The Mastermind

Der arbeitslose JB geht mit seiner Familie gerne ins Museum von Framingham, Massachusetts, in dem das Aufsichtspersonal vor sich hin döst und die Werke nicht gesichert sind. Also raubt er die Gemälde von Arthur Dove, versucht sie zu verhökern und leitet damit das Ende seiner kleinbürgerlichen Existenz ein. Reichardts langjährige Arbeit am Genre setzt sich hier mit dem Heist-Movie fort. Herausgekommen ist ein dezenter, zugleich an Tarantino und Rohrwacher erinnernder Pop noir: Von einem subtilen Jazzsoundtrack getragen werden die Siebzigerjahre mit Fast Food, Autoschlitten und den Demonstrationen gegen den Vietnamkrieg pointiert mitinszeniert. (Dunja Bialas)

Given Kelly Reichardt’s penchant for playing with genre, it comes as no surprise that the heist at the heart of THE MASTERMIND unfolds in unusually breezy, even comical fashion. To Rob Mazurek’s toe-tapping jazz soundtrack, unemployed family father James Blaine Mooney (Josh O’Connor) and his two incompetent accomplices liberate four abstract paintings from a provincial Massachusetts art museum in the autumn of 1970, a period captured in all its wan, scruffy beauty by cinematographer Christopher Blauvelt. Yet once the deed is done, the chords become jittery and the mood turns ever more wintry, for Mooney’s lackadaisical approach to crime still carries very real consequences. As the bumbling, solipsistic criminal leaves behind his wife (Alana Haim) and children to avoid apprehension, tensions simmer in the country he wanders through: an unjust war, university occupations and police violence; some things never change. Like so many of Reichardt’s inscrutable protagonists, Mooney is entirely out of step with the US status quo, even as his wanderings also reveal its fault lines and contradictions. As the world outside goes up in flames once again, what could be more American than a self-absorbed “mastermind” who didn’t think things through? (James Lattimer)

Kelly Reichardt: RIVER OF GRASS (1994), ODE (1999, K), THEN A YEAR (2001, K), OLD JOY (2006), WENDY AND LUCY (2008), MEEK’S CUTOFF (2010), NIGHT MOVES (2013), CERTAIN WOMEN (2016), OWL (2019, K), FIRST COW (2019), SHOWING UP (2022)