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A Pleasing Throwback with an Artless Mastermind

The Mastermind is as pure a throwback movie as they come. From the opening scene of a man scouting out an art museum while discreetly robbing one of the diorama exhibits set to tense and rising jazz band music, the movie demonstrates its evocations with precision, and a strong helping of charm. Director Kelly Reichardt is clearly enamoured with crime thrillers of the 1960s and 70s, particularly French films like Le Samouri and Pickpocket, but also in some aspects of atmosphere American films by folks like Sydney Pollack and Alan J. Pakula. The movie is set in 1970s Massachusetts and certainly feels of a piece with that era in choices Reichardt makes to emphasize it. But it is not just the stylistic calling cards that keep this movie compelling -it is also the manner of its protagonist and his actions.
His name is J.B. Mooney, played by Josh O'Connor, a young unemployed family patriarch and a former art graduate, who uses borrowed money from his parents -not to find or establish work- but to arrange an elaborate theft of a pair of Arthur Dove paintings from a local art museum. The heist goes off relatively well, but a few hiccups soon balloon into J.B. finding himself implicated and subsequently on the run from multiple forces.
Reichardt also draws influence from some real cases of art theft, specifically a 1972 heist of some major pieces from the Worcester Art Museum. Just as in that case, the cultural milieu of early 70s America looms large in this film -attention to the Vietnam War most strongly. It is there in the news on the radio, in snippets of conversation J.B. is both a part of and overhears (one of his accomplices is a veteran) and a major consequential set-piece late in the film involves anti-war protesters and police violence against them. J.B. himself appears ambivalent on the matter, though his general disaffection mirrors that of many in that era who might take to the streets. The constant presence of the ephemera of Vietnam though serves to contrast J.B. within his time, his singular focus and priorities out of step with the reality of the world he lives within.
It is a compulsion with him as we come to find. J.B. is not a desperate man doing this in order to get by. He is quite privileged in spite of his situation -he lives in the suburbs and has several people in his life he can rely on to support him, including his father (Bill Camp), who is a prestigious judge. Initially, he even dares to display one of the paintings in his home -he does not take his actions or their potential consequences seriously, and even the claim he is doing it for the sake of his family comes off as highly disingenuous and glib. His is a rather aimless motivation that feels driven out of some nebulous need to rebel, in an individualistic sense -hence why the anti-Vietnam movement wouldn’t appeal to him. And there is an undercurrent there too of insecure masculinity -his father holds a position of authority but he does not, and he must compensate for it with action and illicit profit. It indeed rings pretty strongly of those antiheroes of Robert Bresson and Jean-Pierre Melville (and Reichardt visually quotes both at times throughout the movie). Reichardt’s distinct feminine perspective though separates him a touch from them. Unlike with those types of characters, there is no sense of idealism to J.B., no aesthetic coolness or empathetic trait to his isolation; he clearly chooses not to channel his energies in a way that might invite those feelings. He is a loser and Reichardt is clear about that. But he is an interesting loser certainly.
O’Connor gives a terrific performance in this, one that conveys a lot of these sides to J.B. through that quiet subtlety that is one of Reichardt’s trademarks. He tries to keep down his real feelings, even after the proof of his crime comes out, attempts to mimic a casual naturalism through episodes like his brief stay with a couple old school friends, played by John Magaro and Gabby Hoffmann. And he demonstrates aptly how impotent J.B. is at all he aims to represent himself as -he can’t even posture very well, he’s an amateur. It’s an intensely considered performance, one that reveals a lot without necessarily peeling back any layers. There’s also some good sheepish comedy O’Connor plays into, as each step of his plan if offset by the ill-thought choices of either himself or those he works with. He is named the operation’s mastermind by one of his co-conspirators the moment he is caught in another crime because J.B. didn’t bother to vet his accomplices. His friend offers an escape to Canada and a relative’s safe space in Toronto, while J.B. chooses to go to Cleveland instead, not bothering to learn that his friends there have long since left. He wears all of these setbacks with grim resignation, and doesn’t even appear to take too seriously the danger he accidentally puts his child in when going to meet with his other partner.
There is more palpable momentum to the narrative here than is usually found in Reichardts’ movies, which tend to be more understated and meditative. But she marries the drama of this story to her usual style pretty well. It is all still poetically naturalistic, subtle and focused -and rather naturally it evokes classics of the genre as a result, Reichardt already fitting a certain mould, if not to the specificity of genre until now. Even with the very limited scope and budget, there is tension there on par with any film of its ilk from the much more resourceful Hollywood of the 1970s. Her camera moves with the action but not distractingly so -parts of the movie feel quite cinema verité; and of course the atmosphere is strengthened by an old-fashioned jazz score from Rob Mazurek, dropping in here and there to give the film an extra dose of gravitas.
J.B.’s doom is inevitable from early in the film and the last few minutes take him to low points he probably never assumed he would reach. And it is incredibly curious and potent what ultimately happens to him given his relationship to the movements of his time -an echo perhaps, though not identical, to the ending of Hair. The Mastermind is a very different kind of story for Reichardt, but she executes it in her own way that is both wonderfully nostalgic for an era and style while also presenting a character and making a statement that is pertinent now. And as is her way, with sparingly few words.

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