14: Literary Adaptations & Mass
Gareth Higgins on MASS
I was so captivated by the love and pain in the room that I watched Mass twice in two days. I mean it: I loved these characters, and I suffered with them. I wanted to be near them, to witness their pain, out of respect for the real-life suffering the film seeks to honor. Inspired by the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the work of bringing survivors into conversation with those who may understand something about the other side of the harm, Mass is one of the most serious films ever made about violence; it’s an act of kindness; an offering of intense care for the world.
The plot couldn’t be simpler: four people united by tragedy come together to talk. One set of parents are living with the aftermath of the murder of their son; the other with the fact that their son was the killer who also took his own life. They’re talking, we learn, after years of sporadic correspondence between the mothers: letters which seem to have expressed everything from uncontrollable rage to the edge of empathy. The setting is mundane and will be familiar to many: a small room in a small church, in a small town. Plastic table, plastic chairs, takeaway coffee, some Sunday School art on the windows, an image of a crucified god on the wall: a room that could be one step removed from a hospital ward. But into this space arrives the opposite of antiseptic: the moment we meet Gail and Jay (Martha Plimpton and Jason Isaacs, above), they’re in the car trying to steel themselves to go into the building, and I wasn’t sure I would want to go in either. When Linda (Ann Dowd) and Richard (Reed Birney) arrive, the air is pregnant with the kind of tension we associate with thrillers.
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