Your Weekly Dose (11/1/21)
This week’s prescriptions include a film and tv series that deal with epidemics in this country, gun violence and opioid addiction respectively, and a work of nonfiction that might hold possible antidotes to them both.
FILM
Mass
If it’s playing in a theater near you, you must go see Mass, one of the year’s best films, boasting some of the best writing and four of the most compelling performances you will see. If it’s not playing in a theater near you, don’t worry, you should be able to stream it digitally soon. From first time writer/director Fran Kranz, Mass tells the story of two couples that meet in the basement of a church. One couple, Jay and Gail (Jason Isaacs and Martha Plimpton), are the parents of a victim of a school shooting. The other couple, Linda and Richard (Ann Dowd and Reed Birney), are the parents of the shooter. Years after the tragic event, Jay and Gail are still struggling to come to grips with what happened to their son and hope that a conversation with his killers’ parents might help do that. What results is about a 90 minute conversation that explores—in as realistic fashion as possible—grief, anger, sorrow, regret, forgiveness, and the hope for true reconciliation.
I’m a fan of single location films, but it’s rare that the events in these films happen in real time, which is part of what makes Mass so unique. Here’s what my friend Gareth Higgins, who, having grown up in Northern Ireland, is no stranger to violence and loss, had to say:
And Mass manages another rarity: in a movie that’s only as long as the events it portrays, things change. It’s incredibly difficult to write a film or a play in which people transform in a believable way, especially over the course of a couple of hours. But Mass does it, partly because the set up is so much like real life. We’ve all sat in vehicles outside a room we were scared to enter. We’ve all wanted to scream at somebody for the pain we associate with their actions. And maybe we’ve all wanted to hear someone say I forgive you, and to say it ourselves. These people - Linda, Gail, Jay, Richard - feel not only like people we know, but people we are.
You can read the rest of his review over at Soul Telegram. I could go on and on about this film, but that would get beyond the scope of this newsletter. This timely and timeless film deserves any and all awards attention that is surely around the corner,. It’s tonic in the divisive times in which we live. Just watch it.
You can find a list of theaters where Mass is screening here.
TV
Dopesick
From Danny Strong (Recount, Game Change, The Butler), Dopesick explores the origins of the opioid epidemic in the United States, particularly the development of Oxy-Contin and its initial release in the poor working class communities in Kentucky, Maine, and West Virginia. The series examines this epidemic from multiple angles the users, their families, the doctors that treated them, big pharma, and state and federal governmental and law enforcement agencies. It shows the intersections of poverty, religion, and labor and how so much of the obscene wealth of the 1% results from the exploitations of these intersections.
Dopesick boasts an all-star cast including Michael Keaton, Rosario Dawson, Michael Stuhlbarg, Kaitlyn Dever, Peter Sarsgaard, Will Poulter, and Ray McKinnon. The characters are compelling and none more so than Keaton’s Dr. Samuel Finnix, whose journey with Oxy is heartbreaking, revelatory, and transformational. At moments, the Sackler family can come off as cartoonish, but it’s hard not to caricature a family that evil…or privileged (they’ve received broad immunity from opioid lawsuits). Rick Mountcastle (Sarsgaard) and Randy Ramseyer (John Hoogenakker) are crusading U.S. district attorneys that work tirelessly to slay the beastly combination of big pharma, a complicit FDA, and elected officials willing to look the other way. At times, it also feels like Dopesick is attempting to say something about pain and our relationship to it. Purdue Pharma execs complain about being unable to launch Oxy in Germany: “They [the Germans] believe suffering is a sign of healing.” A bit on the nose, perhaps, but I’ll be interested to see where they go with this line of thinking.
New episodes of Dopesick premiere Wednesdays on Hulu, and, even in this age of bingeing, I’d say it’s something like appointment viewing. Currently, five of the eight episodes are available.
Where the Deer and the Antelope Play: The Pastoral Observations of One Ignorant American Who Loves to Walk Outside
It’s not as simple as a direct correlation, but there are seeds of healing for the previous two epidemics buried in Nick Offerman’s new book, Where the Deer and the Antelope Play. A lover of hiking, hard work, and good food and drink, Offerman’s writing style reads like we’re walking beside him on a long hike, woodworking at his shop, or grabbing a couple beers at a local tavern. He switches with ease from poetic observations of his natural surroundings to rants about the current state of agricultural and political affairs in the U.S. He’ll find no supporters from the far right, a fact that I doubt keeps him up at night, but he’s never overly critical or mean and makes sure to take stock of his own shortcomings in the process.
Offerman breaks his book into three sections. The first is a week-long hike through Glacier National Park with Jeff Tweedy and George Saunders, good company if you can get it. The second recounts his multiple visits to the James Rebanks family farm in Cumbria (northern England). The third details his weeks-long RV trip around the central and southwestern U.S. during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic with wife Megan Mullally. Offerman laments our disconnect from nature, good work, and, ultimately, one another. It’s not difficult to see how a lack of opportunity or a feeling of hopelessness about the future can lead individuals to violent or addictive behaviors. Factory farming, agri-business, and greed (to name a few) are fueling catastrophic climate change, which breeds more hopelessness, and the cycle continues. But Offerman, like many of us, knows that we can combat this, and points us to people like James Rebanks, Wendell Berry, and others whose life and work are examples more of us should follow.
Where the Deer and the Antelope Play is a quick, humorous read, but deeply spiritual at heart. Hopefully it will inspire you to take a long walk and read some Wendell Berry. I could prescribe few better medicines.
Consider purchasing Where the Deer and the Antelope Play from an independent bookseller like Parnassus Books in Nashville, TN.