Mass (2021) Movie Review
Mass has an odd beginning. We witness Judy (Breeda Wool) anxiously setting up a small room in the basement of a church. She has brought an assortment of food, coffee, and a box of tissues and frets over the way the room is set up. Her anxiety and desire to be helpful is almost painful to watch. A woman named Kendra (Michelle N. Carter) inspects the room with a very business-like attitude. Then a pair of couples arrives. Jay (Jason Isaac) and Gail (Martha Plimpton) hesitantly enter the room. Then comes Linda (Ann Dowd) and Richard (Reed Birney) who are clearly now estranged. Before things really begin and we even know what is happening, Kendra says, “I’m hopeful that we all think this was a good thing to do by the time we leave here today.” The tension has been building at a rapid pace and we still aren’t really sure what is going on.
As the conversation begins with some forced pleasantries, we slowly begin to piece together who these people are and why they are meeting. These four parents share a common bond of tragedy as their children were killed in a school shooting. Linda and Richard have a different kind of grief and pain as their son was the shooter. Mass takes place almost exclusively in the room in the church basement with four people trying desperately to make sense of what happened.
It is the first feature film for writer and director Fran Kranz and what a marvelous debut it is. At one hour and fifty-one minutes, Mass can get a little repetitive as the conversation keeps circling back to the same sentiments that no one really has answers for. But the dialogue is incredibly moving and touches on both sides of the tragedy. The acting is what makes Mass truly remarkable. Dowd and Birney have the tougher job as the more unsympathetic parents of the shooter. They portray the shame and anguish of what their child did to perfection as well as the indescribable sadness of losing him. Isaac and Plimpton are also excellent, with the tragedy bringing them closer together rather than causing them to drift apart. Isaac in particular has a chilling monologue that relays the final moments of his son’s life, which he has memorized and re-lived over and over again.
School shootings are certainly not an easy or comfortable topic to tackle but Kranz expertly crafts the conversation and unanswerable questions to express what too many parents in the United States have had to endure. Mass might have been more well suited to a theater production, but the editing is done in such a way to keep things fresh and moving for the screen. What really drives the movie is the acting which is easily the best acting from an ensemble this year. The four actors each bring moments of such intense sadness that it’s hard to look away. Mass is a simple premise that covers a massively complex topic with the perfect amount of empathy and truth.
You’ll like this movie if:
1. You like movies that reveal things slowly
2. You want to unpack the difficult topic of school shootings in America
3. You like ensembles
