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Actors say Virtual Sundance continues to focus on movies
Returning to the basics of celebrating independent cinema, the cast say a virtual Sundance is better: “People all over the world can now access it.” (January 29)
AP
You are unlikely to see a more devastating movie this year than “Mass”.
The heart-wrenching drama, which premiered Saturday at the Sundance Film Festival, puts you in a room with two sets of grieving parents, six years after a school shooting that claimed their two sons. Their reasons for meeting aren’t immediately clear, as Richard (Reed Birney) and Linda (Ann Dowd) exchange cuteness and a houseplant with Jay (Jason Isaacs) and Gail (Martha Plimpton), who sift through reluctantly old family photos.
At first uncomfortable and stilted, the discussion quickly becomes heated when you find out that Linda and Richard are the shooter’s parents. Helpless Jay and Gail sometimes angrily probe them with questions about their son and perceived failures as parents: Weren’t there red flags that something was wrong? Did bullying or violent video games push him to the limit?
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Linda and Richard repeatedly insist that there was no sign. At one point, Linda confesses, “The truth is, we thought we were good parents, and in a horrible and disturbing way, we still do.
The four characters, along with the audience, finally realize that there are no answers. There is just a void left by the loss of their children, and nothing they do or say can ease that pain.
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The nearly two-hour film unfolds like a play: the conversation takes place in real time and is almost entirely confined to a single play. Actor Fran Kranz (“The Cabin in the Woods”), who made his confident directorial debut, was inspired to write “Mass” after the Parkland, Fla., High school shooting in 2018, where a gunman killed 17 students and employees and injured 17 others. .
“I was just overwhelmed by it,” Kranz said in a post-screening question-and-answer session. “I was a new parent and… listening to a parent that day on the radio, I just started to think, ‘What’s going to happen to this person? Will she be alright? And what would happen to me (in this situation)? ‘”
The actors rehearsed for two days in New York City, before flying to Hailey, Idaho, where they shot the film before the pandemic.
In Idaho, “I spent a lot of time alone and thought about the loss of a child,” said Dowd (“The Handmaid’s Tale”), a mother of three, through tears. “I held onto that heartbreak and said, ‘This is what it is. Don’t run away.’ ‘Rather than improvise,’ we were hoping to stick to the script because it’s so well written. . ”
Despite the extremely difficult and dark subject, Kranz believes there is hope at the end of the film, as Gail struggles to forgive her son’s murderer.
“Forgiveness is really hard because you have to let go,” Plimpton said. “When Gail says, ‘I’m afraid if I do this I’ll lose my son,’ I really feel it. I have my own business and my own people I have to forgive, but it’s very difficult. … It touches me closest to home. “
“Mass” will have a second virtual screening Monday (10 am ET) at Sundance.
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