[FILM]
MASS
★★★★
OUT 21 JANUARY (CINEMAS/ SKY CINEMA)
CERT TBC / 111 MINS
DIRECTOR Fran Kranz
CAST Jason Isaacs, Martha Plimpton, Ann Dowd, Reed Birney
PLOT Years after a tragic school shooting, Jay (Isaacs) and Gail (Plimpton) — the parents of one of the victims — meet face-to-face with Richard (Birney) and Linda (Dowd), the mother and father of the perpetrator. Gathered in an Episcopalian church’s antechamber, they reckon with their pain and try to find peace.
FROM FIRST-TIME writer-director Fran Kranz (yes, he of The Cabin In The Woods stonerguy fame), Mass is an impressive four-actor chamber-piece that combines the relentless emotional intensity of theatre with a voyeuristic intimacy that’s specific to film. The result, a potent study in tension and release, offers an arresting examination of grief that suggests the only way to come to terms with the unspeakable is to talk through it.