Mass

Now making it to theaters in nearly a year since it’s virtual world premiere at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival back in January, Mass, the film’s title, derives as a short term of “mass shooting,” something that tragically continues to keep happening in schools and even in small-town shopping centers all across America, as it’s now at a crucial tipping point. Each week you can discover a fanatical mass shooting somewhere in the United States, this small-scale American independent American drama film relies on minimalist settings and a verbose screenplay to explore these modern day horrors American’s have to endure. Mass is a remarkable debut feature from actor turned director Fran Kranz, who in his debut film also delivers a very emotive and powerfully moving film.

The film will recall the recent work of Regina King’s One Night in Miami as well as Mike Nichol’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf: a verbose mostly four-character dialogue driven film that is shot in the confines of just one room–mostly inside a vestry room inside of a church. The film unfolds with powerhouse emotion thanks mostly to it’s superb cast that delivers powerfully charged performances and gripping writing that is both shattering and redemptive. Any audience member walking into a film like Mass will be deeply impacted by the raw drama and emotion on display, they will also find a deeply personal vision since it explores tragic issues like mass shootings our nation copes with that has sadly reached a level of normalization.

The film chronicles Jason Isaacs and Martha Plimpton as the parents to their teenage son who was one of the students who was murdered in a high school shooting. Ann Dowd and Reed Birney are the parents of the shooter, who we find out was an emotionally disturbed and alienated young man. Both parties agree to meet in the basement of an Episcopalian church in a small town that will hopefully find answers and closure to their current grief, anxiety, depression, regrets, and anger, as they attempt to talk it out in hopes of finding a deeper insight and catharsis to the irreversible tragedy that occurred years prior.

We never see flashbacks, we never see the tragedy unfold, and yet all you do is think of the tragedy as the characters explain in great details of the events. You think of images from the surveillance footage of the shooting within Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado that was included in Michael Moore’s 2002 documentary Bowling for Columbine. There is one description of the footage where you even think of the harrowing scenes in Gus Van Sant’s 2003 shattering drama Elephant. Mass effectively dives deep into modern American trauma, a story about people grappling with the aftermath of it and how it impacts them on every level imaginable. The end result is a contemplative and complex picture that is also anchored with some very effective performances that should generate some award buzz at the end of the year, at least in some film critic circle groups and possibly securing some nominations at next year’s Independent Spirit Awards.

The film begins with Julia (Breeda Wool), a volunteer from the church who awkwardly is setting up a table and chair, as Kendra (Michelle M. Carter), a social worker guides Julia and her assistant in how to set the room up, even guiding her to keep the box of tissues in the corner of the room near the bottle water and snacks instead of sitting obviously on the table. A church for this type of unusual encounter would be suitable, considering a place of worship is a place one can restrain themselves a lot easier than in any other setting. Judy mistakes this as some social gathering, which it’s the polar opposite once Kendra explains the nature of the encounter.

It’s there where we are introduced to Gail (Plimton) and her husband Jay (Issaccs), and Richard (Birney) and Linda (Ann Down). Eventually Julia and Kendra leave the room as they allow the four to talk amongst themselves. You can feel the tension from the beginning, but a report is instantly generated to relieve the tension. They begin discussing how their trip was, thanking each other for making the time for the meeting, and situations begin to get awkward once Gail begins to take out some photos of her dead son as Linda brings a jar her son used to collect snails in.

Upon this revelation, it doesn’t take long to reveal that the unsaid is finally being loudly said once the characters are talking about the tragedy. Richard and Linda’s son Hayden is the unstable boy who has a long history of troubled behavior who tragically became the young gunman who went to his school and killed ten of his fellow classmates before taking his own life. We learn that Gail and Jay’s son Evan, who they are still tormented by, was one of the victims. We also learn that Gail and Jay have a daughter who suffers from depression and can’t sleep since the aftermath of the tragedy.

Mass unfolds like a great stage play that also feels cinematic. Visually, the film is staged very well and is constructed mostly through close-ups, two-shots, and over-the-shoulder shots of the four actors through the dialogue exchanges. They also stay seated at the exact chair for most of the film, while moving around the room to get tissue, and moving rooms towards the end. The film also echoes the drama of the more straight-forward dramatic work of Ingmar Bergman. Like Bergman, this film isn’t afraid to explore painful truths. It goes to extreme heights in seeking human trauma with its raw emotions. There is something very personal about the film, a film that isn’t afraid to seek uncomfortable and unnerving truths about human tragedies like the parents to the victims of school shootings. One might ask why one would want to watch a film like Mass? It’s liberating that we do have films like Mass that are released in limited theaters. A film like this is bold, it’s not afraid to explore the configuration of human tragedy, it captures the unwavering and conflicted emotions of emotionally fragile individuals seeking redemption and finding closure to their depression. Mass is perhaps a painful film, but it’s a very empathetic and compassionate one.