Keswick Film Club - Reviews - The Mastermind

The film last Sunday was "The Mastermind" directed by Kelly Reichardt. Leave it to this director to make a '70s movie that looks and feels like a lost '70s movie, from its scruffy visual aesthetic to its muted colours, its patient character observation and unhurried pacing to its unstinting investment in an underdog protagonist whose careless planning results in a coup that soon goes south. Josh O'Connor's rumpled appeal makes him an ideal fit for the title role in The Mastermind, a minor-key heist caper that spends as much or more time on the aftermath of the crime, when it morphs gracefully into another of the director's singular character studies of struggling Americans.

The themes are pure Reichardt; an unravelling of the American dream is for her a constant; dropping into character's lives without any back-story is another. We have to supply a good deal, which can be frustrating or appealing (take your pick); especially when modern dramas have to explain all

The main character here, JB, is terminally bored and feckless in spite of having most of what life can seemingly offer (wife, two kids, rich Dad and bank-rolling mother, suburban bungalow, precarious employment}. The art heist then, incompetent as it is, is not some fiendishly brilliant plot, but the precursor to his flight and demise, he almost wills it. Many of Reichardt's characters are intrinsically loveable in spite of their innate sorrow, which for Reichardt is simply worn out joy. JB is not even likeable. His final and dramatic denouement is almost a relief.