer, takes us on a journey in today’s Poland and ties our present with its rich difficult past. ‘Superior Being’ follows the tales of Ed, an officer, and Mark, a police station hired citizen, as they try and find a mystery creature that escaped a tomb they were asked to excavate. Intrigued? You should be.
To their surprise, the grave turned out to hold much more that your regular corpse, and as they unseal it, they unknowingly invite a whole lot of troubles into their quiet town. The creature they found inside the tomb escaped, leaving injured people behind it, and too many questions no one dares say out loud. Was the creature alive or dead? Is it human or mystical? And what is it after? To find out, you will have to follow Ed and Mark.
As in all good stories, as much as Mark and Ed try and get to the bottom of things, new questions just keep rising. As they struggle to find the truth, other figures secretly monitor their every move and cast new suspicions on the already troubling ordeal. Their investigation is anything but normal.
The first part of the screenplay deals with faith, fairy tales and fear. It tests our characters’ belief system and through that our own. This way, as the characters embark on their journey, the readers will find themselves doubting theirs. But when all of that is coated with good drama and an entertaining thrill, you’re in for some fun.
Having said that, the two-part script is almost 250 pages long. It can be half that length. There are too many scenes and beats in the first part that doesn’t advance the plot and reduce the tension the writer worked so beautifully to create. The characters need further development and the story, although having all the right elements in it, doesn’t explore its premise enough and leaves its characters and us in a rather shallow space.
However, the potential is definitely there, and the reading experience was delightful. I also must applaud the writer for writing such a detailed complex script and doing so in a foreign language. That is never an easy task, but none the less, the emotions and actions were clear.
The screenplay’s setting is intriguing and adds an exciting layer and possibilities to the story. Poland possesses great history and I enjoyed the writer’s use of structures from world war 2 and an old Jewish graveyard that later turned into a German graveyard. These wonderful choices hold sensational prospects that the writer can play with, maneuver and dive deeper into their meanings and consequences. This is especially true as we try and understand who the creature we found in the tomb is, what he wants, and where he came from.
It is clear that the writer has a magnificent sense of imagination and an undeniable passion for storytelling. His attention for details is apparent, and his ability to enter his characters’ world and make them come alive stand out in every page. I can’t wait for you to see what ‘Superior Being’ Part two has instore for our beloved characters........
