Kelly Reichardt, who has built a reputation as a singular voice in American Indie cinema, garnered devout followers and admirers with her minimalist films over the years. But she stumbles here with the art heist period piece, The Mastermind. One can say that Reichardt's films are always small and narratively open and unresolved - that the beauty of her films is not in satisfying storytelling, but the loneliness she depicts within her often outsider protagonists. And that assessment rings true. But James, our protagonist in The Mastermind, played by Josh O'Connor, is a thoroughly downbeat, unpleasant character to identify with.
It starts with James Mooney (O'Connor) scoping a museum for a score, with his family in tow - his wife Terri (Alana Haim) and two doting young sons, Carl and Tommy (adorably played by real-life siblings Sterling and Jasper Thompson) in a small town, Massachusetts. The year is 1970 and the shadow of the Vietnam War is on TV and the streets every day. It is revealed that James is an art school dropout ne'er-do-gooder in the eyes of his father (Bill Camp), a local judge, who has strong opinions about law and order. James lies about the imminent commission job, so he can borrow money from his sympathetic mother (Hope Davis) behind his father's back.
The art heist, which happens pretty briskly in the first one third of the film, doesn't go well: his last minute assembled crew screws up and ends up on the front page of a local newspaper and on TV. Hiding the fact that he was the mastermind behind the bungled heist from his family and the paintings he stole ending up in the hands of threatening local criminals, James has no choice but to go on the run. And the film becomes a road movie.
James's first stop is a farmstead of old college buddies Fred (John Magaro) and Maude (Gaby Hoffmann). It is revealed that the paintings James stole belong to one of the professors in their art college days. That the burglary was partly out of old-time resentment (over success?) that James chose those particular abstract paintings to steal. Fred is amused that his one-time classmate made a front page of the news and on the run. Maude, a clear eyed realist who doesn't want more trouble in their stable yet poverty stricken life, sternly tells James to leave.
James now takes off to Cleveland, to mooch off of another old friend. But he finds out that they are not home. With money running out and nowhere else to go, he calls Terri, who promptly hangs up on him. With anti-war protests on the street, and cops swarming to control them, James needs to figure his way out.
Reichardt sketches out James's character in subtle ways, giving us only the slight glimpse of a man whose resentments against the success of others and authority figures run deep. Like her Oregon Trail film First Cow, which showed how capitalism was ingrained in the prospecting days of American history, The Mastermind deals with an apathetic character getting swept up in the anti-war movement in the 60s and 70s. But even in her depiction of a prospecting, proto-capitalist in the west in First Cow, there was a small warmth and humanity in the friendship forged between Cookie and King Hu. Instead, James is a person who would steal an old lady's purse during anti-war protests to get by.
I don't fault Reichardt for trying something different. But if her previous genre exercise was any indication - the eco-thriller Night Moves, the only film in her spotless filmography that I didn't care for, she has a real problem handling depicting on-screen violence. I understand her philosophy of refusing to show it and I respect it. But depictions of violence in genre films are wholly necessary, and avoiding it in unambiguous ways comes across as super awkward and unnatural.
I understand why hotshot actors like Josh O'Connor want to work with Reichardt. Her unique small films and her gentle way of depicting loneliness and isolation are truly remarkable. But when the scale of her project gets bigger and more complicated - like her take on a genre film, this time a heist movie in a period setting, the result is less emotionally engaging. The Thompson brothers give the film its laughs and humanity needed. Haim looks the part as a 70s wife/mom, but is wasted in her one note character.
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