'Mass' review: Walking the 5 stages of grief

Fran Kranz has taken on an excruciatingly painful project with his 2021 directorial debut Mass. The film delves into the grief and agony experienced by parents in the aftermath of a school shooting. There has seldom been a movie made on a sensitive issue like this, but Franz takes on an ambitious project and makes no attempt to be subtle in its delivery.

With its stellar cast, unnerving setup and engaging plotline, Mass is a truly spectacular movie worth watching.

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'Mass' reviewed

Six years after a school shooting that tore apart their lives apart, two couples, the parents of a victim and the shooter, meet privately. Seeking closure so that they can finally move on with their lives, they proceed to have a very uncomfortable conversation. Fran Kranz has intricately and thoughtfully examined their journey through the five stages of grief.

With a strained opening, Mass makes it clear from the outset the kind of unnerving journey that the movie will take its viewers through. Apart from the four characters who take up the majority of the screentime, we are also introduced to a social worker and an unnerving and jittery church employee, who arrange and handle details for the meeting.

The introductory scene featuring the two supporting characters opens us up to an uncomfortable and unnerving situation which provides a glimpse of what is to follow.

Martha Plimpton and Jason Isaacs play the parents of a teenage boy who was one of ten students murdered in a school shooting. They meet up with the parents of the disturbed young man who killed their son. Ann Dowd and Reed Birney slip perfectly into the shoes of the killer's parents, who themselves are grappling with truth and loss.

The two couples agree to attend a meeting set up by a social worker who was intervening in the situation. They meet in the basement of an Episcopalian church in hopes of moving past depression, grief and anger through catharsis, and towards a state of acceptance.

What follows is an excruciatingly painful two hours of mounting tension with every passing second. They start off with some painful small talk before their discussion takes on a more serious tone. As the two couples confront each other, breakdown, and attempt to walk in each other's shoes in order to navigate through their own grief, they eventually come to terms with their individual losses.

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Verdict

The drama is centered around a conversation of overwhelming difficulty that would make one squirm with discomfort. Watching it unfold for almost two hours on screen is engaging and testing.

Centered around four main characters, occasionally interjected by a social worker, Mass offers a suffocating experience. The room, which is sparsely furnished and painfully closed off, ends up having a claustrophic effect on the scene, with four people who don’t want to be there but have to in order to find closure.

Plimpton stands out in particular as she captures the suppressed rage of a mother whose agony and frustration spill over as she sees the parents of the perpetrator protect themselves and their son. She portrays the raw emotion which carries the movie through.

The shooter's parents, on the other hand, engage sparsley. The father deflects blame while trying to pass off the situation as a multifaceted horror that cannot be attributed to a single trigger factor.

There is an absence of any underlying political tone which often underscores incidents such as these. The attempt to explain the situation only in terms of the individual psyche of the killer turns out to be very narrow and shallow, and cautionary even.

Director Fran Kranz deserves praise for delivering such a thought-provoking movie and utmost sensitivity in tackling the plot.