The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt, 2025)

[diamonds]

Kelly Reichardt will return with another heist film: The Mastermind, set to star Josh O'Connor

The film centers on an audacious art heist amidst the backdrop of the Vietnam War.

[senseabove]

Teaser for Reichardt's The Mastermind

[brundlefly]

Trailer for The Mastermind.

[Walter Kurtz]

That trailer makes it look as if they shot the film in a fog - a fog that inhabits even the inside of homes - with Vaseline smeared on the camera lens and then printed it on an old VHS tape.

[therewillbeblus]

I wasn't sure if I was going to like The Mastermind until its cumulative effect swarmed me somewhere in the middle, and the humorous, breezy tone -anchored by Josh O'Connor's beautifully understated performance- turned into something more pronounced with incense, without sacrificing its methodical pacing (or funny bone - there are laughs late in the film, but they go down with a choke). The juxtapositions between his pathetic evader and people who are putting work into what they are doing (primarily women, from his wife to passing shots of mothers with children, but also protestors and soldiers on TV - both sides actual 'doers') become more jarring, like a noose tightening on the film's key theme. What Reichardt communicates most effectively here is delivering a picture portrait of the mundane version of the selfishness that white male privilege affords (in stark contrast to One Battle After Another, of which this would make a great double feature - opposing styles converging around a core idea); mainly, the part in people that doesn't want to work hard, participate in family, take responsibility. A part that wants to put the least amount of effort in to get the biggest reward, because that might make them feel special, unique, alive, while the responsible ones take care of what they have to. There's not a shred of sympathy for J.B. due to the way the film drops us right in on his thin personality full of defective characteristics and a lack of engagement or empathy with anyone around him. It's a film about the American Dream of a certain subset of privileged people, and how that individualism infects one's world like a disease. I appreciated the slight meditation on how race plays a role when the one fleshed-out character of color plays with the system while the white protagonist moves to dodge. I think Reichardt is making a larger point about this part in people: That it's valid as a thought and feeling but not as an action. I'm sure Alana Haim would like to do the same thing in her own way.

It's also brilliant how the film ends

Spoiler

with one of the more powerful and despising privileged institutions dominated by white males locking up one of their own - they're the only ones with the power to do it!

[hearthesilence]

I liked The Mastermind a lot. I wish I caught the Q&A's because I've only seen brief clips on social media that show only her discussion of a real life attempt at a botched art robbery that inspired this film, but it plays out like her version of a heist film if she was left to her own devices without knowing anything about the genre conventions. It truly is an anti-heist film where the old clichés are avoided, and not in a way that seems forced or calculated - it plays as if this is simply how she views the idea of a heist, which means it has none of the mythical aspects that have been bestowed on to organized criminals, just the opposite. Even better is how she places everything within the context of global politics, something that initially appears in the background and eventually envelopes everyone. It's both funny and chilling how the film ends - funny as a twist of fate, but chilling (and astute) in terms of the implications, how no one escapes what's happening in the world even if they're only thinking of themselves with little care of anyone else.

[goblinfootballs]

Loved the film, agree with the above assessments. I did get to attend a Q&A, and she was fantastic, even in the wake of some of the worst "questions" I have ever heard at a Q&A. One questioner started to discuss what they saw as the lack of people working in the film, Reichardt pushed back with examples of people with jobs, and the questioner proceeded to argue with her while the audience became audibly annoyed. After the questioner finally stopped talking, she simply said "I'll have to think about that" and moved on to the next person.

[Mr.DarjeelingLimited]

I’m normally a big fan of Reichardt’s films and style but The Mastermind to me felt like a poor spoof of it. It’s slow and not for an artistic reason like Wendy and Lucy and Old Joy (her masterpieces), it’s just slow. Shame because the first twenty minutes were really good.

[brundlefly]

Can I ask what your reaction was to Showing Up? Because I thought the pacing here, while, methodical, was very on point and very conducive to Reichardt's sense of humor. Which of course involves patience. Wendy and Lucy is one of my favorite films, full stop, and I thought this worked as fine counterpoint to that -- being shrugged off by the world v. selfishly shrugging it off -- brought home by their comparative phone calls for assistance. (As twbb says, it also plays nicely with One Battle in a lot of ways -- even the different ways the scores clatter offer a fine comparison. But I think it's consciously made as a movie one could curate against a lot of others, your choice of sad ‘70s heist films (and Ruizpalacios’ '80s-set Museo works as obvious comparison) or isolated antiheroes.)

The Mastermind has more resources and formal control than W&L, and I found myself luxuriating in its ridiculously exact period detail (that palette is quicksand) and the subtleties of O'Connor's performance as that goes from scruff to sandpaper. If her pacing doesn't naturally fit a heist film or a man on the run film, she finds places in the time period where her tempo fits. I don't know if it helps the pacing that it's a movie that can have you mentally spin backward from its final moments, but I was never bored and carried it out of the theater with me.