Unanswerable Questions

The parents of a murder victim and the parents of the killer meet for a discussion in 2021's Mass. It's an effective little chamber piece.

The victim and killer were high school students and the incident was a school shooting in which several people were killed, including the killer, who shot himself. It's an all too common scenario in the U.S. these days. The film stars Jason Isaacs and Martha Plimpton as the victim's parents, Jay and Gail, while Reed Birney and Ann Dowd player the killer's parents, Richard and Linda. I wonder if that's a Twin Peaks reference. Richard and Linda were the two mysterious names on the note Cooper finds in the last episode of Twin Peaks.

The dialogue goes as you might expect. There's a sense of horrible futility while at the same time there's the unstoppable compulsion to do something. Details of the killing and the killer's motives remain superficial, mostly the focus is on the grief and anguish of the two sets of parents. It's not Bergman but it's not bad.

The film was written and directed by Fran Kranz, an actor, best known for his role as Topher on Joss Whedon's Dollhouse. Mass is available on Amazon Prime.