Why the year’s tensest drama never leaves the room
How minimalist drama Mass turned a single location into a boiling cauldron of emotion
PLENTY OF THRILLERS build tension with shoot-outs, car chases, perhaps even the odd explosion. In Mass, the tension comes entirely from a meeting-room of a small Episcopelian church. The only explosions are verbal. Telling the story of what happens when the parents of a school-shooting victim meet the parents of their child’s murderer (based on real meetings arranged by organisations such as The Forgiveness Project), it is an emotional exercise in minimalism.
“I didn’t want this story to leave this room,” explains first-time writerdirector Fran Kranz (previously best known as an actor in films such as The Cabin In The Woods). “I felt so adamant that we need to sit with these characters and do the work with them, no matter how exhausting or challenging it is.”
Previous ‘single-location’ films provided important inspiration: the 1981 cult classic My Dinner With André, for example, was a “north star” for Kranz. “I could keep telling myself, especially as a first-time director, ‘Hey, that works!’ If the conversation is compelling enough, people will sit through it.”
Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes From A Marriage was also an influence, especially in how the camera mirrored the emotional journey of the characters. “I wanted to emulate that,” Kranz says,
“by beginning very slow, very wide, very static, very simple. And then, as things get more heated and emotional, we’re handheld and right in their face.”
Kranz uses subtle filmmaking techniques to augment the performances of his four lead actors (Reed Birney, Ann Dowd, Jason Isaacs and Martha Plimpton). One technique happens almost imperceptibly, about halfway through: as the characters recall the day of the mass shooting, the aspect ratio switches to a narrower height. “This event changed their lives forever,” Kranz explains. “When you lose a child, the world is never the same. It’s shock. It’s also realigning yourself in the world. The idea was to visualise how that kind of loss changes your life and view of the world forever. From that point on the movie enters a kind of new emotional realm.”
Filmed in just two weeks, the experience was intense and claustrophobic for cast and crew. Kranz isn’t sure if he’d do it again. “I got this idea [for another film],” he says, with a smile. “It is way outdoors. Big mountains and landscapes.”
MASS IS IN CINEMAS AND ON SKY CINEMA FROM 20 JANUARY