111 min | PG-13 | October 8, 2021 | Bleecker Street
Four parents meet in the back of a church. Two buried their son after a school shooting. The other two raised the boy who pulled the trigger, and now they all have to sit at the same table.
Four parents meet in the back room of an Episcopal church. Gail and Jay lost their son in a school shooting. Linda and Richard are the parents of the boy who killed him. They sit at a folding table and try to talk. Fran Kranz builds his entire film from that single conversation and refuses every easy exit it offers. The movie is not about the shooting. It is about what grief demands and what forgiveness costs the people who attempt it.
Martha Plimpton plays Gail as a woman holding herself together by sheer force of will. She wants answers that no answer can satisfy. Jason Isaacs plays Jay with a controlled fury that keeps sliding toward interrogation. He came for facts and learns that facts do not heal. Ann Dowd plays Linda as a mother drowning in apology and helpless love for a son she could not reach. Reed Birney plays Richard with a defensive precision that cracks only when he stops defending.
Kranz writes and directs his first feature with the discipline of someone who trusts silence. He opens on Breeda Wool as Judy, the church coordinator, fussing over chairs and a tray of snacks. The banality of the setting does the work that exposition cannot. The camera stays close and patient, holding faces through long takes and cutting only when a line lands hard enough to demand it. The production design keeps the room plain and institutional, a space built for nothing like this. Kranz lets the table itself become both the barrier and the bridge between the two couples.
This is a film about the limits of catharsis. Kranz does not hand over redemption as a tidy gift. He presents it as labor that may not be possible between people whose pain points in opposite directions. The conversation moves through accusation and grief toward something quieter and harder to name. Mass asks whether forgiveness is a decision or a surrender, and it has the nerve to leave the question open.