Josh O’Connor and Kelly Reichardt on planning the perfect art heist

Kelly Reichardt is a filmmaker beloved for her patient, poetic pacing: the long, lazy road trip of Old Joy; the slow trots of Lily Gladstone and Kristen Stewart riding a horse in Certain Women; Michelle Williams and Andre 3000 preparing ceramics for a kiln in Showing Up.

Yet even Reichardt believes that the MUBI ident – the 35-second, violin-plucking intro that plays before the streamer’s films – is too long. On the 61-year-old American director’s newest film, The Mastermind, a 1970s-set heist thriller, the MUBI intro is brief and silent. “It’s like a short film,” she complains. “That thing goes on and on. I was very appreciative that MUBI made the movie, but these long logos are ridiculous. They were kind enough to cut it down on request.”

Do other filmmakers know they can make that demand?

“They do now,” says Josh O’Connor, the 35-year-old British star of The Mastermind who’s towering next to Reichardt on a sofa. “You don’t want to go to a movie and see that.”

Instead, The Mastermind starts 30 seconds sooner on its opening image of O’Connor as James Mooney, a Massachusetts local folding his arms in an art gallery. Mooney, fidgeting like an overgrown child, is inspecting the security, not the paintings; an unemployed carpenter in debt, he plans to steal four artworks by Arthur Dove. Pausing to tie his shoelaces in front of a guard, Mooney’s skill is that he looks too incompetent to be an art thief. However, Mooney later proves that he really is too incompetent to be an art thief.

O’Connor also stole valuable artefacts in Alice Rohrwacher’s 2023 drama La Chimera. Speaking to Dazed, Rohrwacher described O’Connor as “beyond time”, and that “his imagination is like a forest”. I share these quotes with Reichardt. Does she agree?

“Come on, Kelly,” says O’Connor, laughing. “Am I beyond time?”

“Oh, God,” says Reichardt. “Now I have to match Alice?”

“She didn’t like me as much as Alice,” says O’Connor. “I’m joking!”

“I love you,” says Reichardt to O’Connor. “But I’m not as expressive as Alice. He’s a man with his feet on the ground. I like him because I think he could be the everyman, which is maybe the opposite of what Alice’s saying. You see the versatility?”

I’m in The Soho Hotel with the chatty pair during the London Film Festival, none of us aware that five days later eight jewellery pieces will be stolen from the Louvre. Reichardt’s script was inspired by a real theft of four paintings (including a Rembrandt) in 1972 from the Worcester Art Museum by two masked men who shot a security guard. In Reichardt’s version, Mooney and his accomplices are comically clumsy: disguises are mangled, the getaway car stutters, and zero thought has gone into the aftermath. The choice of Arthur Dove is itself questionable: the abstract artist isn’t exactly a moneymaker.

O’Connor is so effortless in ramping up Mooney’s immaturity, it’s a visual gag when he walks past three apparent strangers – Terri (Alana Haim) and two boys – who turn out to be his wife and children. Mooney is also trapped in his own thoughts, as exemplified by a persistent jazz score that accompanies the crime.

The score is notably absent when Mooney, on the phone to Terri, pleads, “You’re so goddamn quiet, I wish you’d yell at me.” During the shooting of that scene, O’Connor started to cry as Mooney. Reichardt immediately asked him to redo the take. “She was like, ‘Hell no, he doesn’t get emotional,’” says O’Connor.

These climate protesters are protesting because they’ve not been fucking heard for years. I imagine Van Gogh would be like, ‘Fucking listen!’

Calling The Mastermind a heist thriller is like describing A Christmas Carol as only being about the Ghost of Christmas Past. The second and third acts follow Mooney’s struggle with owning stolen paintings that are reported in the press. Mooney also faces an existential dilemma, perhaps the catalyst for the theft, as a middle-class egotist with little to show off: he’s eager to make a mark on the world, yet is oblivious when stumbling around activists. As soon as I refer to the protests against the Vietnam War in the film, Reichardt interjects.

“Hold on, hold on, hold on,” she says. “We don’t want to talk about that.”

“Kelly doesn’t like to talk too much about the plot of the film,” says O’Connor.

“Stick to the heist,” she says. “Everyone knows there’s a heist.”

Reichardt is keener to elaborate on visual inspirations like Robby Mueller’s cinematography (“I love the colours in The American Friend”), William Egglestone, and Stephen Shore. When I ask if they can empathise with Mooney’s fear of being an unemployed artist, Reichardt questions if Mooney, a former art student, is actually an artist.

“He hasn’t put the work in,” says O’Connor. “I can’t imagine what sort of art he’d make.”

“I always imagined Japanese carpentry,” says Reichardt. “Or a JB Blunk kind of thing.”

“I imagine Mooney being like those people who go to galleries, see an Arthur Dove, and go, ‘I could have done that,’” says O’Connor.

“No!” says Reichardt. “Really? No! His parents exposed him to stuff. He knows the value of things.”

The conversation is similarly animated when O’Connor goes on a lengthy rant defending the Just Stop Oil activists who threw soup on a Van Gogh painting. “The people outraged about that are often people who cut arts funding, and just don’t like climate protesters,” he says. “These climate protesters are protesting because they’ve not been fucking heard for years. I imagine Van Gogh would be like, ‘Fucking listen!’ There’s always some person on GB News or Fox who’s like, ‘It’s an outrage.’ And I’m like, ‘You don’t know Van Gogh! You don’t give a shit about that painting!’”

O’Connor’s career has been escalating since Challengers. This year he has The Mastermind, Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, The History of Sound, and Rebuilding. Next year, he’s a leading man for Steven Spielberg and Joel Coen. He also wrote an early draft of 2023’s Bonus Track, although he stresses that the keyword is “early” and that he’s a “terrible writer”.

It brings to mind Michelle Williams, the star of four Reichardt movies, telling The Hollywood Reporter in 2018 why she did Venom: “Maybe it’ll make it easier for a filmmaker like Kelly [Reichardt] to get her movie made.” Does O’Connor feel a similar pressure?

“Kelly’s films should be financed regardless,” he says.

“That’s not how the world works,” says Reichardt.

He’s not doing Venom 4?

“I’m not going to do a Venom,” says O’Connor. “That’s Marvel?”

“Venom’s a Marvel movie?” says Reichardt. “Is Michelle Williams doing a Marvel movie?”

I admit to not knowing about Venom lore, while O’Connor wonders if it’s “Tom Hardy playing a snake”. Reichardt jokes that she could just phone Williams now to ask. An eavesdropping publicist tells us that it’s Marvel-adjacent.

“Michelle’s actually been sending me the paycheques from that film straight away,” says Reichardt. “What the hell is Venom? I’m so out of it.”

The publicist lets us know that the series has also ended.

“Great,” says O’Connor. “I can’t be in them anyway.”

Reichardt turns to O’Connor, saying, “I want you to do a movie where you’re all buffed up, so that by the time we work together next, you’re like—”

“But what about The Mastermind!” says O’Connor.

“Someone told me, ‘He has a really spindly body,’” says Reichardt.

“I’m not built, Kelly,” says O’Connor. “It’s a good point.”

Seeing as O’Connor is promoting two other films during the festival, and is mid-shoot on Joel Coen’s Jack of Spades, I ask him how Reichardt compares to his many other directors. Reichardt puts her head in her hands, wishing she wasn’t in the room.

“I love working with Kelly,” says O’Connor. “She knows that.”

“But…” says Reichardt.

“There’s no ‘but’,” says O’Connor. “If you’re a fan of Kelly’s movies, then working with her is what you imagine. Kelly gives you the space to act out a situation. We’ve been taught to see someone do something, and then cut to when they’re done. Kelly allows us to sit and watch someone do something from beginning to end.” He looks at Reichardt, still with her head in her hands. “How did I do?”

Reichardt exhales, then takes a moment. “OK, she says. “That was good.”

The Mastermind is out in UK cinemas on October 24. A book dedicated to The Mastermind is available for pre-order from mubieditions.com