"Mass", in the title of Fran Kranz's excellent debut film, stands for mass murder but it could also mean the Catholic Mass, which is a sacrament, since one of the subjects of this film is forgiveness. Two sets of parents meet in the basement of a church; they are the parents of boys involved in a school shooting, those of the killer and those of one of the victims. What is the real purpose of their meeting? Closure, forgiveness, to vent anger, to divest themselves of pain, to try to understand? Kranz's film covers all of these and is blessed with an extraordinary cast of four. Reed Birney and Ann Dowd are the parents of the killer and Jason Isaacs and Martha Plimpton are the parents of the victim.
It is a theatrical concept and yes, it does feel like a filmed play with well rehearsed arguments but the cast raise onto a different level; painfully we feel like eavesdroppers on their grief and that is Kranz's achievement. Apart from a few shots at the beginning and end we never leave the one room and the cast mostly sit around a table and they talk. This is hardly a film to pack them in on a Saturday night but it is still one fo the best films of the year and certainly it has the best ensemble cast.
