Aspirin was a pretty big part of people’s lives. People took it for pain, headaches, and as a blood thinner after a stroke. The usual dose is 81 mg — “baby aspirin” as it was called, a nickname that presumes harmlessness as if a baby could take it (note: don’t). Sometime around the 1950s, practitioners found that there may be some benefit in prescribing it to patients who were at risk of a heart attack, as it could inhibit the hormone responsible for platelet aggregation and inflammatory-related vasoconstriction. If someone was having a heart attack, you can chew five of the baby aspirins up on the way to the ER. From this discovery, people may take it even when they didn’t have a heart attack yet. It had seemed like the kind of medication that only helps our frail, sickening bodies.
Based on a few recent monumental studies in the later part of the ’10s, the US Preventative Services Task Force and the ACC/AHA guidelines came out with recommendations advising not to take aspirin for primary prevention of cardiovascular events after a certain age, citing that the risk of bleeding may be higher than its potential benefits. This means that if you’re a senior and still haven’t had any heart-related incidents, then don’t bother taking it. This probably sounds like a meager change to your grandparents’ medicine cabinet, but it changed the prescribing game and the perspective of how “safe” aspirin really is.
One of those monumental studies is still happening to this day, right in Framingham. The longitudinal study started back in the ‘40s, so it’s reasonable to assume that we may have met some of the study’s participants in Kelly Reichardt’s The Mastermind, a film that props ’70s Framingham as a not-so-sleepy town, but one that’ll flinch when crime hits the scene when it’s least expected. The hit job: theft at the town’s Museum of Art. The perpetrator: James Blaine “J.B.” Mooney (Josh O’Connor), the jobless son of the town judge and father/husband/space occupier of a household clutched together by his unhappy wife Terri (Alana Haim). It is the kind of set-up with exacted blubbering reactions and proportions that fit just right in Reichardt’s thoughtful and amusing world.
Following Showing Up in the art-field lane, Reichardt playfully flicks a dart into the heist genre. It would have been a fool’s expectation to think that she was going to switch gears to a Steven Soderbergh thriller (though not impossible!), and I truly hope “KELLY REICHARDT” speaks more to gathering interest than “ART HEIST MOVIE SET IN MASSACHUSETTS.” The comedy is calling from within the house: ask an art student what painting they’d steal to sell at the black market, and they will certainly shimmy their answers past the obvious van Gogh painting. For J.B., he sets his eyes on four Arthur Dove paintings (in which his father later clocks their abstractness to be too confusing for a lucrative sell once news of the robbery makes its waves).
Admittedly, it’s unoriginal to bring up a well-documented comparison on the Internet, but O’Connor’s aura is reminiscent of both Ratatouille and Remy, the brains and the brawns of sheepishness. However, he’s adept in projecting what his characters see in themselves. While Challengers is the performance of the believable broke-playboy, The Mastermind has us believe that J.B. sees Mr. Fox when he looks in the mirror. However, a bearded mouse with a Harrington jacket is still a mouse, and one that is capable of causing a cascading sequence of goofs that are surprisingly hilarious amongst such earnest filmmaking.
It’s possible to see The Mastermind as a character study, but there is rarely a time where I had felt positive or pity toward J.B. He seems to be the kind of person who would have answered “yes” to beating Serena Williams at a tennis match. His self-heightened importance in completing this job, which includes bothering his wife at work to take care of his children and asking his parents yet again for another loan, makes his existence collateral damage to anyone who speaks or works with him. Subsequently, J.B. is one of the most unlikable characters this year, and I wasn’t really sure what I would have liked to see from him to sway my opinion. However, Reichardt’s blueprint for J.B. was tailored right down to the bone, which is a masterful accomplishment for a movie that could have depended on plot or character-arc certainties to make it tolerable.
Once again, Reichardt’s longtime cinematographer Christopher Blauvelt captures the natural lighting and the New England weather so beautifully in this film. The sun’s tertiary role in presenting the story in broad sunlight has the kind of muted brightness that puts us in the sleepier part of the afternoon, the perfect kind of timing for J.B.’s operations in his caliber. Experimental musician Rob Mazurek’s sonic cacophony of crashing symbols and piano slams play during J.B.’s caffeinated scenes, though outwardly we see a lot of sitting in cars and power-walking to places. A gun even shows up, but it’s brandished like a cartoon umbrella waved around.
All that being said, I can understand any existing Reichardt hatred out there will not be persuaded by this movie. A part of watching directors’ work with a critical eye as they make more movies is a kind of parasocial relationship as time goes on. Fortunately, I’d like to say that Reichardt is so assured of her work that I can feel a continuum between Showing Up and The Mastermind, two different movies that only she can make happen without a force of hand from studios with dollar-sign eyes. As Reichardt leans into silly antics under beautiful lighting, I’m reminded of DiCaprio’s latter-day comedy roles, another change of course that I’m welcoming with open arms. As dismaying as getting older may be, what can be more healthy for the heart than a laugh?
The Mastermind
2025
dir. Kelly Reichardt
110 min.
Opens Friday, 10/24 @ Coolidge Corner Theatre, West Newton Cinema, and AMC Boston Common
