Kelly Reichardt has been called one of America’s greatest filmmakers, and also one of its quietest. But her latest, The Mastermind, centered on an art heist that goes off the rails, is probably her loudest movie yet and definitely her biggest budget to date. Reichardt even set out to make something different from her previous work — which includes First Cow, Showing Up, and Wendy and Lucy — only to get back to the editing room and realize, “Oh, there it is. Another one of these films.” Naturally, Reichardt’s crime movie is a character study about a man trying to charm his way out of failure.
The Mastermind stars Josh O’Connor, most recognizable from last year’s Challengers or one of four movies out this fall, including the new Knives Out sequel. (He headlines projects from Steven Spielberg and Joel Coen next.) But while O’Connor is on a trajectory to be a household name, he’s perfectly cast in The Mastermind as a movie star’s foil, the dimly lit thief J.B. Mooney.
As promised, the movie does open with a satisfying heist — a thrown-together choreographed art theft of Arthur Dove paintings, based on a real-life one in 1972 at Worcester Art Museum. For Mooney, stealing the artworks isn’t the hard part; it’s the holding onto them that becomes the problem. O’Connor’s dimpled smile is on display as a man who has coasted aimlessly through life on his good looks and privileged upbringing (his father is a powerful local judge). Family connections won’t get him out of this one, though, as Reichardt describes The Mastermind as an “unraveling” — an “anti-heist” film.
Reichardt talked to The Verge about the challenges of writing and being a budget-conscious filmmaker (and the expense of scenes with cars, shots at night, and her first-ever built-out set), all the while trying to avoid the H-word: heist.
GODLIS
The Verge: Your films tend to have an atmosphere that is unique to you. How do you set the tone of a Kelly Reichardt film?
Kelly Reichardt: I mean, it’s funny, because I always think when I’m starting out that I’m doing something completely different. It’s not going to be like anything I’ve done before. And then I get in the editing room and I go, “Oh, there it is. Another one of these films.” So yeah, I don’t know. I guess everyone has their own kind of footprint, for better or worse.
Did you find the film in the edit, or how much was it locked in the script?
The script was the script. I mean, there were so many locations and so much car work and so many... I just didn’t have the funds to shoot in a way that I’d find something in the edit. [Cinematographer] Chris Blauvelt and I, we’ve worked together on so many films now. And I talked to Chris about the edit all the time when we’re constructing the scenes and the shots. The edit is part of the conversation, but of course, nothing’s in stone. And you get in the editing room and you go, “Okay, here’s the film I have.” And there are many discoveries to be made in the editing room. But it wasn’t like Meek’s Cutoff.
The concept was that I would have this genre form that I was working in, and then that would, like the character, come undone. It’d really be a sort of aftermath film. That was kind of what I was going for.
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