Of Kelly Reichardt’s many talents behind the camera, historically, she is not a filmmaker you would refer to as “a trickster” — there is little in the way of twist or misdirection in her work. She is, however, a deconstructionist of genre, frequently the Western, but also the terrorist thriller, the buddy road trip comedy, and the artist biopic, stripping the sensationalist pacing and conveniences of plot to the studs and making us sit in the realities of these premises, so perhaps we should’ve known better. This did little to prevent the collective boner Reichardt gave the world of cinephilia when it was announced she was making a ‘70s art heist with Josh O’Connor. At my New York Film Festival screening, as the Saul Bass-worthy credits unfurled, there was an audible gasp and cheer at the “And Bill Camp” title card, certain he would be stepping in as a gruff foil in the joyride we were all ready for.
The Mastermind challenges viewer expectations in more ways than one. The intro is seductive and cannonshot thanks to the muted, earth-toned color palette and Rob Mazurek’s mellow bebop score in the background, playing in and out, bridging scenes through the entirety of the film and lending it an undeserved ease. We open on O’Connor, as James Blake Mooney, pacing around the museum, casting a lanky, elegant figure in fuzzy period attire, discreetly nabbing a carved and painted figure from a laughably “secured” display in the middle of a gallery room in the Framingham Art Museum in rural Western Massachusetts. It’s but a warm-up for the big score. His wife Terri (Alana Haim), also beautiful and long-limbed, smiles discreetly as their two boys, one possibly, charmingly on the spectrum, dart from room to room, providing the perfect distraction. Are they all in on it? An outfit of family thieves, perhaps, as the prospect of two light and fun hours of gorgeously shot, clever artifact-boosting entices the viewer.
That notion is quickly dashed, because the film’s title is ironic, and the cheekily stolen artifact is the outset of a long, agonizing slide to the bottom. James Blake Mooney is one of the biggest and most frustrating schnooks to grace a movie in years: unemployed, often in his boxers, loafing around the house, perpetually fucked over and operating off his back foot. The film tracks his steady descent from the gentleman thief he imagines himself as to the petty dickhead he appears to have always been, that he washes out as. Mooney is, at least in his own mind, a talented craftsman who takes pride in doing the fine labor of high-end carpentry, but has no interest in running his own crew because of the paperwork, the payroll and scheduling, and office jobs that owning a small business requires. His parents are rich — his father, the aforementioned, disappointed Bill Camp, is a judge, and he borrows the money he needs to fund the heist from his mother (Hope Davis) — so you understand his desire to stage a heist is less a matter of necessity than an escape from his ennui and the menial life he’s checked out of.
He ironically has no interest in getting his hands dirty in the heist that takes up the film’s first act, claiming he’s at the museum too frequently to get involved, but instead enlists the nearest slippery, unreliable petty crooks he can find to run a glorified smash and grab at the Museum for a few of Mooney’s favorite Arthur Dove canvases. Nothing goes according to the threadbare plan during the hilariously inept heist, but the motley crew does abscond with the contraband, and that’s when the shit really begins to hit the fan, all of it spraying on the in-over-his-head maestro.
The Mastermind is Bressonian — most overtly recalling 1959’s Pickpocket — in its exploration of a sinner, why he sins, and the consequences of those sins, legally as a citizen and spiritually as the ostensible head of his family. It’s closest to Night Moves in Reichardt’s oeuvre, another film about crime and the punishment that comes in the aftermath, and by the stirring end of The Mastermind, along with his self-inflicted stupidity, it’s as if Mooney has directly pissed off a deity, so complete are the calamities of random happenstance and excruciating indignities that befall him. Of course, the Reichardt joint is slow, patient, and procedural, played in a minor key, following Mooney’s futile attempts to cover his tracks and talk his way out of suspicion, until the house of cards inevitably flops.
Reichardt does the impressive job of turning Mooney from a guy you’d like to fuck at the outset to a pathetic loser you’re anxious to get away from as the world slowly turns its back on him, one family member or friend at a time. O’Connor finds yet another register that what he’s shown before, here meek, slow-witted, grinning stupidly at his fate, defiant, but it’s also hard to put a finger on what exactly he’s rebelling against. He’s in nearly every frame displaying anti-charisma, and by the end, you want to grab him by his gorgeous brown corduroy coat and shake him until that gray woolen pageboy cap falls off, in hopes that he’ll stop taking his privilege and gorgeous wife and precious boys for granted, which is his true sin. It’s indicative of the unusual use of O’Connor here, and of an unusual heist film. Which is to say, The Mastermind is another Reichardt movie you didn’t expect, or know you wanted, until she showed it to you.
DIRECTOR: Kelly Reichardt; CAST: Josh O’Connor, Gaby Hoffman, John Magaro, Bill Camp, Hope Davis; DISTRIBUTOR: MUBI; IN THEATERS: October 17; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 50 min.
Originally published as part of NYFF 2025 — Dispatch 2.
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