Josh O’Connor in Kelly Reichardt Heist Film

Leave Kelly Reichardt to make a film from the 70s that resembles and looks like a lost film of the 70s, of its visual aesthetics stripped of its mute colors, its observation of the patient character and its pace without insurance to its foundation investment in a protagonist of the oppressed whose meticulous planning is translated by a coup that goes to the south. The crumpled call of Josh O’Connor makes him an ideal choice for the title role in The brainA cuddly from a minor sky that spends so much or more time in the aftermath of the crime, when he graciously transforms into another of the director’s singular studies on the Americans in difficulty.

The film takes place in the Massachusetts around 1970, two decades before the infamous flight of art at the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum in Boston, whose walls always preserve empty spaces where stolen artists from artists such as Vermeer, Rembrandt, Manet and Degas were formerly suspended. It seems that the Reichardt par excellence that James Blaine Mooney (O’Connor) does not go after the old masters or anything closer. Instead, he targets four paintings by American modernist Arthur Dove, one of the country’s abstract painters in the country – influential but at the time not in high demand.

Reichardt takes his first solo writing credit on this functionality, which nevertheless echoes two films written with the collaborator of frequent script Jonathan Raymond. He has nuances of meticulous planning of eco-activists who explode a hydroelectric dam in Night move and continues the vein of subtle humor that has made the microcosmic vision of the art world Present so captivating.

The opening sequence follows JB while walking from one room to another, a student both art and the snoozing goalkeeper in a fictional museum in Framingham. (Stand-in for exteriors is the Cleo Rogers commemorative library designed by Im Pei with its huge bronze Henry Moore at the front, presented in a memorable way in the magnificent Kogonada film, Columbus.) Half of a pair of young twins constantly launches into a few science-fiction arcanas while the mother who is bored of the boy and her quieter brother cut him.

It was only once JB opened an exhibition cabinet to pilot a small artifact and that they go to the exit becomes clear that the woman is his wife Ter (Alana Haim) and the children are her sons, Carl and Tommy (Sterling and Jasper Thompson). Terri seems to be an accomplice while the boys serve as a lure, which initially recalls family stories in bumps of small crime like the masterpiece of Hirokazu Kore-Eda, Display thieves. But it turns out to be a little bad orientation.

When James moves beyond the small tests and prepares to lift the paintings of dove, Terre seems to want to know as little as possible. James assembles a team of three, Guy (Eli Gelb, one of Broadway Hit’s discoveries Stereophony), Larry (Cole Doman) and Ronnie Gibson (Javion Allen), assuring them that they will be in and will go out in eight minutes. James explains that he cannot be there while the robbery goes down because his face is now too well known to the museum staff.

But when Larry renounces as a driver, JB must fulfill this role, and although they take out the paintings, things do not take place entirely as planned thanks to Ronnie, who pulls a weapon on an art student and fights with a security guard at the exit. Several scenes later, after Ronnie caused other problems, JB obtained an overly pricing lesson in the mocking words of a tasty thief (Matthew Maher): “Never work with drug addicts, dealers or jokers.”

Once the news of the daring light of daylight breaks, JB’s father, Bill (Bill Camp), a local judge, also had thoughts that could have been more useful before the event: “It seems inconceivable that these abstract paintings are worth it.” One of the great actors of the contemporary character, Camp composes pompomosity while judge Mooney thinks about the dark market before conceding: “These things are outside my field of experience.”

Bill’s criticism with regard to James unemployment for not having done something about his joinery skills like a small business owner with whom he was at school seems an important factor in JB’s decision to try to earn money in the easy way. Dishonest. Her mother, Sarah (Hope Davis, sublime), is more indulgent with him, although when he strikes her for a considerable loan in addition to money he already owes her, she insists on a planned reimbursement plan.

Although Reichardt never pushes comedy, these Fusty parental exchanges are often very funny, just like the bad parent episodes with the boys.

The production of the period and the design of the costumes (by Anthony Gasparro and Amy Roth, respectively) instantly evoke the era, while taking care to never distract with remarkable kitsch. But certain relics of the 70s inevitably obtain laughter – the rear telescope with a crank handle which gives trouble to guys while he rushes to load the paintings at the back of a stolen station trolley; The marketing gadget forgotten egg tights, has sold in a plastic egg -shaped packaging, which JB provides its crew to wear in the form of masks.

Reichardt finds an infectious fascination in some of the most commonplace elements of the crime, such as James applying its carpentry know-how to build a tailor-made storage fund for paintings. This body then gives a physical comedy when it crawls on a ladder to hide it in a hay attic while a pig sniffs in the background, rumbling for food and passing JB no attention.

Playing a character who could easily be an American cousin to his sad tombs ChimeraO’Connor skillfully balances these comic moments with a slow construction of melancholy and regret-“I did not really think it,” he says morosearly-while the scheme of Get-Rich-Rick slips out of its reach.

Haim, the singer who has become a star of the screen in small groups in Paul Thomas Anderson Licorice pizzaUnless working with Terra. But she says a lot about her eyes on the internal battle of the character between abstention and walking away to protect herself and the boys from the wreck of James. It seems real on both sides when James loses terra as an ally.

Haim’s performance economy is fully in accordance with the less important Reichardt policy with its actors, which applies to the incisive cast of the smallest roles, with faces that look straight at home at the time.

There is an interlude that is both charming and sad in which James is still in freedom despite the fact that his face is splashed through the newspapers. O’Connor hits poignant notes when JB is mistaken in thinking that he is safe while extending to the farm of his old friend Fred (accustomed to John Magaro) and his wife Maude (Gaby Hoffmann), who is convinced that James uses their former university art teacher as a closure. Fred seems very excited to have a criminal sought in the middle of them, Maude considerably less, which accelerates the departure of JB.

Throughout the film, newspaper titles and television extracts contextualize history in the context of anti-Vietnam demonstrations, colleges retaliated with protests from the student campus and aggressive police services, as well as overviews of the twisted smile of Richard Nixon. Although Reichardt takes care not to hammer this too strong element, it is impossible to miss the parallels with the political landscape of today.

James’ flight attempt to Canada strikes a hook during one of these street demonstrations, and the last stroke of him, locked in a small part of the frame, is overwhelming.

The longtime employee of DP, Christopher Blauvelt, who also turned Meek cut,, Night move,, Some women,, First cow And Present For Reichardt, there remains an incomparable adjustment for the director’s naturalist minimalism, ensuring that even the rows of trees in the flamboyant fall colors are never too pretty.

As she did with Night moveReichardt has made a genre image that takes off all the usual tropes to focus on character, human failures and reality that even a person from a comfortable middle class can be exhausted by the fight and scope of reckless solutions.

The only major departure for Reichardt is the very effective use of a partition by the jazz musician Rob Mazurek. The cool, but also nervous riffs of percussion, bass, brass and drums look like a set of Beatnik diving bar which ends at the end of a long set, offering the perfect complement to a decelerated film that works on the EuPhone.