Kelly Reichardt's new film *The Mastermind* premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, following J.B. Mooney (Josh O'Connor), a carpenter who orchestrates an art heist targeting four Arthur Dove paintings from a fictional Massachusetts museum. The heist is inspired by a real 1972 robbery at the Worcester Art Museum, and the film explores the tension between artistic value and monetary worth against the backdrop of Vietnam War-era America.
The film matters because it continues Reichardt's examination of art's place in everyday life, shifting from the working artist's perspective in *Showing Up* to a broader critique of how art is valued—spiritually and materially—in mid-century American culture. By grounding the heist in period-specific details and a real historical crime, Reichardt uses the art world as a lens to explore class, ambition, and the gendered divisions of labor that shape both crime and family.