Mass.

Mass marks the directorial and writing debut of actor Fran Kranz, an actor who hasn’t done anything so far that might have indicated he was capable of this. Mass feels in so many ways like a stage play, with just four characters in one room constituting the vast majority of the film, and it pulls off a discussion of a difficult subject in an engrossing and credible way. (You can rent it on amazon or iTunes.)

Mass takes place at an Episcopalian church, almost entirely in a meeting room, where two couples, played by Jason Isaacs, Martha Plimpton, Reed Birney, and Ann Dowd, will meet some unknown period of time after a school shooting where a son of one couple killed the son of the other couple, and other classmates, before killing himself. The parents whose son committed the murders are no longer together, and have taken different paths – mom is wracked with guilt, and wants compassion, or at least more of a kinship with the grieving couple, while dad is still trying to absolve himself somehow and is bottling up his grief. Meanwhile, the parents of the victim are still deep in their grief, and can barely contain their rage when the conversation first turns to the killings. The meeting is unmoderated, but has been arranged by a counselor who seems to have worked with both couples; the four are simply left to their own devices. (I’m not saying which couple is which by design; it’s better to avoid knowing until the dialogue reveals it.)

The dialogue is raw and doesn’t flinch from its subject, including, at one point, a detailed description of the sequence of the murders. The parents share how they found out about the massacre not long after they were sharing photos of their kids, which appears to have been their pre-arranged conversation starter. The script shines when it centers their shared grief, how both couples lost sons that day, and how this isn’t some sort of Grief Olympics between them. Kranz doesn’t try to explain the inexplicable, other than to have the shooter’s father run through the litany of possible explanations – which follows an abortive discussion of gun laws in America. The victim’s parents ask the questions you’d expect, including why the killer’s parents didn’t do something to stop this, but Kranz doesn’t give any easy answers. The end of that conversation in the meeting room might be the only time the script loses its intensity, because the quartet reaches that point abruptly given what came before. It’s relentless without ever becoming lurid or otherwise pandering to retain your attention. It’s a story about one small bit of the aftermath of a school shooting, and Kranz never loses sight of that.

Mass has received a slew of honors from local critics’ circles and independent film groups, including taking the Robert Altman Award from the Independent Spirit Awards, won in recent years by Moonlight, Spotlight, One Night in Miami…, and Marriage Story. Dowd and Isaacs have each won a supporting actor award, although I’m not sure what makes either of them ‘supporting’ in this film. All four are great, but Dowd stands out – the script gives her the most to do, and she’s incredibly affecting both in her grief and her need to be understood by the other parents. The idea that Being the Ricardos might get a Best Original Screenplay nomination over this is … well, especially aggravating because the nomination would ensure more people know that Mass exists. It may not be everyone’s cup of tea, because it’s very talky, because it so resembles a play adapted to the screen, because it’s so unsparing of its topic. It is a tough watch, but it achieves everything Kranz could have wanted from his script.