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‘Mass’ tries to find the end of grief | Sundance movie review

Ann Dowd appears in Mass by Fran Kranz, an official selection of the Premieres section at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by Ryan Jackson-Healy.

Mass watches as four people come together to talk through an old wound that has been preventing them from moving on with their lives

Mass is a stunningly raw and emotional journey through trauma, grief, and healing featuring four tour-de-force performances that'll leave you breathless.

Four people gather in a small room in the back of a Church basement. We know that they have a history considering the meeting is being coordinated like a sitdown between mafia bosses, but we don't quite know what. And to truly appreciate Mass, which premiered at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, you should keep it that way. The movie will tell you eventually, but it'll earn that reveal.

Although, if you're reading this review you likely already know it, so I'm not holding back.

Fran Kranz, perhaps best known as the stoner Marty in my beloved The Cabin in the Woods, directed the film from a script he wrote. His debut in both roles. But you would never know it from how assured the film is. Something happened to Gail (Martha Plimpton) and Jay (Jason Isaacs). Something so traumatic that they've been in therapy for years working up the courage to face Linda (Hereditary's Ann Dowd) and Richard (Reed Birney).

Director of the Sundance Film Festival Tabitha Jackson and director Fran Kranz at the virtual Premiere of Mass by Fran Kranz, an official selection of the Premieres section at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. © 2021 Sundance Institute.

The first 45 minutes of the film are spent skirting around the subject. Blessedly sparing us from any clunky exposition. We don't need it anyway. All we need to know is the emotions. Gail is angry and hesitant. Jay is also angry but willing to hear things out. Linda is regretful. And Richard… well, Richard is detached. We sit in these roles through simmering, slow-burn dialogue where the couples catch up. Clearly not friends but connected. And then that moment happens. When Gail finally stops being hesitant and runs headlong into it all. “Well, your son killed my son, so I'd like to know.”

It's revealed that Linda and Richard's son killed Gail and Jay's son in a mass shooting at their school. After years of therapy, Gail and Jay feel ready to ask Linda and Richard the questions that have been preventing them from moving on. Did they see the signs ahead of time? What happened in his childhood to make this happen? Do they blame themselves?

That last question holds a lot of weight for both couples. That's because Gail and Jay want to find someone to blame, Richard wants to explain it away, and Linda is still trying to figure out whether or not she is to blame. Kranz's screenplay shows incredible restraint by rarely veering into anything that feels overwrought or inauthentic — perhaps the one thread of conversation that does is about gun control.

For a premise that is prime for melodrama, Mass has little of it. There is a flow to the conversation. A flow that starts out as a leek before becoming a tsunami in the third act. There are threads about parenting, consequence, and grief that take you on an emotional rollercoaster driven by four stunning and committed performances that is a watershed moment in each of the actors' careers — Plimpton and Dowd steal the show though.

One theme that you'd expect me to list is forgiveness. But from my perspective Mass isn't about that. Perhaps forgiveness is a part of it somehow, but it is simply a means to an end. At its core it is about healing. It is about hope. How in the darkest moments of life we have the capacity to heal our spirits. We have the means to do that but simply have to be willing to do the work. Mass shows us the work.

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Hey! I'm Karl. You can find me on Twitter here. I'm also a Tomatometer-approved critic.

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Karl Delossantos

Hey, I'm Karl, founder and film critic at Smash Cut. I started Smash Cut in 2014 to share my love of movies and give a perspective I haven't yet seen represented. I'm also an editor at The New York Times, a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, and a member of the Online Film Critics Society.