The Brooklyn Rail

Kelly Reichardt makes movies like Edward Hopper paintings set in motion. Her latest feature, The Mastermind, which premiered at the 63rd New York Film Festival and opens in theaters on October 17, is no exception. Although its plot might strike you as beyond the auteur’s typical fare, its style flourishes under Reichardt’s touch.

The titular mastermind, JB, is played by Josh O’Connor, whose type-cast now seems to be “bad art-napper.” You might remember him from Alice Rohrwacher’s 2023 La Chimera, and, like that role, O’Connor’s character is, once again, stealing art history. A father of two boys, JB is unemployed, sleeping on the couch, and can’t understand what his wife means by “don’t call” her at work unless it’s an emergency. JB has hatched a genius plan: he is going to employ a couple buddies to filch a few Arthur Dove paintings from his favorite local museum in Massachusetts. Later, we learn he was going to use an old art school professor as a fence for the masterpieces. The smug amateur larcenist spectacularly fails, and the bulk of the film is spent on the lam, while we are strung along by the suspense of wondering if he will get caught and if we are, in fact, rooting for our leading looter to endure the ultimate humiliation of police entrapment.

But is this surface level account of the events the film’s real plot? In The Mastermind, we exist in a world under the scrupulous observational scrutiny of Kelly Reichardt—so of course not! Like O’Connor’s Chimera archaeologist with a tomb or his Mastermind plunderer with the hole that is becoming his life, let’s dig in.

I’ll be honest—I spent the bulk of this movie on the edge of my seat, worried Reichardt would let me down, whispering, “Come on, Kelly, when’s the other shoe going to drop?” If you are familiar with Reichardt’s filmography, like her 2022 film Showing Up, you know it’s in character for her to hold onto that other shoe until the last moments of the story. But then that last scene hits her audience like a steel-toed boot with tap-shoe soles.

Let’s go back to the beginning of The Mastermind. Reichardt announces that what is happening in the background of the film is as important as the foreground (or maybe it’s more significant). This technique suits Reichardt, a director heavily influenced by the fine arts. In painting, it helps to develop the background with the foreground, and so The Mastermind unfolds like a work of art. The film opens on the museum. The foreground of the scene remains stagnant, while motion catches our attention in the background. The nature of museum design supports this approach. The series of galleries creates a literal mise-en-abyme, the openings between the rooms framing scenes within scenes. Even the name of the institution, Framingham, draws attention to the way the movie is shot and the story told. Right away, Reichardt teaches us how to watch her movie—keep an eye on what’s behind her characters. Carefully, as we try to discern where our attention should be, JB’s first, small robbery plays out while Rob Mazurek’s score does some heavy lifting to keep up the momentum during an intro paced like the unwrapping and slow savoring of the last piece of candy. It’s a funny premise: a director, known for taking her time, makes a heist movie, perhaps the most time-sensitive of all genres. As our pilferer exits the museum, having purloined a soldier figurine, he pauses at the door to bend down and tie his shoes as if he has no reason to hurry.

Replete with delightful characters and one-liners, this luxuriously autumnal tale stands out as another Reichardtian triumph. I have a soft spot for Odyssey-like epics, Americana, and the warm, fuzzy feel of ’70s filmography, and such vibes subfuse The Mastermind. The film’s beauty and brilliance shine through in its details. In the background stands a Buick Skylark billboard, the ad’s text cuts off poetically: “When you drive with our tires, the road takes you.” Civil Rights Movement posters and campus protest tales on the radio seem eerily reminiscent of Black Lives Matter and Justice for Palestine protests. I found myself hoping these carefully selected and placed background particulars were, like the composition of the opening scene suggests, doing more than adding atmosphere. The big, sweet eyes of JB’s son witness his father’s unraveling, and the film hinges on the high stakes of jeopardized masculinity. As I watched, wondering where the movie was going and awaiting the signature twist in the story, JB became less and less sympathetic, more and more exemplary of the greed and arrogance that fuels social strife—a cultural pillager in more ways than one. He occupies a strange place in society, neither its greatest threat nor its greatest victim—and this inbetweenness allows for depth and nuance.

Reichardt’s dry wit shines in lines like this description of a Canadian commune full of “draft dodgers, radical feminists, dope fiends—nice people.” Or: a couple walks in on JB’s fellow bandits taking paintings off the wall, and they walk away saying that they’re “cleaning” in that gallery. Reichardt achieves more than reenacting a historical setting; she crafts a visual narrative worthy of Joan Didion’s The White Album or Slouching Towards Bethlehem. I won’t spoil where the film takes you by its last minute—it’s too worth the satisfaction of getting there on your own. Like a Skylark motorist, let the road take you.

By the way, have you thought about how many words the English language has for “thief,” “thieve,” or “theft”? Throughout this article, I used some variation of them eight times, but those three words only appear once each.