Mass (2021)

By: Mike Ward on Friday, October 22

PG-13 Running Time: 111 mins

SHOULD I SEE IT?

YES

Four performances all worthy of end-of-year awards attention. Mass is a master class in storytelling through believable and transformative acting.
Fran Kranz’s writing, his instincts in restraint as a director, his ambition in analyzing grief in such a simple, yet challenging manner pays limitless dividends. Mass is one of the year’s finest films.
Bring tissues and something of an open mind. Mass never confronts you, but it does challenge your way of thinking in a world that knee-jerk reacts and forms an opinion almost immediately.

NO

This is a very emotional and difficult film to watch, weighing heavy on your heart long after it comes to an end.
Not all movies are made to simply entertain us. Mass is a drama of the highest order and asks that if you commit to viewing it, you commit to viewing it.
Unrelenting in its intensity, some have called the film torturous and exhausting. Isolated largely to one room, there isn’t anywhere to really go once the movie shuts the proverbial door.

OUR REVIEW

In Fran Kranz’s extraordinary new film, Mass, two couples - one together and one seemingly separated - come together to share in the collective grief of a horrific tragedy. In the opening moments, simmering with trepidation, angst, and impenetrable sadness, Gail and Jay (Martha Plimpton, Jason Isaacs) pull up to a nondescript Episcopalian church in Small Town U.S.A. and dread what awaits them.

Inside, an overzealous church employee, Judy (Breeda Wool), readies a room in the church for a private meeting. She pushes on her co-worker Anthony (Kagen Albright) to work faster, and comes off as a lot to the no-nonsense, intensely focused facilitator/social worker Kendra (Michelle N. Carter), who has arranged the pending meeting.

Summoning the courage to enter the church, Gail and Jay are greeted by Kendra and walk to the meeting room where, soon thereafter, Richard (Reed Birney) and Linda (Ann Dowd) arrive. The entire build-up to this moment is intense, uncomfortable and if you are going into the film blind - you likely have no idea why these four individuals are about to sit together in a room.

It is not a spoiler to share that Mass deals with the lingering, unrelenting aftermath of a school shooting. Gail and Jay’s son was killed by Richard and Linda’s son. Years have gone by. And while Kranz’s screenplay doesn’t give us every detail as to why these couples have decided to meet, we do hear that waivers have been signed in advance, Gail has exchanged letters with Linda through the years, and Richard and Linda arrived separately from one another.

Kranz explores in Mass what the news media so often ignores in the wake of one of these all too frequent incidents. The loss. The emptiness. The grief. Sure - cable news may interview a surviving family member or two, put the perpetrator’s name and image up in lights, use common language to soften the horror of the tragedy, and then within a couple of days move on to the next one of these. Personalities pontificate ad nauseum about the tragedy. Some even offer thoughts and prayers. No one really wants to discuss the aftermath that embeds within someone’s soul. Maybe they don’t know how. Maybe it doesn’t pop a rating. Maybe it doesn’t quite sell as well.

Largely for the first half of the film, Richard tries to get through this experience with a cold, clinical workmanlike cadence. Linda is far more emotional, far more open to learning more about Gail and Jay’s son, Evan. Pictures of Evan are awkwardly shared until Gail cannot stand to see Linda’s sobbing and display of emotion. Jay is barely holding together, seething and fidgeting, trying to keep Gail strong. Linda asks to share something about her son. She offers a jar of paper snails and an otherwise charming story of how her son, Hayden, couldn’t stand any harm to come to animals as a little boy. So, he created a place where everything could be kept safe. It is unclear if Linda sees the irony in what she shares.

What must be acknowledged is that Mass is a master class in performance from four actors who have never been better on screen. Kranz never rushes them, never breaks the flow of what feels like a conversation in real time. The editing work of Yang-Hua Hu is exceptional in how it never gets in the way of what we are observing.

The film is built on a backbone of restraint. You see it in the character interactions. You see it in the way the camera observes rather than intrudes. In one stunning moment, as Linda speaks, the camera pans from Gail and Jay across a long empty space between the couples until it finally comes to rest on Linda’s pained and worn-down face. Her story, designed to make a connection, illustrates that the two families could never be further apart. That slow pan feels like it goes for hours, though it only occurs for just a few seconds.

Mass is full of little touches like that. No one gets an upper hand, though each takes a shot at it. Richard tries to control the conversation. Gail fights against an agreement to not interrogate Hayden’s parents. Jay bottles up until he finally explodes and makes assumptions that work against him. And Linda tries to understand again and again, finally able to have a moment of profound release that happens, ironically, when Richard is nowhere near her.

At times, the film feels like a stage play adapted for the big screen, and there are some exchanges which can feel slightly stilted and rehearsed. Perhaps Mass lingers a touch too long in the back-and-forth, but what is most remarkable is how absolutely necessary these lines of dialogue happen to be. We feel nearly every moment spoken with devout conviction.

School shootings continue to occur nearly every day in this country. A recent editorial in The Washington Post theorized that school shootings are increasing and changing, in terms of a number of factors - prevalence of firearms access to minors, the everyday drumbeat of gun violence in the media which inexplicably normalizes the act as justifiable in some twisted, perverted way. During the first year of COVID-19 in the United States, gun sales increased 64 percent from 2019 to 2020.

We have a gun problem in this country. And Kranz drills down less on the politics of the situation, but the realities of what one pull of the trigger can mean to everyone impacted by that action. Carefully, thoughtfully, Mass reminds us that everyone suffers a loss in these situations - everyone, in some capacity, must experience an empty seat at the table, an empty bedroom, or an absent child no longer present for birthdays, celebrations, and holidays.

Mass does not land softly. The movie pulls no punches. This is intense, difficult storytelling that likely isn’t going to sell out the multiplex. But it’s vital. It is important. Mass is a movie that speaks of pain and loss in a way I cannot quite remember seeing before. This is one of 2021’s finest films.

CAST & CREW

Starring: Martha Plimpton, Jason Isaacs, Ann Dowd, Reed Birney, Breeda Wool, Michelle N. Carter, Kagen Albright

Director: Fran Kranz
Written by: Fran Kranz
Release Date: October 8, 2021
Bleecker Street Media

Four performances all worthy of end-of-year awards attention. Mass is a master class in storytelling through believable and transformative acting.

Fran Kranz’s writing, his instincts in restraint as a director, his ambition in analyzing grief in such a simple, yet challenging manner pays limitless dividends. Mass is one of the year’s finest films.

Bring tissues and something of an open mind. Mass never confronts you, but it does challenge your way of thinking in a world that knee-jerk reacts and forms an opinion almost immediately.

This is a very emotional and difficult film to watch, weighing heavy on your heart long after it comes to an end.

Not all movies are made to simply entertain us. Mass is a drama of the highest order and asks that if you commit to viewing it, you commit to viewing it.

Unrelenting in its intensity, some have called the film torturous and exhausting. Isolated largely to one room, there isn’t anywhere to really go once the movie shuts the proverbial door.