Is the room okay for you? Table, chairs, Jesus watching us - it's great.
Continuing my trip up The Guardian's top 50 films of 2022
#16 : Mass
Jason Isaacs and Ann Dowd are among the cast of a drama about the “healing” meeting between the parents of a high-school shooting victim, and the parents of the perpetrator.
I have heard of this, but there's absolutely no chance I'd have watched it - it just screams "GRIM!" at me. And The Guardian really aren't helping with their use of inverted commas either. I'm sure it'll all be well acted and very worthy though - but I suspect it's unlikely to change my view on high-school shootings.
Oh yes, it's very well acted. And yes, it's very, very grim - particularly so if you have kids. Basically, the meeting goes exactly as you'd expect it to go - there's just a load of hurt and anger on both sides. It maybe tries to engineer a little more closure than is probably necessary, but I can forgive it because it doesn't go overboard. It also manages to have quite a "nice" ending which I really wasn't expecting. And that's probably all I really need to tell you.
All the parents are very well acted - Jason Isaacs and Martha Plimpton as the victim's and Reed Birney and Ann Dowd as the perpetrator's. I obviously knew Jason Isaacs by name and roles but I knew all of the rest of them by sight from various things and they all do some proper acting in this as broken people, but all broken in their own way. Breeda Wool is also good as a church member who is responsible for setting up the environment for the meeting - she has no idea what is needed and is nervously edgy and overly keen to help.
Whilst the acting is good, you can't help but feel the script makes it pretty easy for them - it's a really well written film and I was surprised to see that Fran Katz who wrote it (and directed it as his feature-film debut) is only 42 years old because it feels like the work of someone older. I was even more surprised when I saw his photo because I recognised him from his role in Dollhouse which I really enjoyed, but it was absolute nonsense - and there was absolutely nothing in Fran's performance in it to suggest he'd go on to do something like this.
In terms of the direction, for the most part, the camera just lingers on a face in close-up and let's the actor in question do their thang - it's well done, but you'd be very disappointed if it wasn't. There's not really a lot more to it, but there are some slow, lingering shots of some scenery - no-one expected that eh?!? All in all, it's competent without being flashy, which is exactly what the film needs.
So, I've described it as very, very grim but, to my surprise, I really quite "enjoyed" it - it's a proper grown-up bit of filmwork with a good script (it would also make a fine play) which raises some very interesting questions within an unfortunately too believable framework and doesn't overly try to answer them. You'd have to be in the mood to watch something heavy going (and definitely not feeling fragile about your kids) but it's a well written, acted and shot film which holds your attention - and you can't ask for more than that really. At time of writing, it only appears to be available on Sky but I'm sure that will be changing soon.
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