Producers: Fran Kranz, Casey Wilder Mott, J.P. Ouellette and Dylan Matlock   Director: Fran Kranz   Screenplay: Fran Kranz   Cast: Jason Isaacs, Ann Dowd, Martha Plimpton, Reed Birney, Breeda Wool, Michelle N. Carter and Kagen Albright   Distributor: Bleecker Street

Grade: B

Actor-turned-writer-director Fran Kranz takes on serious, distressingly topical, issues in his first feature, and while he can’t provide a completely satisfying conclusion to the intimate but explosive situation he’s fashioned, he undoubtedly affords his four leads ample opportunity to showcase their dramatic skills in powerful if sometimes melodramatic monologues.  “Mass” is a somewhat contrived but often searing examination of pain, guilt and forgiveness, delivered by four exceptional actors.

The setting is a small Episcopalian church, where staff members Judy (Breeda Wool) and Anthony (Kagen Albright) are preparing for an unusual meeting arranged by a therapist, Kendra (Michelle N. Carter).  Six years after a school shooting left ten dead, two couples are scheduled to talk: Richard (Reed Birney) and Linda (Ann Dowd), the parents of the killer, and Jay (Jason Isaacs) and Gail (Martha Plimpton), the parents of one of his victims.

What follows resembles a small-ensemble play as the couples grow to understand one another over the course of their conversation, which follows years of recrimination and litigation.  It begins awkwardly, with nervous exchanges about the couples’ surviving children, and proceeds into increasingly fraught territory as Jay and Gail press for explanations about how Hayden, the killer, wasn’t prevented from committing his heinous act, and Richard and Linda—now separated—acknowledge their failings but couple their apologies with poignant excuses.  The portrait that emerges is of four people who have all suffered incalculable loss, but remainl capable of overcoming their inclinations to either accusation or defensiveness to recognize and empathize with the grief of the others.

The reconciliation set-up has an obvious degree of artificiality about it—the introductory material featuring the three facilitators is rather weak, and there are points in the discussion where Kranz descends into something close to mawkishness—a tendency that increases toward the close.  There’s also necessarily an inclination for such a piece to grow static and stagey.  But Ryan Jackson-Healy’s smooth camerawork and Yang-Hua Hu’s skillful editing help to mitigate that.

The most important element, however, is the acting.  All four of the performers are superb, and each has moments when he or she takes center stage, as it were, and delivers an impassioned plea.  Dowd and Plimpton make the strongest impressions, but Isaacs and Birney aren’t far behind, and they put across even the script’s weaker elements with sincerity and nuance.

It’s customary at this point to remark that such a film is a grueling experience, forcing one to feel the grief that follows a preventable tragedy and face the apparent futility of trying to prevent future ones.  And to add that nonetheless watching it is a salutary choice—the old “depressing, but good for you” cliché. 

That’s true, of course, but in this case one can also say that if you miss “Mass,” you’ll be foregoing some great acting, as well as closing your eyes to the expansive human cost of a sadly too-frequent species of national tragedy.