The Mastermind

 

Director Kelly Reichardt

Reichardt on the set with Josh O'Connor

Reichardt and O'Connor at Cannes 

THE MASTERMIND            B                                                                                                        USA  (110 mi)  2025  d: Kelly Reichardt

Weird times, huh?                                                                                                                          —James Blaine “J.B.” Mooney (Josh O’Connor)

About as minimalist a film as you’re going to find, while also moving away from the filmmaker’s familiar Pacific Northwest mindset to the East coast of Boston and the Midwest of Ohio, where something is decidedly different in the water, as this has a darker edge, even going over the brink into unfamiliar territory, drenched in period detail, literally immersing viewers in the early 1970’s when America had just expanded its operations in Vietnam to Cambodia and the country was rife with anti-war protesters, so instead of a suspense-filled heist movie, this is more of an unglamorous, anti-heist, psychological study of a criminal on the lam, immersed in his own guilt and regret, mirroring the draft dodgers of the 1970’s who left the country for Canada in a time of great turmoil.  With a war still raging and a corrupt President Nixon mired in a cesspool of his own lies, circumstances that are clearly intended to be relevant today, they had to keep looking over their shoulders until the election of President Jimmy Carter at the end of the decade, offering those fleeing Americans amnesty to return home.  While all about the attention to details, showing a keen eye for what is almost unnoticed behind the everyday façades of people, in style alone Reichardt forces viewers to watch more closely, to see what’s underneath the characters, yet ultimately this is a Dostoyevskian Crime and Punishment movie, a film about wrestling with your conscience, with an art heist at a Boston museum taking place in broad daylight where security is scant, with everything going according to plan, that is until it all starts to unravel.  During the filming of the art heist scenes, an actual art heist occurred at Bard College, the college where director Kelly Reichardt teaches, and just a week before the film was released, burglars broke into the Louvre in Paris and stole $100 million dollar historic crown jewels in a daring daylight heist at 9:30 in the morning that took just seven minutes, conducting their getaway on scooters.  Inspired by the 1972 robbery of the Worcester Art Museum, where two Gauguins, a Picasso, and a painting initially attributed to Rembrandt, now believed to be the work of one of his students, were stolen (eventually recovered at a Rhode Island pig farm), shooting a security guard on their way out, the first time in history that art was stolen at gunpoint, while also borrowing liberally from Robert Bresson’s blank character in his crime study Pickpocket (1959), this is largely an introspective mood piece with little to no action, painstakingly taking us back to a time before the Internet and cellphones, eliminating any hint of thrill or suspense with the theft coming early in the picture, as the film instead defies the conventional heist genre and turns on its ear what passes for action in the films of today, offering a quiet condemnation on the rapidly growing culture of instant gratification.  More low-key and character-driven in tone, filled with quiet moments, devoting herself entirely to the dynamics of the small and inconspicuous, this may remind viewers of Reichardt’s Night Moves (2013), existing primarily under the surface, probing deeply into the restless psychological territory of a group of radical environmental activists, also reminiscent of the dysfunctional South Florida lovers-on-the-lam in her debut feature River of Grass (1994), while others have claimed it’s in the tradition of Jean-Pierre Melville’s LE CERCLE ROUGE (1970), darker and more abstract than his earlier work, yet in the tradition of French film noirs where fate prevails and the demise of the main character is established at the beginning.  This is Reichardt’s second minimalist heist film, as First Cow (2019) revolves around two friends in early 19th century America stealing milk by moonlight from their neighbor’s cow in order to bake doughnuts with it, yet even Michelle Williams in Wendy and Lucy (2008) was forced to shoplift due to her dire economic circumstance.  Bleakly funny in spots, particularly the sheer ineptitude of the participants, shot on 16mm in muted colors by longtime cinematographer Christopher Blauvelt, which provides a grainy, lo-fi charm, evoking films of the 70’s, with Reichardt co-writing and editing her own films, yet what stands out most is the extraordinary jazz soundtrack by Rob Mazurek from Chicago Underground (jazz ensemble), a jittery, propulsive-driven counterpoint to the otherwise slow moving cinema of Reichardt, becoming the underlying engine that subversively propels the movie forward, providing positively thrilling, Whiplash-like percussive rhythm and texture. 

Reichardt’s second straight picture premiering in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, it’s significant to note that this is the first film since River of Grass that was not written by source material from Portland novelist Jon Raymond, or in the case of Certain Women (2016), three short stories by Maile Maloy, so it’s fair to say Reichardt’s pictures have a literary air about them, delving into the interiority of the characters.  For the casual viewer, nothing much happens in this picture, filled with all the monotony of suburban life, as it’s an excruciatingly slow and meandering existential journey, with the camera relentlessly following James Blaine “J.B.” Mooney (Josh O’Connor), an out of work college art-school dropout and failed architect doing odd jobs as a carpenter, finding his place in a comfortable middle class family compromised, coming from an affluent family, where his father (Bill Camp) is a circuit court judge and his wife Terri (Alana Haim) has a white-collar job, raising two young boys, yet he hasn’t yet found his place in the world, seemingly existing in a state of paralysis.  We never learn how his life came to such a standstill, suggesting he has seen better times, but the title is purely ironic, as is the driving jazz soundtrack, which is completely at odds in a film using silent imagery that couldn’t be less exciting.  J.B.’s nickname is perhaps a reference to the mysterious D. B. Cooper, who hijacked a plane in 1971 before parachuting and disappearing into the Pacific Northwest woods with $200,000, never to be seen or heard from again.  While there’s a Vietnam War raging, constantly heard in radio reports or footage seen on television, there’s also a counterculture anti-war movement going on that challenges the status quo, where there’s a whirlwind of social change in the air, yet James ignores all that, exuding a blank expression on his face and is pretty much defined by his indifference.  While we see the family visiting an art museum, James seems overly detached, lost in his own little world, easily ignored and separated from the rest of the family, where he goes through a practice run, stealing a small wooden figurine, placing it in his wife’s bag, yet that success emboldens him to think bigger, The Mastermind Movie Clip - Stealing from the Museum (2025) YouTube (1:56).  Completely unpretentious and unembellished, like all Reichardt films, it’s the small details that stand out, like the cars, clothing, news broadcasts, and old buildings, feeling more like a slice-of-life picture, where a listless James is depicted as just an ordinary guy, with nothing special about him, yet with his background, more is expected of him, sort of a rumpled Elliot Gould figure from Altman’s The Long Goodbye (1973), becoming a portrait of malaise and unfulfillment.  He borrows money from his philanthropist mother (Hope Davis), seemingly for an important architectural project, yet he uses it to hire two petty criminals, Guy and Ronnie (Eli Gelb and Javion Allen) and a getaway driver Larry (Cole Doman) to steal four obscure abstract paintings by early American modernist Arthur Dove (Arthur Dove (1880–1946)) from a fictional Framington Museum of Art in the Boston suburbs, perhaps due to some misconceived belief in outsmarting the establishment.  On the day of the heist, James forgets that his kids are off from school that day, so he drops them off at a bowling alley and hands them some cash to get by, only to learn that his driver Larry has inconveniently quit on them as well, yet even with these hiccups, the plan goes off as intended, where masked thieves wearing nylon stockings grab four targeted paintings off a wall, stuff them into bags, and literally walk out the front door, except that an adrenaline-pumped Ronnie waves a gun at a young female student witnessing the event while working on an assignment from school, forcing her under a table as they simply run out of the building with the paintings in tow, with luckily no one getting hurt.  James takes the stolen goods to an isolated location, hiding them in the hayloft of a barn at a remote pig farm, where a good five to ten minutes are spent watching him perilously climb up and down on an unsteady ladder to get up there with wooden-enclosed, framed paintings, one at a time, moments that are typically left out of other movies, as we’re thoroughly expecting some disaster to happen, only to return home afterwards with the police already questioning Terri.  Outed by Ronnie, who was caught the day before, as the mastermind behind the operation, James plays dumb, using his father’s name and influence to get the police off his back, at least for the moment, but he has a target on his back. 

While we never really learn what James was planning to do with these paintings, it’s clear the dam has broken on this shoddy operation, while we’re also beginning to suspect he hasn’t a clue what he’s doing, with Guy demanding more money or he’ll inform on him as well, so he agrees to meet, only to be surprised by mob figures who simply take what they stole, casually informing him, “Honestly, I don’t think you thought things through,” sarcastically questioning his ability to put a trustworthy group together, leaving him with nothing to show for it, but now his name and photo appear in all the newspapers and TV reports, requiring that he go on the lam to avoid arrest.  This may be the least engaging of all the filmmaker’s movies, lacking the emotional impact of her previous work, as viewers may find it hard to find an entry point, something that makes all this matter, becoming an examination of male entitlement that features a frustrated, screwed-up guy who has squandered away all of his opportunities.  Seemingly an excuse to escape from his banal, bourgeois family life, it’s the aftermath of the crime that gets the most attention, as James slides into exile from his family and friends, literally dropping out of society, seeking sanctuary out in the rural countryside with old art school friends Fred (frequent collaborator John Magaro) and Maude (Gaby Hoffmann), with Fred excitedly rummaging up memories of their more youthful indiscretions, urging him to flee across the border to a Canadian commune filled with American “draft dodgers, radical feminists, and drug fiends - - you know, nice people,” but Maude is less than enthused.  In fact, it is the women in this picture who quickly see through his smokescreen of illusions, as Maude doesn’t want any part of him, while Terri has no patience left for whatever predicament he finds himself in, offering no sympathy whatsoever, left to clean up the mess he left behind, angrily refusing to wire him money, hanging up instead, where he may as well be lost to them, finding himself isolated and alone, backed into a corner, and completely alienated from a society in flux.  But what do you have left when you increasingly damage the trust of your loved ones, and what world can you expect to live in when you’re not an active participant, where your own passivity allows stronger and more malicious forces to intrude?  Set in a time when America was passionately expressing a social consciousness, when opinions on issues mattered, and people were willing to put their lives on the line to bring about change, this is in stark contrast to our protagonist who doesn’t believe in anything, a man unmoored from his generation, taking his privileged affluent advantages for granted, ultimately allowing more zealously-driven forces to prevail.  An ambiguous commentary on the responsibility of the individual in a society marked by social injustice, the parallels between Nixon’s and Trump’s America are not accidental.  Never afraid to look at the dark underside of American failures, it goes without saying that Reichardt is referencing the political maelstrom we’re experiencing today, suggesting we’re all responsible for the world we live in.  What goes through the head of James is predictable, as survival instincts kick in, willing to do whatever it takes at any given moment, even the unthinkable, like stealing a purse from an elderly lady, running off afterwards where he blends into a crowd of marching anti-war protesters, watching a few get knocked in the head by locals who want no part of them there, evidence of a moral divide in the country, but James is a man defined by an entitled arrogance who has lost any moral connection.  Completely alone and adrift, no longer a part of anything, he’s beyond redemption, and beyond disillusionment, finding himself part of a self-imposed hellish damnation as the world closes in on him.  Throughout the film, the sheer existence of activist people of color, social unrest, and the radical energy that defined 1970’s America is deliberately omitted.  That erasure conveniently reinforces the privilege of the characters’ own ignorance, where his capacity for narcissistic self-absorption and lack of depth defines who he has become, recklessly moving from one bad situation to another, aimlessly drifting through time, engulfed by the emptiness that surrounds him, eventually finding himself cornered, like a rat in a maze, with no way out.