‘I Like Ordinary People In Extraordinary Positions’

Kelly Reichardt’s latest film, The Mastermind, starring Josh O’Connor and Alana Haim was presented last night at the Cannes Film Festival. The film marks Reichardt’s second movie in competition at the festival.

In The Mastermind, O’Connor plays an out of work carpenter in the 1970s, Massachusetts, who decides to organize an art heist.

The movie was received with an almost 6-minute standing ovation, during which the director said, “It’s special to be here, obviously America is in a ditch right now, maybe we’ll get out of it. In the meantime, we have the movies, for a little while at least. But don’t give up on us.”

During the press conference held this morning at the festival, Reichardt mentioned that she was scouting for a while for a good art heist story, and she finally found the seed of the story when she heard about the 50th anniversary of two teenagers who got caught while pulling a heist.

She also praised Mubi, which will distribute the movie later this year. She said, “Mubi got behind us, we went to Ohio, Cincinnati to film. Then Josh, that part came with him on my mind, it happened really fast.”

She added: “Thank you to Mubi, they gave us the resources to do it, standing there, they were here if we needed any help, they didn’t impose in any way, that’s a very fortunate thing.”

On working with Reichardt and portraying ordinary characters, O’Connor said, “I was a big follower of Kelly’s films. I find myself drawn to the ordinary. When we go to the theaters often times, we see the most extreme versions of characters, that’s drama. I like ordinary people in extraordinary positions. Mooney puts himself in an extraordinary position, which is of his own doing.”

Reichardt’s films are often marked by the desire to pay tribute to certain genre and at the same time to deconstruct them. For The Mastermind, the filmmaker made sure to have all the ingredients of the heist movie, especially the ones made during the Hollywood New Wave, towards the end of the 1960s and beginning of the 1970s, in order to deconstruct it better.

She said, “Jean-Pierre Melville is a favorite filmmaker of mine, I love the Hollywood New Wave, but that genre is made of films about men made by men. So there is this tradition of the bumbling jerk in a way, that is also a hero in some respect, some of that is just the nature of narrative. If you follow any Jack Nicholson’s character, he can do whatever he wants and somehow you’re on his side.”

She added: ‘I followed this tradition but also showed how to break it down a little bit. The genre deconstructs as Mooney’s plan does.”

O’Connor then explained the psychology of his character, Mooney, who follows the tradition of men having “low self-esteem and a big ego.”

He said, “One of my favorite aspects of the movie was when we were going to the garage, as Terry is taking the kids to school, and Mooney is in his underwears, that felt like a very Mooney thing to do. He has these grand expectations for his life, he feels he deserves better. His great plan is a work of art in itself.”

He added: “It comes from a place of privilege, from generations of men being told they deserve something more, it’s an interesting time in history about male roles in that period, and the shifting, the changing tide of that. From the first two world wars, you have men going to war and dying. Then the Vietnam War, and it’s about what he thinks his role should be. I was kind of led by that in some ways.”