52 Films by Women Vol 9. 34. The Mastermind (Director: Kelly Reichardt)
Reichardt’s protagonist, art graduate J.B. (James) Mooney (Josh O’Connor)
is a closed book with no career who is supported by his wife (Alana Haim) and
has two boisterous sons (Sterling Thompson, Jasper Thompson) who share his
messy head of hair. We are introduced to him on a family trip to the Framingham
Museum of Art - his father Judge Mooney (Bill Camp) is a member-patron -
wearing an ‘F’ button, which might just as easily stand for failure. J.B.
treats canvases as oranges ready to be plucked. He notes the indifference of a
sleeping security guard, the quiet of certain rooms. He agrees to pay three
other men to help him steal four canvases by the early American modernist,
Arthur Dove (1880-1946). Predictably, things don’t go to plan.
Pictured: 'The kids' school being closed is not an emergency.' Terri Mooney (Alana Haim) in a scene from the 1970-set American crime drama, 'The Mastermind', written and directed by Kelly Reichardt. Still courtesy of Mubi.
On one level, the film is about a loser whose hubris makes him toxic to
others and whose outcome is as casual as it is unexpected. However, there is a
lot we don’t know about J.B., for example, how he avoided the draft and was not
sent to Vietnam; we can guess that his father might have pulled some strings.
We know that J.B. has no liking for admin. At his father’s table, we learn that
his brother runs a business. J.B. complains that his sibling spends all his
hours on paperwork, balancing the books. Business supplants creativity. It is
an issue which directors like Reichardt know well. The majority of producer-directors
spend more time securing funding for their work than creating it.
However, the theft itself is a piece of art. Reichardt repeatedly shows
J.B. opening his garage door revealing the local newspaper wrapped in
transparent plastic that in turn describes the latest developments in the case
on the front page. The movement simulates a cloth cover being removed from a
painting in a gallery. J.B. has garnered
attention, created heat, measures of success that an artist craves. However, J.B.’s
crime is not simply narcissistic. It also promotes the artist. What is it about
Dove’s work that makes it worth stealing? By creating a contemporary narrative
about a painting, J.B. invites readers to consider the work’s aesthetic and
commercial value, as well as to foreground the process of selection, choosing
one work above another. It is not entirely surprising that The
Mastermind left the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, where it
competed with two dozen other films, unrewarded. The first rule of artistic recognition
is not to question the process.
Pictured: Accomplice Ronnie Gibson (Javion Allen, left) counts his payment in front of would-be art thief J.B. Mooney (Josh O'Connor, right) in a scene from the 1970-set crime drama, 'The Mastermind', written and directed by Kelly Reichardt. Still courtesy of Mubi.
J.B.’s choice of accomplices is found wanting. One of the thieves – the guy who stole a car
to be used in the getaway – hands over the vehicle for some cash, then drops
out. His replacement, Ronnie Gibson (Javion Allen) has a propensity for
violence; during the theft, he points a gun at a schoolgirl skipping through
the gallery while reciting French, who witnesses the crime. The other thief
sells Mooney out, asking to meet him and then introducing Mooney to some real
criminals.
J.B. is no slick operator himself. Waiting outside the gallery in the car
– he can’t enter, having been seen too many times - he finds that a police car
pulls up alongside him, forcing him to circle the block. The patrol officer has
stopped to eat a sandwich. When he moves the stolen canvases to a barn,
carefully climbing a rickety ladder, he accidentally knocks the ladder over and
has to drop down. Having forced J.B. to give up the paintings, one of the
career criminals give him a sympathetic look. At the very least, the paintings
are worth $2,000 reward money. The accomplice who sold J.B. out is not
rewarded.
There is a surprising moment after the theft when J.B. transfers the
paintings to the boot of his car and the back door opens. His eldest child
vomits. ‘I said no junk food,’ J.B. admonishes. The boy is too ill to ask about
J.B.’s ‘friends.’
Inevitably, the police visit J.B., who mentions his father as a means to
delay being taken in for questioning. The paintings are ‘recovered’; J.B. goes
on the run. Reichardt showcases the Plymouth bus service, a competitor to – or
fiction version of – Greyhound.
The remainder of the film shows J.B. struggling to survive. In order to
pay his accomplices, he borrowed money from his mother (Hope Davis), telling
her it is for expenses relating to a commission. She rings him, asking for a
payment plan. He spends the night with two friends, Fred (John Magaro) and
Maude (Gaby Hoffmann). They understand his plan, ‘to use the professor’ – we
assume his former art teacher - to fence the paintings. Fred is helpful; Maude
wants him to leave. J.B. ignores Fred’s suggestion to cross the border and hide
in a commune in Toronto. ‘Not my people.’ The next couple he hopes to stay with
leave their property before he arrives. ‘They got out pretty quick,’ a bearded
neighbour tells him.
J.B. calls his wife, asking her to ask his mother to wire some cash. ‘You
shouldn’t call here. Get off the line,’ she tells him. His options dwindle, but
he has enough money to spend a night in a woman’s spare room. He re-considers
his option to flee to Canada.
Reichardt makes the point that crime involves losing one’s identity, not
just the connection to other people. J.B. finds a passport in the shirt pocket
in a room in which he is staying. He then uses his artistic training to switch
his photograph from his own passport to the other identity document. Reichardt
shows this process using a three-sixty degree pan slow around the room. It is
one of the film’s few ‘flair’ moments but is also in keeping with the film’s
long-take aesthetic, which is in turn a suspense-building trope of the crime
thriller. At the conclusion of this process, J.B. has given up his name.
In the end, J.B. dirties himself, following an old woman from a café and
stealing her money. The aftermath, involving a protest march, leads to his
downfall, as sudden – J.B. isn’t paying attention – as it is unexpected. What
happens to him is of no consequence to the police officers who stand in the
road, one of them twirling a hat on a truncheon.
O’Connor excelled as a romantic but rumpled antiquities grave robber in
Alice Rohrwacher’s 2023 film, La Chimera. In common
with The Mastermind, his character is not in control of his destiny and
somewhat lost. J.B. retains some residual sympathy, struggling to make sense of
a violent world. We see him glance through the window at a television set on in
an opposing apartment block showing military action taking place in Cambodia.
In a bar, he overhears a conversation between three African Americans, one of
whom has just completed military service. Reichardt doesn’t show explicit
violence, other than J.B.’s theft of the old woman’s handbag, but she is
mindful of its effect. The end credits acknowledge a text on post traumatic
stress disorder, dated 1972. In the end, J.B. is a rat trapped in a rather
large cage. The action is set to a jazz score by Rob Mazurek, all drums,
cymbals, a saxophone that bleats and relents, as improvised as J.B.’s own
flight, no mastery, just survival instinct.
Reviewed at Curzon Westgate (Screen
Three), Canterbury, Kent, Saturday 25 October 2025, 17:45 screening
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