'Mass' Review: Fran Kranz's Directorial Debut Shows Us How Even This Divided World Can Begin to Heal [Sundance 2021]
Director/Writer of Mass, Fran Kranz
It feels like acknowledging your own sense of adulthood when you realize how many comedians have such a grasp on the dramatic aspects of life. Something you can only realize when you’re slightly more emotionally mature. How actors like Jim Carrey, Robin Williams, or Melissa McCarthy can make you cry with laughter, then turn in an Oscar-worthy performance in a subsequent film and make you cry for a completely different reason. Fran Kranz, a great comedian in his own right, while not as prolific as those comedic-colleagues, has shown the world his grasp on those other aspects of life in his directorial debut, “Mass.”
And it is a firm grasp.
It should come as no real surprise that Kranz can create something like Mass; the man’s work as an actor in projects such as Dollhouse, Much Ado About Nothing (2012) and The Cabin in the Woods has shown that same brilliant comedic timing and that same fierce intelligence that many of the legends possess. But he is also a man who has recently become a father, one who has gained a well-rounded perspective on the world he lives in, so it seems like he was perfectly suited to tell this story. Only someone who understands something like the iconic ancient Greek masks representing comedy and tragedy, could really hone in on the world another split; the fracture we have seen within society more and more in the last half-decade.
Mass primarily represents just one of the fractures in Western society; the politics surrounding gun ownership, and the bizarrely proprietary American fetish when it comes to gun culture. We have grown accustomed to hearing the word “mass” way too often in news stories, predominantly in America, for unthinkable reasons. What’s arguably the most compassionate measure of Mass is that it never tries to choose sides. This film is not about censoring gun owners, or mental health vs gun ownership, the left vs the right, or the second amendment. The only side it ever takes is the side of humanity or the side of reason; that as long as gun violence permeates our lives, we all lose.
Isaacs and Plimpton
The story is simple, two couples meet to attempt to deal with the unthinkable; the aftermath of a violent mass murder. Two sets of parents. Four human beings. Four of the most impactful performances you will see. Jason Issacs and Martha Plimpton play Jay and Gail, the parents of a school shooting victim. On the other side of the table sit Ann Dowd and Reed Birney, playing Linda and Richard, the parents of the shooter. All four represent so much in the runtime of the film; guilt, awkwardness, anger, frustration, and deep, deep sadness, but through their performances, and Kranz’s direction, it shows us why we have yet to do the right thing and sit down with those we hate because it is damn near impossible to do so. It’s hard, and yet it’s the right thing to do. You empathize with everyone in that room at one point or another, you understand their perspective, and Kranz’s script brilliantly represents how we have all felt at one point or another the last time we heard a tragic story of another school shooting.
Kranz admitted that his perspective on this issue changed dramatically as a new father, and that perspective informed his writing so beautifully. Not only does it carry a worrisome aura for our future, and this culture of gun violence, but it is powerfully empathetic. As mentioned, it is crafted to represent all ideals and perspectives, even those we wish to blame. To confront and give a voice to the spiteful, yet understandable, treatment of the shooter’s family, to research it for the screenplay, and convey it with such humanity, was something never considered in prior films. Birney’s Richard especially has one of the most interesting perspectives out of the four characters. He is not indifferent, he is not unsympathetic, he is just completely finished with the entire situation. There’s an unspoken story with Richard, that as the murderer’s father, no one ever listens to him, and no one has ever considered his pain. We see how it’s killing him just as much as the grief that tears at Jay and Gail. Richard has one of the most powerful single lines of dialogue in an overwhelmingly powerful film, “the world mourned 10 victims, we mourned 11”. This again seems to be Kranz as a new father realizing we can’t all be perfect parents, but also how quick we are to judge others. Especially in a horrific situation such as Mass’ fictional shooting; Trying to find reason in a situation that's far more complex and nuanced then we can admit is one of the most difficult journeys we can start, but it’s not impossible if we listen to one another.
The title does not just represent the myriad of sad and violent words that follow it in headlines, one of the first meanings I had thought about was how this violence is a cancer. How it doesn’t end when the guilty are arrested or the victims are put to rest. It’s never put to rest. It festers, it grows, and it can kill us in a more figurative way if we allow it. Mass teaches us about forgiveness; it is almost literally the handshake from across the table from the proverbial ‘other’. In a world that is tearing itself apart almost daily, the film thrusts our own hatred in our face, forcing us to realize we can keep on hating, and it can kill us, or we can try to understand and grow.
Dowd and Birney
As Franz grows as an artist, as a writer and a director, I am eager to see what this man, similar to my own age, a man with children similar in age to my own son tries to do next. As a film fanatic and critic, I find myself all too often asking ‘why is this an important story to tell’ and I come up empty handed more often than not. This was certainly not the case with Mass. The staging of the film, which lends itself to the original concept of being a stage play (it was only later Kranz decided it should be a film) is a format in which I often ask that same question “why was this important to tell”. That often has to do with many stage adaptations put to film and how they can become stagnant. How they don’t have the emotive resonance to move you emotionally if it can’t move the audience geographically.
Kranz’s directing is adept and sensitive, much like the performances of his four main actors. It gets out of the way, which is extremely impressive for a rookie director, it allows the story to be the main character, and while it spends most of it’s run time in the same room, it never felt ‘trapped’. That level of deftness is rarely found in first-time directors, and that’s one of the main reasons his next project should not be missed, no matter what it is.
Mass is certainly a smaller film in many regards, but it is the message that makes it massive. The title reflects it all. A small word, a simple word, but like the film it can mean so much, and can mean so many different things. Another meaning of ‘Mass’ is of course about a collection of those seeking forgiveness, and like the central message of the story, that is the most beautiful one. That is the most important one that we all need to take from it, so that the cancer does not continue to grow.