The Mas­ter­mind – first-look review

It’s dif­fi­cult to say what tru­ly moti­vates James Blaine Mooney (Josh O’Connor) to blow up his own life. Frus­tra­tion, per­haps, with an unin­spired sub­ur­ban exis­tance with his wife Ter­ri (Alana Haim) and their two ram­bunc­tious sons Tom­my and Carl (Jasper and Ster­ling Thomp­son). A juve­nile desire to embar­rass his father, a coun­ty judge, in front of their com­mu­ni­ty? Per­haps it’s sheer, pig-head­ed hubris – he’s an art school drop out rely­ing on hand-outs from his par­ents which he claims are to fund his bespoke fur­ni­ture-mak­ing busi­ness, while schem­ing to steal four Arthur Dove paint­ings from the small but well-appoint­ed Fram­ing­ham Art Muse­um he takes his fam­i­ly to vis­it on the reg­u­lar. He recruits some acquain­tances into the scheme (whom will prove his even­tu­al undo­ing) but the theft is entire­ly JB’s brain­child. Besides the obvi­ous ben­e­fit of finan­cial gain, it’s such a deeply unwise thing to do, Kel­ly Reichardt’s Viet­nam era heist dra­ma is imme­di­ate­ly engag­ing in its opaqueness.

The crime itself is a com­e­dy of inep­ti­tude, but once it’s over JB – with his stag­ger­ing hubris – fan­cies him­self home free. When the heat inevitably close in, JB ditch­es his fam­i­ly, hitch­ing rides across the Mid­west in search of a way out of the hole of his own mak­ing, seek­ing out old friends he can bum accom­mo­da­tion or mon­ey off for a night or two. Mooney, an aged-out hip­pie with a with­er­ing stare and effort­less tal­ent for decep­tion, seems to feel no remorse or regret, and in the phone calls he makes to his wife and kids, his plat­i­tudes are half-heart­ed at best. For O’Connor, it’s a turn that resem­bles his sub­lime per­for­mance as tomb-raider Arthur in La Chimera, but there was always some­thing half-heart­ed about the melan­choly archi­tec­ture expert’s life of crime – JB is a dif­fer­ent ani­mal, unmoved by moral­i­ty. With his Dylan-esque get­up, he’s a reg­u­lar rolling stone, emblem­at­ic of the Nixon era of indi­vid­u­al­ism ush­ered in by the turn of the decade.

As JB scram­bles like a rat in a paper bag, the anti-war move­ment plays out in the back­ground, with pro­tes­tors clash­ing against law enforce­ment, while dis­patch­es crack­le through the radio sta­t­ic and appear in black and white news­reels. The brash iso­la­tion­ism of Mooney stands apart from her usu­al rugged­ly soli­tary char­ac­ters; this is a man who had a com­fort­able mid­dle class hand­ed to him on a plate and decides to tor­pe­do it for a curi­ous­ly low-stakes art theft that seems to have more sen­ti­men­tal val­ue than mon­e­tary. There are shades of Elliot Gould and Gene Hack­man in O’Connor here, a chameleon as much as a chimera, while Alana Haim’s small but cru­cial sup­port­ing per­for­mance as his had-enough-of-this-shit wife is fur­ther proof of her cap­ti­vat­ing on-screen presence.

Although the premise evokes the gold­en age of The Coen Broth­ers and their mon­ey-hun­gry n’er-do-wells, The Mas­ter­mind is a tragi­com­e­dy as only Reichardt can fash­ion, shot by Christo­pher Blau­velt (her reg­u­lar DoP since Cer­tain Women) draw­ing inspi­ra­tion from the era-defin­ing work of William Eggle­ston and Rob­by Müller to cre­ate images that feel lived-in – warm but dis­tant snap­shots of an Amer­i­ca on the cusp of per­ma­nent frac­ture. This is Reichardt in Night Moves mode, but with a lit­tle more of the comedic ener­gy (cul­mi­nat­ing in a lilt­ing sad­ness) found in First Cow. It’s a film that under­stands there’s noth­ing to be gained from mak­ing one­self an island, but remains sto­ic and unsen­ti­men­tal in its vision of the past. By the time the film’s crush­ing, riotous ham­mer-blow end­ing comes, we’re left with more ques­tions than answers about what JB’s gam­bit was all for. Greed? Well, isn’t that just anoth­er word for the Amer­i­can Dream?

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