Post by Dracula on Nov 21, 2021 15:22:00 GMT -5
Mass(10/23/2021)
I’ve been hearing about the film Mass since it debuted at Sundance to great acclaim, but it doesn’t have the strongest distributor and there was minimal remaining hype for it when it just kind of showed up unannounced at my local theater. The film is a very stripped down and minimalist story, one that I was surprised to find out was not based on a stage play. It plays out mostly in one room amongst four characters and basically in real time. It concerns two sets of parents: the parents of a kid murdered in a school shooting and the parents of the killer. These four meet several years after the incident in a church basement as part of a sort of reconciliation therapy session and things get really tense from there. That description probably gives a good idea of what the film’s dynamics are and it’s a little tricky to talk about it beyond that except to say that a lot of the issues you might expect to be discussed in such a scenario are discussed and there are several emotional breakdowns by all parties involved. The film avoids casting big stars in favor of highly respected character actors including Jason Isaacs, Ann Dowd, Reed Birney, and Martha Plimpton who all do feel like real people in a realistic environment and all four of them have very different ways of displaying their trauma and/or guilt about the situation. The film doesn’t have much in the way of an adventurous visual style aside from an odd aspect ratio shift around the two thirds point and it incorporates one kind of unclear symbol at certain key points in the narrative. In general the film probably could have benefited from having a slightly more adventurous filmmaker in the director’s chair to give the film a certain something extra, but as a showcase for acting the film we’ve gotten is definitely worth a look.
**** out of Five
I’ve been hearing about the film Mass since it debuted at Sundance to great acclaim, but it doesn’t have the strongest distributor and there was minimal remaining hype for it when it just kind of showed up unannounced at my local theater. The film is a very stripped down and minimalist story, one that I was surprised to find out was not based on a stage play. It plays out mostly in one room amongst four characters and basically in real time. It concerns two sets of parents: the parents of a kid murdered in a school shooting and the parents of the killer. These four meet several years after the incident in a church basement as part of a sort of reconciliation therapy session and things get really tense from there. That description probably gives a good idea of what the film’s dynamics are and it’s a little tricky to talk about it beyond that except to say that a lot of the issues you might expect to be discussed in such a scenario are discussed and there are several emotional breakdowns by all parties involved. The film avoids casting big stars in favor of highly respected character actors including Jason Isaacs, Ann Dowd, Reed Birney, and Martha Plimpton who all do feel like real people in a realistic environment and all four of them have very different ways of displaying their trauma and/or guilt about the situation. The film doesn’t have much in the way of an adventurous visual style aside from an odd aspect ratio shift around the two thirds point and it incorporates one kind of unclear symbol at certain key points in the narrative. In general the film probably could have benefited from having a slightly more adventurous filmmaker in the director’s chair to give the film a certain something extra, but as a showcase for acting the film we’ve gotten is definitely worth a look.
**** out of Five
