Needless to say, the title is ironic. The abject non-lead character in Kelly Reichardt's captivating and depressing heist film, set in 1970s Massachusetts, is weak, vain, and completely clueless. In the end, he becomes a strange Updikean figure, albeit one without self-awareness: he runs away without money or a change of clothes to escape the grotesque mess he has created for himself and his family.
This is James, played with almost apathetic charm by Josh O'Connor; he's an art school dropout and aspiring architectural designer with two young children, married to Terri (one minor complaint is that the excellent Alana Haim doesn't have much to do). James relies on the social standing of his father Bill, a judge, played formidably by Bill Camp, and borrows large sums from his patrician mother Sarah (Hope Davis), ostensibly to fund a new project.
Director: Kelly Reichardt
Writer: Kelly Reichardt
Stars: Josh O'Connor, Sterling Thompson, Alana Haim
But James has something else in mind for money. Having established lax security measures at a local art gallery, he plans to pay two thugs and a driver to steal four paintings by American artist Arthur Dove and hide them in a nearby farmhouse. But then, as one of his thieves sadly asks, "How are they going to fence them?" James's answer turns out to be the most pathetic of all.
Obviously, one wouldn't expect Kelly Reichardt's quietist, realistic cinematic art to offer us something like Ocean's Eleven or Reservoir Dogs. But the ostentatiously simple reality itself makes the extraordinary events real and surprising, filmed, as always with Reichardt, with an earthy color palette under cold, clear daylight, in her bland, accent-free style. We're talking about a robbery with guns pointed at innocent bystanders and battered security guards, with no dramatic music on the soundtrack (just as it would be in real life). Reichardt has precisely pinpointed the heist's lack of glamour.
It could be compared to realistic art heist images like Alonso Ruizpalacios's "Museum" or Bart Layton's "American Animals," both from 2018, but this one is absolutely distinctive and, yes, thrilling. So is the eerie sense of everyday life captured in every detail of the chaotic and protracted aftermath, which, in fact, constitutes the very essence of the film: James demonstrates his inability to anticipate the reliability of the thugs and the likelihood that the local mafia will frown upon bold, flashy, and—who knows?—lucrative robberies in their territory.
James visits his acquaintances, wary and horrified, and these scenes show us the terrible truth about his dreams and ambitions, abysmally insubstantial: he periodically calls from payphones, asking the children to "pay Mommy," evading justice, committing despicable thefts (much less exciting than art theft), and finally receiving brutal poetic justice amid the injustice of Nixon's America. As for O'Connor, his art thief character is eerily similar to the one he played in Alice Rohrwacher's 2023 film The Chimera, a former archaeologist turned antiquities thief, although there he was physically stronger and more knowledgeable about art theft.
Kelly Reichardt's last film, coincidentally, was also about art: Showing Up, with Michelle Williams as a stressed-out artist whose everyday existence (the banality of "showing up") is shown to be more real than the supposedly burning artistic inspiration. There, the everyday details were as relevant as the art; In The Mastermind, the depressing details of the post-heist calamity are as pertinent as the main event. This is what draws Reichardt's observant eye in and makes The Mastermind so captivating.
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