Mass (2021)
(L.-R.: Jason Isaacs, Martha Plimpton, Reed Birney and Ann Dowd in Mass)
This movie is a gathering storm. I was pretty well drenched near the end, literally in tears at one point. Throughout I couldn't quite get my bearings, couldn't be sure where the movie was going to leave me.
Some movies have to be allowed their own space and sense of time, and we need to clear their path toward us. Mass doesn't have a "genre". There's almost nothing in it that you see coming.
The tense situation is this: a meeting is held in the aftermath of a mass – the word will twist and tumble in your mind as you watch – high school shooting, wherein two teenagers died, one murdered by the other, the shooter taking his own life.
Wielding the gun was Hayden, the son of a discreet businessman, Richard (Reed Birney), and his patient, long-suffering wife, Linda (Ann Dowd). Some years after the horrific event, they've agreed to meet with the parents of one of the victims, Evan. That boy's mother, Gail (Martha Plimpton), and father, Jay (Jason Isaacs), aren't sure what they want from the meeting. All four parents have veiled agendas, needs, hurts.
The anxious coming together happens in a "healing space" at a small Episcopal church, in a basement meeting room. Unexpectedly, this “safe” space peels away defenses, turns out to be ideal for raw exposure. Church may be a place to look inside oneself, but it makes no promises about what one will find there. The hymn heard at the movie’s opening and close, "Blessed Be the Ties That Bind", poses a challenge the troubled parents can’t sidestep.
Their encounter starts off with a barely amiable nervousness on both sides. And they do have sides. Each parent advocates for his or her son's humanity. We learn that leading up to the shooting Hayden had spiraled into depression, with violent fixations. Richard and Linda tried to get him professional help, supported him when he seemed to have found a few "friends". But alienation and loneliness were hurtling him toward self-destruction.
Jay and Gail recall their beloved Evan with profound fondness, especially at those times when he was sweetly exasperating. Gail's story, wonderfully acted by Plimpton, about a dirty football uniform ends in joy as well as a searing apprehension of loss.
The point of the meeting is to discover how, as we say in our "empathetic" age, to move on. But before any of that can happen, cold reckonings will spill out, one after another. Gail and Jay want to know: Why did your son kill ours before you could stop him? A shattered Linda and Richard can only reply: We don't have clear answers, only sorrow and regret. Time has elapsed. But the pain persists. Watching these four struggle against it, you hope they won't leave that room until something is resolved. But what exactly?
Fran Kranz, in his directing debut, working from his own script, establishes a clean, spare space, not only in the meeting room but in viewers' minds. His camera rarely leaves that triggering church basement. Cinematographer Ryan Jackson-Healy and editor Yang Hua Hu – necessarily – cut the actors no slack. Everything is on the line, which they have to show us. Increasingly we understand that the unsparing closeups and seismic jolts in the editing will lead to a – terribly mixed – reconciling. Kranz’ assured, feather light direction keeps landing blow after blow.
For one, when Jay describes Evan's death, relives the wounded boy's slow crawl leaving a trail of blood across a schoolroom floor, Richard sympathetically says, "I know." Jay hurls back in rage: "You don't know. I know." The movie knows that every child’s death belongs to the child’s parent as to no one else.
Insightful writing and superlative acting push and pull these people away from and toward one another. All four performances are flawless. The script finely delineates each character, and the actors flesh them out with personal woe, which is harrowing because there seems to be no letup in sight. Understanding isn’t the same as release.
It’s an artistic triumph that, in Kranz' hands, the meeting room never feels like a “compassion” hothouse. Any one of these people can suddenly turn and go for another’s throat. Peace somewhere outside this room is what they’re snarling and crying out for. The four talk almost entirely about themselves and their children, but we’re never allowed to forget the sometimes less than caring world they’ll re-enter. Ours. Think one more time about the movie’s title.
Glimpses
(Recent movies now gradually slipping from notice or out of circulation)
This Week’s Selection: In the Heights
In the Heights (2021)
(Corey Hawkins and Leslie Grace in In the Heights)
This sparkling musical is set in Washington Heights in upper Manhattan. It explores a community of many colors, with roots more complex than the word “Latinx” can convey. Adapted by Quiara Alegría Hudes from the Broadway show of the same name (written by Hudes and Lin-Manuel Miranda), the movie bounces on its Caribbean beats, with dancing rhythms that seem to spring from the pavement as much as from a neighborhood’s determination to thrive.
It’s spun out in multiple story threads rather than a single narrative. One thread concerns Nina (Leslie Grace), who’s on a Stanford scholarship she’s not sure she wants to renew, feeling cut off from family and friends. Another involves a young fashion designer, Vanessa (Melissa Barrera), who can’t seem to parlay her blossoming talent into an internship downtown, at the fashion industry’s epicenter.
Yet another tale centers on Nina’s beleaguered father Kevin (Jimmy Smits), who’s put his limousine business at risk in order to keep Nina in college, a sacrifice Nina points out she never asked him to make.
Anchoring and narrating these hopes and aspirations is Usnavi (Anthony Ramos), the young owner of a bodega who longs to return to the Dominican Republic (or thinks he does, anyway).
The director, John M. Chu (Crazy Rich Asians), and choreographer, Christopher Scott, toss in dance hip-thrusts like ingredients in a rich gumbo. It’s delectable, yet it wasn’t always clear to me what specific dreams the script was setting a fire under. By the end, no one’s circumstances had radically changed. But maybe that was the point all along. True community nourishes and respects you, and leaves your personal choices up to you.
The infectious musica embraces players and audience alike. The performances are accomplished and fully inhabited, with an especially lovely sequence danced by Nina and her African-American boyfriend, Benny (Corey Hawkins), against the backdrop of a tall apartment building (no spoilers from me – see it and be enchanted). It’s the movie’s most captivating number.
The music and dance rhythms in In the Heights throb as steadily as conga drums. The movie insists that those deep beats can resound in every chest, with no color barrier.