Josh O’Connor, from Prince Charles to an art thief

Mastermind It is the eighth feature film Kelly Reichardtprobably without any relation to Karen, the candidate for deputy for La Libertad Avanza and who as an artistic background has worked on Notidormi with Raúl Portal, a director born in Miami, that is, American, but who is more assiduous at Class A film festivals like Cannes or Berlin than at the multiplexes in her own country.

And it’s not because Reichardt’s films are elitist. Examples abound (certain women, First Cow) y Mastermind has, for example, a rising star as Josh O’Connor in front of the cast.

The British man who was Prince Charles in The Crownacted with Zendaya in Challenging and starred The chimerahere is an unemployed carpenter. It is the 1970s and James B. Mooney, to cover his own expenses and those of his family, plans and carries out the theft from a museum, in broad daylight, of four works, not by any artist, but by Arthur Dove, who is considered the first American artist to create abstract works.

Of course, those were different times, museums did not have the security or surveillance cameras of today, but James and his henchmen are not people who care too much, so he is going to have to become a fugitive from the law.

James lives in a suburb of Massachusetts, and what resonates around him are the echoes of Vietnam. It is a strongly polarized United States, but James is not worried about it. No.

The title, once the robbery plan begins to develop, may seem or sound parodic. James, paraphrasing an Argentine president, can realize that the phrase better than saying is doing is so true that it would have been good for him to have the ability or suitability to carry out the robbery there, in that museum that he even usually visits with his family.

Reichardt doesn’t make a heist movie, Mastermind It’s not the kind of film like The great scamwith George Clooney. He adopts the genre, if you will, to deconstruct it: he is much more interested in the character than in the theft.

And what is JB like? An apathetic and selfish guy, who, as we say, seems somewhere between distracted and disinterested in the political and social context in which he lives. He lives in a time when Americans were beginning to feel that society could not feel as optimistic as it did in a more recent step. JB is the product of Reichardt’s look, which if it becomes somewhat more melancholic in the second part is by pure decision of the script.

Reichardt offered Alana Haim (Licorice Pizzathe recent One battle after anotherboth by Paul Thomas Anderson) the role of JB’s wife and mother of children. And that was another success of the director to tell a personal story, which becomes largely collective. Or at least that’s the feeling it leaves us with.

Drama. United States, 2025. Títutulu Original: “The Mastermind”. 110′, SAM 13 R. Of: Kelly Reichardt. Con: Josh O’Connor, Alana Haim, Sterling Thompson, Hope Davis, Bill Camp. Salas: Cinemark Palermo, Cinépolis Recoleta, Pilar and Rosario, Showcase Belgrano, Norcenter and Rosario.