The director Kelly Reichardt encourages stillness. Her model—lengthy takes and low stakes, usually punctuated by unhurried silences—forces viewers to decelerate, to immerse themselves within the ambiance being created on-screen. Her films can resemble panorama work, like these by the artist Arthur Dove. His work is featured in The Mastermind, her newest movie, which mirrors the tableaus its protagonist covets: textured, summary research of actuality that reveal their true efficiency over time.
James Blaine—or “J. B.”—Mooney (performed by Josh O’Connor) isn’t the affected person sort, nonetheless. He’s an unemployed carpenter who’s grown stressed amid his suburban comforts. Set in 1970 in Massachusetts, the movie follows J. B. as he hatches a plan to steal 4 of Dove’s work from the (fictional) Framingham Museum of Artwork. His plot would make the likes of Danny Ocean cringe: It includes having two amateurs rob the exhibit in broad daylight with none plan to avoid the safety guards. The pair is then to ship the products to an undisguised J. B. idling in a automobile outdoors the entrance entrance.
In contrast to the profitable smash-and-grab on the Louvre final weekend, J. B.’s scheme goes awry instantly. However the theft isn’t the first focus anyway. The Mastermind—an ironic reference to J. B.—mines drama from its methodical deconstruction of the housebreaking’s aftermath. J. B. clumsily goes on the lam, leaving a path of harm emotions and damaged relationships in his wake. That distinction, between how meticulously Reichardt builds her story and the way in which her protagonist pinballs via his, yields a remarkably exact exploration of hubris as a self-destructive pressure. The Mastermind isn’t a heist film a lot as a personality examine that dismantles the prison himself, one egocentric act at a time.
The movie can be probably Reichardt’s funniest so far. The small scale of the central heist permits the director to prioritize observing how J. B.’s troubles are attributable to unusual, simply averted obstacles. J. B. rushes via vetting his prison collaborators, as a result of he’s forgotten that he has to take care of his sons, who don’t have faculty that day. A cop occurs to tug into the museum’s parking zone, making J. B. panic, however J. B. didn’t have to attend in such a conspicuous spot. (Much more amusing: The officer isn’t preserving a watch out for would-be thieves in any respect; he’s simply taking a break to eat a sandwich.) One sequence exhibits J. B. hiding the work contained in the loft of a barn, solely to get lined in mud after the ladder he’s utilizing falls to the bottom, leaving him stranded.
But J. B. just isn’t fully hapless both. The Mastermind makes clear that the comfortable, middle-class life he leads is populated by equally self-absorbed personalities. J. B.’s spouse, Terri (Alana Haim), is so disinterested in J. B. that she will’t be bothered to see what he’s as much as within the basement. His mom fastidiously compares the lengths of two halves of corn at a household dinner, preserving the longer one for herself whereas she tunes out the dialog. Buoyed by the composer Rob Mazurek’s jazzy rating, the movie produces a wealthy portrait of Seventies suburbia and the jadedness such an setting might breed: Reichardt and her go-to cinematographer, Christopher Blauvelt, immerse J. B.’s city in a heat, autumnal glow, however his house is a dimly lit collection of cramped areas, filled with pale upholstery, rumpled laundry, and board video games performed on the ground. It’s no surprise J. B. can’t take his eyes off of Dove’s work, so putting of their designs and vivid of their hues. With apologies to Ariana Grande, his subsequent urge to steal them comes with a heavy whiff of inconsiderate, “7 Rings”-esque materialism: He noticed it. He preferred it. He needed it. He obtained it. He’s an inelegant protagonist, seemingly incapable of contemplating what occurs subsequent, as a result of he’s by no means had to take action.
O’Connor isn’t any stranger to enjoying an artwork thief, and his understated efficiency finds compelling shades of a person who commits such an clearly boneheaded act and not using a clear motive. As clues to J. B.’s mentality emerge, O’Connor imbues the character with a hangdog charisma that deepens every revelation. J. B.’s household, as an example, seems to be rich sufficient to assist him; when cops cease by his residence, he sheepishly name-drops his father, the native choose, to defend himself. Even when he goes on the run, J. B. strikes via the world as if all the things will prove superb for him. He appears genuinely shocked when he’s advised he can’t stick with two art-school associates of his for greater than an evening.
What J. B. has aced is clearly not the artwork of persuasion or thievery. His actual specialty, The Mastermind suggests, is his capability to tune out all the things however his personal desires and desires. Reichardt blankets the world round J. B. with period-specific particulars: She lets the viewers discover the Military-recruitment poster affixed to the wall behind J. B. at a bus station, the radio studies concerning the Vietnam Conflict that play within the background whereas J. B. concentrates on assembling a false passport for himself, and the protests within the streets of Cincinnati that J. B. casually wanders into. Photographs of flimsy objects pepper the movie too, conjuring a way of inevitability to J. B.’s comeuppance. Reichardt lingers on the paper airplane that one among J. B.’s sons grips whereas operating via the museum, in addition to a girl dashing via the streets amid a downpour with solely a newspaper to protect her. The life J. B. has led, as mundane as it’s, has by no means been sturdy both. By taking it as a right, J. B., who doesn’t really steal very a lot from the museum, robs probably the most from himself.