Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Mass’ on Hulu, a Single-Location, Single-Conversation Drama That’s as Vigorous as it is Essential

Now on Hulu after premiering on VOD in late 2021, Mass is, for the bulk of its run time, a single-location drama about a single conversation occurring among four people. First-time director Fran Kranz assembled a veteran cast of career character actors – Jason Isaacs and Martha Plimpton as one couple, and Ann Dowd and Reed Birney as another – to chew on one multifaceted topic for nearly two hours, and the result is an under-the-radar critical success that should play well in the intimate setting of home streaming.

MASS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Judy (Breeda Wool) is fussing. She’s a church volunteer trying to set up a room just right for some new visitors. She finds a nice room, arranges the chairs, makes some coffee, gets out some food, puts a box of tissues here. Kendra (Michelle N. Carter) set up the visitors’ meeting; she tells Judy the room is OK, rearranges the chairs, says coffee is good, that’s probably too much food and the tissue box should go over there. They’re nervous, and Kendra is prickly in response to Judy’s mildly overzealous attempt to be friendly and accommodating. What exactly is about to occur goes unsaid. They’d rather not bring it up, so they tiptoe around the topic like it’s a patch of thin ice over dark fathoms.

Gail (Plimpton) and Jay (Isaacs) sit in their car outside the church. She doesn’t know if she can do this. Just drive away, she snaps, and Jay pulls out of the parking lot. He stops the car down the road a stretch. The therapist said this would be good, he asserts, and she agrees. It’s just incredibly difficult. He backs out and drives toward the church and the camera stays and lingers on a nearby fence, where a red ribbon flaps in the breeze.

Gail and Jay arrive and Kendra is slightly chilly and businesslike and Judy is kind and friendly and all but bent over backwards. Richard (Birney) and Linda (Dowd) are next to arrive and introductions are awkward but pleasant in a strained sort of way. Linda gives Gail some flowers; she picked and arranged them herself and first they’re in the middle of the table but they seem in the way so they’re moved. They need a lot of open space between them. The couples sit down and share small talk about their children, and that’s awkward too. There’s a comment about how this is a good thing, because they’d only previously talked through their attorneys.

They converse around what they should be talking about, circling each other, and it’s tempting to say they’re like fighters sizing each other up, but that’s not wholly accurate. Gail comes off as someone whose heartbreak has rendered her nearly silent. Jay seems reasonable and calm to an extent, but capable of reaching a rolling boil. Linda is generally warm, an almost grandmotherly type, but with an omnipresent sense of melancholy, and Richard, a straightforward matter-of-fact speaker with an intense stare, tends to step on her sentences. They don’t always fill the air. Pregnant pauses give birth to the elephant in the room: Linda and Richard’s son killed Gail and Jay’s son. School shooting. Six years ago.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The body language, mannerisms and conversations in Mass splinter into political and private topicalities like 12 Angry Men – and it has more in common with The Breakfast Club than we might realize.

Performance Worth Watching: Plimpton and Dowd cover a wide, complex range of emotions with great empathy and humanity.

Memorable Dialogue: Linda: “You say you want to heal – we all do. Is this how?”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Mass unfurls in real time like a one-act play. The characters talk about the unthinkable with overwhelming intensity. It’s grueling to watch these people be wrung out like ragged dishcloths, but it feels like a necessary experience, an exercise in stylized realism digging into one of the most debilitating dysfunctions of modern American life. We see not a single moment from the key event, but the movie is nevertheless harrowing in the way it stares into the crater, contending with the aftermath.

In concept and construction, the film is certainly contrived, e.g., giving each of the four principals a moment to air out their grief and rage, and in some ways, it’s all but a feature-length Oscar clip. But Kranz’s stripped-down direction allows his actors to find truth and honesty in his fine-tuned screenplay, which never seeks to exploit the characters’ pain for the sake of melodrama. Instead, cast and filmmaker seek to understand that pain, which opens up a microcosm of the way society functions, the way people – the way Americans – communicate, getting past one barrier after another on a quest for, if not answers, then compassion.

These people are at times wide-open and closed-off, condescending and humble, aggressive and defensive, logical and histrionic, confident one moment and second-guessing themselves the next – all understandably so. They work through their desperation and regret; reveal their broken hearts; wrestle with concepts of right and wrong, nature and nurture, reason and faith. The big questions and minute details all get heavy-bagged. Is any of this doing any good? We have to hope so. The film is honest and forthright and, like so many things in life, when it’s over, even if all the problems of the country and world aren’t solved, and maybe never will be solved, we realize it inspires some food for thought, some personal psychological progress and some necessary catharsis.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Mass is a tough watch, but you can’t deny the power of its drama and its value as a reflection of American society.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.