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| The Mastermind (MUBI Editions) Photo: MUBI |
The Mastermind, ISBN-13: 979-8991658027, RRP £35.00.
The Mastermind, a delicately constructed tale of a heist gone wrong, is a beautiful piece of craft. Indeed for every way that its protagonist's planning is undercut there are subtle decisions throughout that mean our attention is never distracted by a lack of care behind the camera. The Mastermind is, to me at least, a film like The Brutalist that has a protagonist who may not, in fact, be the eponymous character. That level of uncertainty, of questioning brought about by the use of the definite, is one of the film's hallmarks.
That focus is matched in this, only MUBI publishing's second book. Read Frame Type Film was a gorgeous piece, and in my review of that I anticipated eagerly their next work(s) and The Mastermind does not disappoint. The Mastermind is the first in the MUBI Editions Lights! series. These will be dedicated to MUBI’s own productions and releases. Given that those include films like this, Decision To Leave, The Substance, and Gasoline Rainbow, that holds promise. From this evidence, MUBI are more than fulfilling that.
First physicality - the 'book' is not. It is a slip-case which contains four smaller volumes. Those who have seen the film will already recognise that format as an homage to the case in which JB will conceal stolen goods. The cardboard case is an abstract by Daniel Baker, drawing from Arthur Dove's own abstract works that are featured in the heist. It's a film covering (no pun intended) that carries the stickers which identify it, with an open side and the bottom carrying things like the ISBN and material designation there'd be nothing to identify it on a shelf.
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| The Mastermind book slip case |
That would, I suspect, make anyone curious to investigate it. Those who wish to preserve information at the expense of mystery can probably carefully cut the side that holds the four texts in, but even as I was taking a craft knife to it I wondered if I'd let the cleverness of a plan distract me from its consequences.
I cannot stress enough how delighted I was drawing the texts from within the case. I'd already had the aesthetically pleasing parallel of seeing The Mastermind in a small suburban museum and arts complex, a building of a similar vintage and design to the location of the heist. One of the elements is a foldout guide to the work of Arthur Dove, presented as a pamphlet from that Framingham Museum of Art. It unfolds to a poster eight pages in size, but the other seven (after the 'front cover' within this 'book' within a 'book') carry high quality pictures of Dove's work, and an enlightening essay by Alex Mackaye. It's only that Mackaye's career as an art installer at the Philips Collection Museum of Art, started 28 years after the film, that signals anachronism. The paper and typeface credits do too, but their weight (in all senses) is perfectly judged, and one suspects much easier to get up a ladder.
Secondly, though only just, content. The largest volume's cover contains the credits for the film. As a companion to The Mastermind that's a lovely touch, but the photographs and text inside highlight the work of so many of those named that it's appropriate. There are details of everything from suits to sausages to skittles, the only thing that undercuts the architectural accuracy is a charming photograph of two soon-to-be-adopted kittens looming over a scale model. There are tales of construction, even reconstruction within it, and all of it added to my understanding and appreciation of the film.
One has no text at all, save that captured in its photographs. I'm not even absolutely certain which way up it goes, which felt appropriate for a film that so heavily features abstract modernist art. There is a clue in a brave little (stolen) soldier but happening across him a fair few pages in is at once an inversion and a subversion. Again and again, in this the first of MUBI Editions 'Lights' series, I was given the opportunity to delight in something that had me reaching for words like synechdoche or an almost synesthetic satisfaction.
Thirdly, thematic weight. Beyond structure, the uneasy lines of photographs taken from behind the scenes of things within the scenes, the element of reconstructing reconstruction. At the end of the wordiest of the four pieces, full of black and white photographs of the cast and an essay by Lucy Sante, Kelly Reichardt adds a small piece which explains how film and book came to be. Though it's geography that informs the phrase 'circular drive', the recursion and creation of the plans of The Mastermind and its protagonist. He is sufficiently self-sabotaging that he might be better called an autoantagonist were that not likely to require a level of self-awareness that's never evident. Instead the poise and balance is held by the film itself. At the end of her text, of the work as a whole, Kelly says [she] "hope[s] this object feels good in your hands". It does, with a level of clarity and craft that is at once testament and tribute to its subject(s).
Lastly, and within all of those above, quality. The film has a heft, and design collective The Aliens have captured that in this work, these works. If you are the kind of filmgoer who notices fonts, a fan of The Mastermind or any of Kelly Reichardt's work, a collector or fan of books on film, this is commended to you. If you're more than one of those then I would encourage you to acquire a copy forthwith. Though take a lesson from the film and do not seek to beg, borrow, or steal it; The Mastermind is out now with north American book stores, and will be available to buy in the UK and rest of the world from 17 February.
