Kelly Reichardt is one of the greatest directors working in the world today. Her films such as Wendy and Lucy, Meek’s Cutoff, Certain Women and First Cow have grown into modern classics on the subject of people wrestling with the complex founding notions of America. Her excellent new film, The Mastermind, takes a similar tack: it’s a palm-sweating, 1970s-set anti-heist movie in which a would-be criminal genius (perfectly essayed by Josh O’Connor) finds out in the most spectacular and blackly comic way imaginable that crime does not pay.
LWLies: I’d be interested to know what your take on heist cinema is. What are the things that have appealed to you about how those heists are depicted onscreen, and some of the conventions?
Reichardt: Melville is probably the main fellow. I kind of got sucked into this because it was the 50th anniversary of this Worcester, Massachusetts heist, and I found an article about the teenagers that got swept into it. I’m just fascinated with people stealing art, and the idea of taking something from a public space to enjoy on your own, like the people that had the de Kooning in their bedroom. Instead of everyone enjoying this painting, it’ll just be you behind your bedroom door. Passing art, holding art for collateral, or the idea of people that you wouldn’t necessarily expect to be interested in art for its intrinsic value of the pleasure it brings them.
For me, a lot of heist films, like the Melvilles, seem to be very focused on filming the process of how the heist works, fetishising that.
Yeah, I love it. With Rififi, you’re at that break-in for a quarter, a third of the film. Usually there’s the planning – the guys get out of jail, they’re going to get together and do something just one more time. This is all pushed into the first act, which was how I wrote it, but it ended up like a tilted canoe. I was interested in changing the structure of it a bit, so I kind of thought of it as an unwinding film more than a heist film. I think if you went to this film thinking it was a heist film, you might be pissed.
I’d love to talk a little bit about your visualisation of the character of JB Mooney and how you came to Josh O’Connor. When I was watching the film, and I think probably with more of an aesthetic sort of resonance than character, there was definitely a bit of Warren Oates in there. I was thinking if this had been in the ’70s, maybe Oates in one of his softer roles. He could do those in his Two-Lane Blacktop-type roles.
Well, when Warren Oates is trying to get some credence in 92 in the Shade, he really needs some credence. I remember asking Josh if he knew Warren Oates, because I actually thought of Warren Oates while watching La Chimera with Josh. Going around in that white linen suit that he’s wearing in Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia. I was a Warren Oates freak for a while, but he was just kind of becoming whoever I wanted him to be, which was nice. I wasn’t really trying to riff off anybody.
Hats off to Josh for being willing to play a sort of blank character that you can project onto. You want him to be deep or you want him to have all this stuff about him. You think of Bresson’s characters and you’re like, ‘Who are they, really?’ Whatever you project onto them. I think an actor really has to set aside ego. In Josh’s mind there’s a very clear idea who Mooney is. It’s almost like he’s not lying when he’s lying. Before every take Josh would say, ‘You know, this is really a good idea. I really think this is a good idea.’
Do you see the character as a nihilist?
Kind of. Well, maybe that’s too cynical in a way, or too thought-out. I think he’s maybe too in the moment to be a nihilist. Like he’s really not good at the long-term planning, and to be a nihilist you have to have a philosophy. I mean, it’s 1970, right? The ’60s are over – it’s this murky in-between time. The Worcester heist was in 1972, but I wanted to push it back and make it on this border wall of this murky time that I thought fit Mooney – neither here nor there yet. Just like the country figuring out what’s next. Who are we? This whole freewheeling thing’s not working out. What are we going into?