This is going to be a shaggy dog story, I thought to myself, as the fetching titles unwound. A nod to those seventies crime caper movies, all fixed camera long shots, revealing details that might or might not be crucial for the story, demanding the viewer’s attention. The eminently likeable Josh O’Connor planning a heist, with more and more obstacles thrown up, just as the script gurus would have recommended. No point making a heist movie without speed bumps. As things continue to unravel for O’Connor, who carries on being likeable, O’Connor can’t help being likeable even if he’s robbing old ladies, the movie seems to have two possible directions: a happy ending as he succeeds in somehow reconciling with his family or a tragic denouement where he ends up estranged from them forever. Reichardt subverts this dialectic by coming up with a third outcome, what I would term the Bergman-ending, when you just drop out of the story altogether before engaging with that irascible third act. This could also be termed the Shaggy-Dog-Story ending, which I don’t recall the script doctors ever promoting, but has its advantages. Reichardt has frequently sought a way to ovoid the straitjacket of narrative conventions. In The Mastermind, with its portentous title, perhaps there is a sly critique of this idea of perfection, the notion of the perfect crime/ the perfect script/ the perfect film.
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