Kelly Reichardt's new film, The Mastermind, arrives at a moment when art theft dominates headlines. Days after the Louvre heist, the director's droll and unconventional gallery-robbery drama, starring Josh O'Connor, feels especially timely.
The film is set in 1970 in Massachusetts and is vaguely inspired by a real-life incident. O'Connor plays JB Mooney, a deadbeat father in a flat cap and autumnal knitwear, who steals four abstract paintings from a small-town gallery. His two young sons accompany him on his various reconnaissance trips, a detail drawn from Reichardt's own childhood.
Reichardt, whose mother was an undercover narcotics agent, her father a crime scene detective, and her stepfather an FBI agent, described how her upbringing shaped the film. "A big part of my childhood in Miami involved waiting around in cars with my mom," she recalled. "What I tried to get across in the film was that feeling when you're not sure if what your parents are up to is kosher, and how confusing it is."
The director also noted that O'Connor's physicality influenced his casting. "Josh is a fantastic actor and an awesome human being and he also doesn't have a gym body," she said. "That's hard to find because men all want to be superheroes now." The film is less a heist thriller than a "coming-undone movie," with the robbery itself completed within the first half-hour and the rest chronicling the agonising aftermath.
Reichardt deliberately films scenes that other movies would cut, such as Mooney laboriously removing the stolen canvases from a wooden box, carrying them and the box up a ladder into a hayloft, and then reinserting them. The result is a painstakingly observed portrait of a plan unravelling, anchored by a standout performance from O'Connor.
