‘The Mastermind’ review: Josh O’Connor isn’t the sharpest art thief

The Kelly Reichardt Theater is one of the most exquisite treasures in the indie world, a space for pioneers (“Mika's Cut” “First Cow”), artists (“Emergence”) and wanderers (“Old Joy”, “Wendy and Lucy”), which attract your attention, as they do in the emergency room, lingering tensely.

You can't think of a heist movie in such anthropological terms. Yet “Mastermind,” Reichardt's latest and one of her best works, is set in motion by a daytime art grab organized by Josh O'ConnorMiddle-Class Suburban Massachusetts is another carefully crafted film from Reichardt: honest, sad, funny and fundamentally philosophical about our interactions with the world. As you might expect, it's really about the aftermath of the crime, and our version of the heist is a deft and entertaining character study, rooted in an apathy that juxtaposes jarringly with the tumultuous year in which it all takes place: 1970.

By all accounts, the preppy and soft-spoken James Mooney (O'Connor), an unemployed carpenter, is not obvious crime material, no matter what composer Ray Mazurek's energetic jazz score might imply. James visits the local art museum, often with his unsuspecting wife Teri (Alana Haim), and two boys in tow. Otherwise, James is simply an absent-minded father, a trusted husband, and a disappointing son, living off the status and generosity of his parents, a respected judge (Bill Camp) and a socialite mother (Hope Davis).

However, judging solely by the error-prone heist (it's been a long time since pantyhose masks seemed this ridiculous), stealing isn't this spoiled man's forte either. (You didn't think that title was respectful, did you?) When he later hides the stolen paintings in the farmhouse's hayloft and accidentally knocks the ladder out from under him, the moment is funny and appropriately metaphorical.

Reichardt exposes the half-bad criminality of a privileged man, especially since O'Connor is so hypnotic at conveying self-absorbed ignorance with her sad eyes, posture and movements. When the film then hits the road to escape, the early autumn colors of Christopher Blauvelt's cinematography shift to gray tones and darker interiors, and James's atmosphere becomes less rebellious, eluding capture – even if he's visiting a buddy (Jones Mahal) expresses admiration for the aloof loser who leaves behind a mess, an assessment coming from Gaby Hoffmann as Magaro's wife. The bebop groove also leaves James, leading into sharp drum solos.

The final contextual humiliation is the details of the period itself: Nixon posters, anti-war posters, television footage of Vietnam, a protest march. Unconstrained but ever-present in Reichardt's mise-en-scène, they remind us that the misadventures of this bored aesthete are a particularly hollow way of resisting conformity. When good problems attract us, why choose bad ones?

In this brilliant, charming Reichardt gem about luck and fate, one can even find a “what if” question associated with its disaffected male protagonist: would today's version of James, equally adrift and arrogant, steal art to appease his emptiness? Or, thanks to the Internet, achieve something much worse? “Mastermind” perhaps sounds ironic in the context of heists. But it also hints that the evil of male behavior is yet to come.