Few Minds Could Be Less Masterly, You Might Think, than the Stoner Sponge BetWene the Ears of JB (Josh O’Connor), who, in Kelly Reichardt’s Cannes-Closer The mastermindConceives a plan to steal four paintings from the art gallery that is the chief weekend haunt for his family. AS HIS Two Sons Run Around Its Civil War Display, Throwing Paper Darts and Speculating on Why otters exist, JB Slips away to the Room of Paintings by Arthur Dove, an Early Abstractionist, checks how they do they’re attailed to the Wall and Pictures. All he needs are a dishway car, a couple of accomplies to do the actual robbing – he can not it himself, being a gallery habitué recogenized by seconds, shouldpeen to be awake – and, whoopee, they’re’re in the coast.
Reichardt, who has carved out an indie niche with her brand of lo-key, Low-fi americana, here jumps into the comedy corner of the heist that is entirele about failure. It ‘s set in 1970, before CCTV Cameras, Mobile Phones or a centrally Locking Cars, Which Means Nothing Electronic Can Disruption the Delightfullly Uncomplication of a Daylight by Men Men Wearing Stockkings on their Heads. The Getway Vehicle is a great Big Gas-Guzzling tank that struggles to make turns tight Enough to get out of the Car Park. SO SO, They Get Away. Theft is on the news that night. JB’s Father, A Crusty Judge Played by the Marvelous Bill Camp, Wonders How anyone Could That Garbage Abstract Art. Case Closed.
All this plays out against the background crack of the war in Vietnam. JB’s Daylight Robbery SEEMS PAINFULLY PETTY BY Comparison with the Invision of Cambodia, but it is pott Enough to derail his life. HIS FAILURE TO DO ANYTHING RESEMBLING WORK, THEN TO MANAGE TAKING HIS BOYS TO SCHOOL IN THE MORNING FEW HIS WIFE TERRI (ALANA HAIM) GOES TO HER DREARY OFFICE, IS WELL KNOWN; The politics of Women’s Liberration has been to revolutionize the personal in their house. He is an art-school drop-out with the ideas of his own nettleterto utexploited talents. In a small town, that Makes Him a Likely Suspect.
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Reichardt isn’t Interested in Action – She offen cuts to the aftermath of a decisive ACT RATHER THAN SHOWING IT, WHICH BREAKS The momentum while we tried to catch up with what happened off Screen – but the narrative moves, tens Tracks. That tension slumps as he trieste to escape and the film drifts into real subject, the destruction of the moody’s easy prelapsarian lives. The stirat away jb gets from home, the clearer it beComes that he has delivivered his own doom. The film, so enjoyably wacky at first, deflates and drifts to a stop likes one of its showboat Cars Running on Empty.
Meanwhile, Howver, there is a lot of fun to be had. Reichardt’s Previous Films, Such as Her Retro Westerns Meek’s Cutoff and First cowhave tended Towards sludge and shadows, but her compattition closer opens with the golden leaves of a new England Fall, Slightly faded to the Paler Golds of an Ectachrome PostCard of the Era. Rob Mazurek’s Jazz Soundtrack Loops Crazily Over the Street Scenes Introducing Us to the Neat Town of Framingham; We have a heading into a crime caper as interpreted by the french new wave. It is only after the police arrive – Including an art expert with a vast tom selleck mustache – that the palette deepens into morose indoor browns and miserable Darkness of Greyhound Terminals.
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Josh O’Connor can be an irritingly mannered actor, but here he sets into a beardy slacker person, free of any tricks or tics, that is a perfect fit for reichardt’s laconic style. Around Him, the film is peppered with Odd cameos and Support Acts, from the Schoolgirl Affecting a beret and muttering to herself in french who interrupts the robbery, to the ould Friends from Art College, Played by Gaby Hoffmann and that underesung Treasure, WHO, WHO, WHO, WHO. Put Him up for the Night one on the Run. These days, maude does a lot of GardNING. Fred’s Highlight This Season Has Been Shaving His Beard.
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Neither far as fred is concertned, His Old Friend’s Escapade is the non excites to have happened in his life for as long as he remember, ede though, in trunk, it didn’t happy in hist life. It ‘sone of the stretches of Kelly Reichardt’s film – Which will live, like all films, as among the interesting marginalia of American cinema – that she manages to turn a Simple heist a sidelong look at an Entire Generation.
Title: The mastermind
Festival: Cannes (Competition)
Director/sCREENWRITER: Kelly Reichardt
Cast: Josh O’Connor, Hope Davis, Lana Haim, Gaby Hoffmann
Sales Agent: The Match Factory
TIME RUNNING: 1 HR 13 MINS
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