Mass, or Monument for a Capitalist Society
This page avoids major plot turns, twists, and ending details. It’s designed to help first-time viewers decide if this movie is right for them.What counts as a spoiler can vary by viewer.
Mass was made during Sjöström’s years at the film department of the Royal College of Art, in cooperation with the London Filmmaker’s Co-op. Random or staged shots of people and settings in urban London are arranged and abstracted, double-exposed and solarized. The result is a dense texture filled with layers and associative dimensions. Mass is a film attempting to convey, by strictly filmic means, the cooped-up feeling of the individual in the grey mass of the city. The absurd concrete city landscape is visualized through the unspoilt and naked eye of the camera in a concentrated mosaic of images and sound.