THE MASTERMIND*** - BFI London Film Festival 2025 - Day 7

Kelly Reichardt’s THE MASTERMIND is an odd film. As one would expect, it is formally beautifully constructed and has her typically restrained, measured tone with the subtlest hints of humour. But its central character is so selfish, smug and feckless, it’s hard to know what to do with the film’s requirement for us to engage with his story. 

The movie takes place in the early 70s in smalltown America, with society divided between the successful, conventional middle class family to which our protagonist belongs, and the young hippies protesting Vietnam. Josh O’Connor plays an art school drop out turned failing cabinet maker essentially bankrolled by his wealthy mother (Hope Davis). He is married with two young sons and as the film opens we are in media res: he is casing a local art museum for a heist. We quickly realise that he is a man of little moral worth: he uses his sons as cover and smuggles out a stolen figurine in his wife’s purse while letting them go through security on his their own. Later in the film he will claim he did it for them: the LFF audience guffawed at that. 

Josh O’Connor (CHALLENGERS) is brilliant as the “mastermind”, JB Mooney, in a thankless role. This is basically his film - he is in every scene - and if he were any less personally charismatic the film would be unbearable. Alana Haim’s role as his wife is even more thankless as her character is emotionally withdrawn. It’s a real relief when we get a great cameo from John Magaro (PAST LIVES) who at least brings some warmth and humanity to the film. 

Reichardt’s lensing and colour palette are beautiful. There’s a particularly elegant bravura shot that goes 360 degrees in a motel room. I was genuinely curious how the third act would play out. But the real star behind the lens is composer Rob Mazurek who gives us a kinetic jazz score that propels act one - the heist - and act two - the concealment. It is notable that as that score, and the action, falls away in act three, the movie really loses its energy. 

THE MASTERMIND is rated R and has a running time of 117 minutes. It played Cannes, Telluride and London. It will be released in the USA on October 17th and in the UK on October 24th.

SEPTEMBER 5*****

SEPTEMBER 5 is a stunning film depicting the horrific and murderous attack on Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics by the Palestinian terrorist group Black September. Where Kevin Macdonald's superb and comprehensive documentary ONE DAY IN SEPTEMBER gives us all the angles and the whole story, this new film tells the story from the perspective of the ABC sports journalists who were in the Olympic Village.  As it happened, this was the first Olympics that took advantage of satellite broadcasting to bring live coverage to the world.  As a result, this was the first terrorist attack broadcast live to the world - well before Mumbai or 9-11.  And it created both iconic images which are used as live in this film - but also deep moral questions about how far live coverage enables and recruits for terrorists.

As the film opens we are in the dark, claustrophobic ABC sports-room recreated by director Tim Fehlbaum in precise detail.  The journalists hear shots fired and suddenly realise they are in the midst of an attack.  They have to figure out how to wheel heavy camera equipment out to the village to shoot footage of the apartments where the Olympians are being held.  And they have to wrestle satellite slots to broadcast what they have.  In a powerful and pivotal performance, Leonie Benesch (THE WHITE RIBBON) plays a young German journalist who has to become an impromptu translator, listening in to police radio and local news reports.  Meanwhile, the always brilliant Peter Sarsgaard plays the Sports-journo boss who has to wrestle with his home news team who argue that mere sports reporters are out of their depth, and retain control of "his" story.  

There are two iconic and notorious moments. The first is when the journalists realise that the terrorists are actually watching their footage, and can see German cops attempting a rescue operation, because no-one switched off the TV feed to the apartment block. It's then that we get that iconic image of the hooded terrorist looking out of the apartment window and straight down the barrel of the TV camera.  The second iconic and notorious moment is when an ABC journalist (played brilliantly here by John Magaro) chooses to relay an unconfirmed report that all the sportsmen have been released alive and well. He wants the scoop. Simple as. 

Kudos to Fehlbaum, his production team and in particular his editor Hansjoerg Weissbrich, for creating a film of such taut, spare, suspense and high stakes.  The look and feel of it take you right into 1972 and into the fast-paced need for judgment.  It gives you sympathy for real people making tough choices in uncharted territory. Most of all, I loved the way in which the real footage of on-air broadcasts was seamlessly woven into the fictional recreation. So you can see Magaro's character speaking apparently to an on-air presenter and that presenter relaying the information he has been given. It's a masterclass of editorial brilliance.

SEPTEMBER 5 is rated R and has a running time of 95 minutes. It played Venice, Toronto and Telluride 2024. It was released in the USA on January 17th and in the UK on February 6th.

PAST LIVES*****

The charm of the road not taken is that one can reminisce and reimagine safely from the comfort of that choice now being closed off.  Celine Song's debut feature PAST LIVES asks what would happen if the road not taken was never quite in the rear-view mirror but persisted as an option in the present day, tugging at one's sleeve and distracting us from the seemingly happy life now lived. What if our choices were still open to be re-litigated?

Nora (Greta Lee) and Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) are childhood sweethearts in Korea.  They are on the verge of a sweet pre-pubescent romance and even have a charming date in a park chaperoned by her mum when Nora's family emigrate to Canada.  

Twelve years later, Nora and Hae Sung rediscover each other via social media and create a Skype romance that moves rapidly from whimsical to serious and then frightening.  Frightening because an actual romance will require compromise: Hae Song has to do his military service and is committed to studying engineering in Korea; Nora has been accepted to a writer's retreat in Montauk. Both put their careers before their relationship.  

We jump forward another twelve years and Nora is seemingly happily married to fellow writer Arthur (John Magaro). They seem happy despite the cultural barriers between them. He tries to learn Korean to narrow the gap - to go with her into her instinctive dream language. But at the same time, as she explains to him, she doesn't feel Korean, especially when she contrasts herself to Hae Sung. He is "so Korean". She is Korean American. 

Hae Sung finally travels to New York and the weight of two decades of emotion become apparent. How does one weigh up the the pull of childhood love and cultural resonance against the reality of change, maturity and cultural difference? Is Hae Song drawn to - does he even know and understand - Nora now? Is she attracted to Hae Song or to a nostalgia for Seoul?

Song's film is delicate, quiet, elegant and wistful. It speaks to the impossibility of going back and recapturing a different time and place - a certain innocence.  But it is not melancholy. It celebrates the fact that people grow and move forward and that while this might make a rekindled romance impossible and undesirable, it acknowledges the need for.... well....acknowledgement. You can both love your husband and acknowledge your real feelings for a childhood sweetheart, and the potency of a fantasy of the road not taken.

The three leads are all strong in this film. But for me the standouts are Song's taut, spare script and cinematographer Shabier Kirchner's washed-out palette and framing. Often we see characters set apart from each other in the same frame, or filmed from a distance while their voices utter dialogue unrelated to that moment. We are at a distance, withheld from their true feelings, and this perfectly captures the ambiguity about what those feelings truly are.  At the end of the film, we know far more than the unseen couple speculating on the triumvirate's relationships at a bar at the start of the film, but we don't really know them fully.  And that is as it should be.

PAST LIVES is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 105 minutes.  It played Berlin and Sundance 2023 and was released in the USA in June. It will be released in the UK on September 8th.