In
Mass, Fran Kranz s heartbreaking, poignant, rage-filled howl of a directorial debut, the American plague of school shootings is given four faces, four people, four parents. They sit in a room in a church, a quiet place for them to exchange pleasantries, hand over a little flower arrangement, and then tear themselves open in keening, wailing pain.
Kranz s script finds these survivors in a place beyond simple anger, or hatred, or grief. For years, Gail (Martha Plimpton) and Jay (Jason Isaacs) have tried to find some focus for what happened to their son in an ordinary classroom. Today is an extraordinary one, and yet so simply laid out. They finally meet, alone, with the parents of the boy that killed their son. Richard (Reed Birney, a picture of buttoned-down torment) and Linda (Ann Dowd, utterly incomparable) look like the kind of parents they would run into at a bake sale, and there s a fragile politeness to their opening conversation. The session has clearly been exquisitely a
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Mass, the feature film debut of writer-director Fran Kranz, is a brutally honest exploration of the people who are affected (and often forgotten) in the aftermath of a school shooting.
Mass tackles the raw emotions of its characters and works to enter into the most difficult and harrowing conversations. What results is a film that is driven by the strength of its actors’ performances, an intimate setting, and nuance. But,
Mass stops short of being great by hinging upon the idea that forgiveness is required for healing, while giving the couples at the center an opportunity to do so without full acknowledgement of who is given the chance and in its treatment of the shooter.
Mass is heavy and heartbreaking, bolstered by fantastic performances. But, Mass’ treatment of the shooter and time spent on forgiveness hinders its momentum.
2021 Sundance Film Festival Review – Mass
Starring Jason Isaacs, Ann Dowd, Martha Plimpton, and Reed Birney.
SYNOPSIS:
Years after a tragic shooting, the parents of both the victim and the perpetrator meet face-to-face.
In the wake of any tragedy, those affected scramble to make some sense of what’s happened in order to move on with their lives, but as Fran Kranz’s powerful directorial debut proves, the road to catharsis is anything but straightforward.
Mass takes place almost entirely inside a single church meeting room as two couples, Richard (Reed Birney) and Linda (Ann Dowd), and Jay (Jason Isaacs) and Gail (Martha Plimpton), convene to confront the shared demons of their past. Years prior, Richard and Linda’s son committed a school shooting resulting in both the death of Jay and Gail’s son and his own suicide. Now, years away from the suffocating media blitz and laboured legal wranglings, the four hope to pore over the issue one last time and each find some measur
Fran Kranz made a breakthrough performance as the amusing stoner in the meta horror movie
Cabin in the Woods. Now a new chapter in Kranz’s career has triumphantly begun with his quiet, confident, and devastating feature writing and directorial debut
Mass.
Mass takes its time digging into intimate drama, slowly ramping up its tension and trepidation. But as the story unfolds across pages of gut-wrenching, emotional dialogue, four parents confront the trauma and grief of the tragedy that connects each of their kids and upended all of their lives.
The first 15 minutes of Mass follows an eager-to-please, kind red-haired woman as she’s preparing a room inside of an Episcopal church for some kind of meeting. She’s meticulous about making sure everything is perfectly comfortable, and the careful planning becomes even more particular when some kind of mediator comes in to inspect where the meeting will be taking place. It might seem like pointless tire-spinning, but it all mak