The Mastermind, celebrating its New York premiere at the 63rd New York Film Festival, had all the makings of excellence purely upon its announcement. A 70s-set heist film starring Josh O’Connor? The autumnal Northeast American landscape serves as its backdrop? That’s what the movies are all about. Should the film solely have delivered the promise of its logline and nothing more, cinephiles would have been able to consider themselves sufficiently fed. But lucky for us, Kelly Reichardt had much more in store beyond the enticing hook of her latest film. It’s what comes beyond the initial heist of The Mastermind that turns this initial thrill into one of the great American films of the year.
It feels like most heist films nowadays are interested in the largest of stakes. Massive bank robberies, expansive criminal enterprises, and long cons. The idea would seem to be that with so much on the line, the emotional stakes would also be heightened by. While that may be true in some instances, it’s here where Reichardt displays the first of many pivots away from such goals and audience expectations. Much like the jazzy score that plays periodically throughout the film, we get the sense that anything is liable to happen. And that’s proven fairly quickly. The smash cut from credits to a warm image of O’Connor practically spiking the lens with his introspective gaze charms anybody returning the look. It’s only upon seeing what he’s actually up to that Reichardt welcomes us into her new film with a palpable sense of excitement and unpredictability. Yes, it’s a film which is interested in crime. But to merely call this a crime film is such a disservice to its ultimate goals.
With The Mastermind, Reichardt finds herself focused on a situation that’s as quiet and low stakes as it could get. But that’s only apparent at face value. In reality, though the monetary stakes might be somewhat low, the emotional stakes mean everything. For at its core, this film is a tale of a man who feels lost amongst the domicile of his caring family and within the streets of a country in turmoil and at odds with itself. JB (O’Connor) is a father in a quiet Massachusetts town, where not much seems to be of note aside from its natural beauty and the local art museum. As he walks through the gallery looking upon the varied artwork with affection, Terri (Alana Haim) walks with two children comically disturbing the peaceful ambience commonly found in such environments. That doesn’t seem to affect JB’s cool demeanor, as he effortlessly pockets a small figurine from one of the displays. We come to realize that they all arrived together as a family. That’s not a front as we may have initially expected. They all head to a family dinner with nobody any the wiser. Despite his devilish charm and questionable morals in Challengers, seeing O’Connor so easily commit a crime comes as a bit of a shock. It’s not something we might have come to expect from the actor. Reichardt seems acutely aware of this, and utilizes the audience’s perception of O’Connor to maximum effect throughout the film.
The longer The Mastermind plays out, the more JB becomes an enigma to the viewer. His shifting identity over the course of the film is part of what makes this such a deeply compelling watch. JB seems smart enough, but O’Connor also plays him with a very lackadaisical quality. Reichardt drops several crumbs throughout the film for the viewer to build a more rich portrait of her central protagonist. It’s one of the many reasons this film feels so full-bodied. You instantly feel at home in the world of The Mastermind. It welcomes you in with images that are full of gorgeous period recreation, and introduces a bevy of characters that all feel like they’ve lived complete lives before the film began, and will continue to do so long after the credits roll. JB is off-handedly revealed to be an art school drop out. He’s been unemployed for enough time that the nagging of his parents has become just another regular occurrence at dinner. More than anything, O’Connor plays JB as a man who is deeply bored and fed up with his immediate situation. The only issue is that he’s in no rush to get a job, nor does he seem to have any immediate (legitimate) prospects to look forward to. Instead, he simply turns his boyish charm on when necessary to ask his wealthy (and connected) parents for a loan. It’s a delicate balance that proves again why O’Connor is one of the most in-demand actors currently working. In the thrilling first act of The Mastermind, Reichardt forces us to reckon with whether or not we believe JB to indeed be a criminal mastermind. But as we come to see over the next two acts, he’s as lost as anybody else.
Beyond the smooth veil of criminality JB hoped to hide behind, all his behavior turns out to be for nothing. The plan, which seemed simple enough and more than possible to pull off, is revealed to be anything but glamorous. Reichardt completely strips this film of sensationalized crime. There’s several mistakes throughout the heist. The grunt work is shown to be annoying and cumbersome. And this ultimately results in a slowly-drawn portrait of a man desperately trying to put his life back together while the country around him is preoccupied with societal upheaval. For a time period that’s so heavily aestheticized nowadays, Reichardt repeatedly highlights some of the uglier truths of the early 70s occurring alongside her character study. It’s all part of her larger thesis which works wonders. Reichardt’s lens gently captures the aftermath of JB’s crime in such a way that reveals a painful truth about certain paths taken in life. There’s a drifting nature to the back half of this film that’s almost haunted. Once the crime element dissipates, we’re left with a hollow core at the center of the film. This meandering nature is by design. Despite all the beautiful scenery, JB floats through it operating under the belief that the world around him has far more pressing issues to deal with. But it’s just that thought process that Reichardt flips around to deliver what’s bound to be one of the best endings of the year. Just because there’s more pressing matters which require attention doesn’t mean there won’t be consequences doled out for lesser actions. Instead, there will be a whole new slew of unintended consequences. In focusing on the big picture, the forces that be will simply swallow up anybody they can in one fell swoop. Individual stories may matter on such an essential level to the people at the center of them, but in the grand scheme of things, The Mastermind reveals some to be seen as nothing more than possibilities that may have wasted their chance. How we perceive JB by the end of this film is ultimately the big punchline of Reichardt’s delightfully well-made, and affectingly sad, cosmic joke.
The Mastermind is celebrating its New York premiere at the 63rd New York Film Festival as part of the Main Slate section.