Mass (2021)
Directed by Fran Kranz
His father was a drinker and his mother cried in bed
Folding John Wayne's t-shirts when the swing set hit his head
The neighbors, they adored him
For his humor and his conversation
This past week in our dystopian cauldron, the stew brewing adds another heavily armed white man acquitted of murder. The flavor profile on this has been decidedly bland for a while now. A Blue-Lives Matter, Trump-supporting white supremacist teenager murders two, and the consensus is that we’re not surprised. How did we get here? I’m going to try to avoid being dogmatic and self-righteous. In a situation like this, where the wheels of our quote unquote democracy obstruct the Truth through the cacophony of a media circus, it’s easy to polarize and observe this as a partisan issue, us vs. them. I can speculate that Kyle Rittenhouse never would’ve made it out of Kenosha alive if he were black. I can speculate that Kyle Rittenhouse would’ve been found guilty on all charges if he were black. What I do know is that in a situation like this, when you’re born black, you’re dead on arrival; born white, you’re elevated to mythic status.
But I’m not interested in that. The armchair social psychologists on Twitter can lay out their theories in 280 characters. What I am interested in is why a 17-year old white kid finds himself owning an assault rifle. We all know how these things happen but what interest does a child have in owning a gun or attending a Trump rally or associating with Proud Boys. Even asking that question with sincerity requires extraordinary compassion, if only to make sense of the complexity of how someone finds themself pulling the trigger on another human being. I won’t pretend to understand the nuances regarding this. I’ve lived on the northside of Chicago my whole life and never so much as held a gun. My interests as a 17-year old were graduating high school, going to college, and trying to get the attention of a girl I liked. I’m often critical of my upbringing, but there are indeed certain privileges that I’ve been afforded that I’m grateful for. But there’s a fine line. I didn’t have an alcoholic father. I lived in poverty but my living situation was consistent. Both my parents were there, for better or worse. What I guess I’m trying to say is that, like the Sufjan Stevens’ song quoted at the top, the differences between Rittenhouse and you and me are not as vast as you expect. Those who believe in violence are desperate to get some kind of ground under their feet, desperate to get away from their unpleasant feelings; desperate to be the one who’s right.
Fran Kranz’ Mass is a chamber drama set in the basement of an Episcopalian church. It is a simple film that brings together two couples. Martha Plimpton and Jason Isaacs play the parents of a teenager who was one of several students murdered in a school shooting. Ann Dowd and Reed Birney are the parents of the shooter. They sit at a table and talk. They exhume the corpse of the event, so to speak, in an attempt to heal. What begins as clumsy and cordial quickly dissolves into the emotional, asking impossible questions about why. There’s a lot here involving the act of punishment. Should the shooter’s parents be held accountable? What does regret look like? Is their suffering in the aftermath enough accountability? All this plays out in real time, shot inelegantly and edited with few grand flourishes. It is as utilitarian and visually bland as you can get, carried by the strength of its actors and script. I include these formal descriptors out of obligation; if you’re going to watch Mass, you watch it for what it has to say about the present moment, not how it says it.
Negotiation is a human responsibility. Mass understands the profound discomfort of that negotiation. A simplistic and often destructive emphasis on who is right and who is wrong lends itself to more pain, punishment, and righteousness. Our default setting is to punish others to feel better about ourselves. What if we aimed for understanding? There will always be mysteries and the unanswerable. But your brain is made to think about difficult things. To help you get to a point where you understand something that you didn’t understand before. Right now is a critical time. Now is the envy of all the dead. One day, I hope Rittenhouse understands that. I have to believe he will.