One of the joys of film reviewing is witnessing a longtime director's creative breakthrough, as Kelly Reichardt did. A serious director with a principled outlook, she used to eschew style and flair as if they were a sin, narrowing her aesthetic to the points of view she expressed in each film. Nose “Appearance“, starting in 2022, she has for the first time demonstrated unbridled cinematic pleasure, an unabashed delight in inventive observation and gratuitous beauty. This may not be a coincidence, given that the film is about two artists – one working small and refined, the other working big and colorful – and it pays tribute to both. Now with the new film Mastermind, Reichardt is coming radically further in many dimensions – dramatic, aesthetic, geographical, historical, ethical. This is one of the freest reinterpretations of the genre, and even one of the most distinctive distortions of cinematic storytelling, that I have ever seen. Moreover, its subject is gratuitous.
“Mastermind” is another story from the world of art. The story takes place in 1970, mostly in Framingham, Massachusetts, where James Blaine Mooney (Josh O'Connor), nicknamed JB, is a cabinetmaker who is out of work and whose high sense of his own craft may be the reason for this. He lives with his wife Terry (Alana Haim), the family breadwinner, who works at a typewriter in the office, and their two peculiar sons, who appear to be ten years old, Tommy (Jasper Thompson) and Carl (Sterling Thompson). One day, when the family visits the (fictional) Framingham Art Museum, JB finds work for his idle hands. Finding the guard sleeping, he opens the display case and steals the figurine, removing it into a glasses case and placing it in Terry's purse.
Then, with time to kill and energy to burn, JB recruits several friends—the disheveled and laid-back Guy (Eli Gelb), the tense and abrasive Larry (Cole Doman) and the impulsive Ronnie (Javion Allen)—to steal paintings from the museum. Before the thieves even set foot in the building, “Mastermind” becomes an instant heist classic. Reichardt's detailed look at a plot clearly destined for disaster is both terribly sad and absurdly funny. Terry sews large fabric bags to fit the paintings, and JB shows off his woodworking skills by creating a partitioned box to store the loot. Larry steals a car to get away; Guy parks another one to elude his pursuers; JB peers behind a painting to see how it hangs and, to instruct his team on which paintings to rip out, draws pictures of them that betray a skill that is unfortunately overused. Reichardt's fanatical attention to detail in the art theft conveys genuine admiration, tinged with a sense of foreboding hidden in JB's attempts to anticipate what could go wrong.
Good luck with that. Reichardt also enjoys antics when things go awry: a locked car door can't be opened; a beret-wearing schoolgirl (Margot Anderson-Song) shows up at a museum during a robbery and recites a classic play in French; parking becomes a banal nightmare of obstacles and surveillance; Eventually the thieves even face a threat from a so-called rival faction. As the careful preparation of the heist gives way to chaotic improvisation, Reichardt's awareness of the radical contingency of concerted action (an idea that is inherently political at its core) far exceeds Paul Thomas Anderson's attention to the plans and risks of a revolutionary cell in One Battle After Another.
The action scenes of the film are built on a unique and original social foundation. As the son of a prominent local family, JB disappoints his father Bill (Bill Camp) and bewilders (though adores) his mother Sarah (Hope Davis). Their status gives him significant advantages, which play a surprisingly large role in this story. And here Reichardt carefully weaves a web of connections and causation that produces a range of results—some well-planned, others wickedly ironic—that I would not dare reveal.
Mastermind has so many plot surprises that I'm unusually wary of spoilers when discussing it. He delights in being caught off guard by both big twists and small details whose startling originality deserves discussion, but which viewers should be allowed to discover unprepared. The heist unfolds in three acts—planning, execution, and evasion—and in Mastermind, each of the three is strikingly unique in mood and manner, and the results are surprising in both practical and emotional terms. The most responsible way to convey joy is to share some details, but skip over their place in the plot and go straight to the powerful conceit that connects them. One of Reichardt's greatest sources of inspiration is to frame the political conflict surrounding the Vietnam War and its manifestations in American society—news reports, marches and protests, voices of reaction, police repression—and integrate them into history as inevitable elements of everyday life.
