‘Woman in Gold’ Stars Helen Mirren in Tug of War Over Artwork
“Woman in Gold” rests heavily on the squared shoulders of Helen Mirren, whose character, Maria Bloch Altmann, is a proud Austrian lady who fled the Nazi scourge to settle first in New England in finally in Beverly Hills.
Reawakened to the past by the death of her sister, at whose funeral she is first observed, Bloch wages a protracted legal battle to regain possession of a canvas taken from her family by the Nazis 60 years earlier.
Reawakened to the past by the death of her sister, at whose funeral she is first observed, Bloch wages a protracted legal battle to regain possession of a canvas taken from her family by the Nazis 60 years earlier.
In this real life story, the artwork, Gustav Klimt’s “The Lady in Gold" is a regal paintin, encrusted with gold leaf, the famous Adele Bauer, of Vienna.
Some consider it the Mona Lisa of Austria, and to some Austrians, keeping this magnificent work in Vienna was a matter of Austrian honour.
Although Maria Bloch lives modestly in Beverly Hills, as embodied by Ms. Mirren, she is a lady of enormous cultural refinement and as formidable a personage in her way as Ms. Mirren’s sometime stage and screen alter ego, Queen Elizabeth II.
Assuming a clipped accent and maintaining a rigid posture, she exudes a keen-eyed patrician composure.
Assuming a clipped accent and maintaining a rigid posture, she exudes a keen-eyed patrician composure.
Mirren’s portrayal of Maria Bloch, a sometimes fearsome lady who doesn’t suffer fools, is ultimately sympathetic.
Her chilly reserve and aristocratic manners camouflage a reservoir of feeling.
Her dry-eyed performance is the more impressive because the role could so easily have been milked for weepy sentimentality.
For apart from Mirren’s performance, “Woman in Gold” smugly and shamelessly pushes familiar buttons.
Her chilly reserve and aristocratic manners camouflage a reservoir of feeling.
Her dry-eyed performance is the more impressive because the role could so easily have been milked for weepy sentimentality.
For apart from Mirren’s performance, “Woman in Gold” smugly and shamelessly pushes familiar buttons.
As directed by Simon Curtis from a screenplay by Alexi Kaye Campbell, “The lady in gold” turns a complicated story with many debatable questions about artistic provenance and ownership into a standard historical drama about good guys versus bad guys.
The "bad guys" are the Austrians, portrayed as cold, arrogant enemies of truth and justice.
Their legal battle to keep "The lady in gold" in Austria is subtly used as evidence of a residual nostalgia for the Nazi occupation, tinged with anti-Semitism, although none is voiced outright.
The "good guys" are Holocaust refugees and their American descendants, who take Maria Bloch’s case all the way to the United States Supreme Court.
Their legal battle to keep "The lady in gold" in Austria is subtly used as evidence of a residual nostalgia for the Nazi occupation, tinged with anti-Semitism, although none is voiced outright.
The "good guys" are Holocaust refugees and their American descendants, who take Maria Bloch’s case all the way to the United States Supreme Court.
The story begins with the death of Maria Bloch’s sister, in whose belongings are records of her unsuccessful effort to recover five Klimt paintings displayed in the Palazzo Belvedere in Vienna.
Maria Bloch engages Randy Schoenberg (played Ryan Reynolds), grandson of the composer Arnold Schoenberg and an inexperienced lawyer, who persuades Maria Bloch to accompany him to Vienna, a city to which she vowed she would never return after fleeing the Nazis.
Maria Bloch engages Randy Schoenberg (played Ryan Reynolds), grandson of the composer Arnold Schoenberg and an inexperienced lawyer, who persuades Maria Bloch to accompany him to Vienna, a city to which she vowed she would never return after fleeing the Nazis.
A legal fight over the struggle for ownership of a painting is hardly the stuff of high drama.
And the screen play can’t find a way to make that conflict, or the ethical and moral issues involved, compelling beyond the obvious guessing game of who will win.
And the screen play can’t find a way to make that conflict, or the ethical and moral issues involved, compelling beyond the obvious guessing game of who will win.
Maria’s ambivalence about continuing to pursue what sometimes seems to be a hopeless quest is the dramatic core of the film.
Once Maria Bloch and Randy Schoenberg arrive in Vienna, the paper work concerning the history of "The lady is gold" is withheld from them.
Only with the help of a local journalist can they penetrate the wall of secrecy and evasion and learn that "The lady in gold", commissioned by Adele Bauer’s husband, Mr. Bloch, and later taken by the curator to the Palazzo Belvedere, belonged NOT to the sittee, Adele Bauer, but to her husband, who willed it to his heirs, including Maria Victoria Bloch.
Once Maria Bloch and Randy Schoenberg arrive in Vienna, the paper work concerning the history of "The lady is gold" is withheld from them.
Only with the help of a local journalist can they penetrate the wall of secrecy and evasion and learn that "The lady in gold", commissioned by Adele Bauer’s husband, Mr. Bloch, and later taken by the curator to the Palazzo Belvedere, belonged NOT to the sittee, Adele Bauer, but to her husband, who willed it to his heirs, including Maria Victoria Bloch.
Maria Bloch changes and softens as the story advances.
In Vienna, she is bombarded with memories of her childhood and the 1938 Anschluss, the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany.
In Vienna, she is bombarded with memories of her childhood and the 1938 Anschluss, the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany.
The film’s most gripping scenes are flashbacks portraying the Nazis’ triumphant entrance into Vienna, where welcoming throngs line the streets.
One especially upsetting scene shows Jews forced to scrub sidewalks to the delight of contemptuous onlookers.
As unsettling as they are, such moments in a dramatically undernourished film make the viewer acutely aware of being emotionally manipulated.
When the Maria Bloch (played by Tatiana Maslany) flees Vienna, her parents’ final words, “remember us,” strike a tone of mawkish nobility that characterise the heavy-handedness of the screen play and of the score, by Martin Phipps and Hans Zimmer.
One especially upsetting scene shows Jews forced to scrub sidewalks to the delight of contemptuous onlookers.
As unsettling as they are, such moments in a dramatically undernourished film make the viewer acutely aware of being emotionally manipulated.
When the Maria Bloch (played by Tatiana Maslany) flees Vienna, her parents’ final words, “remember us,” strike a tone of mawkish nobility that characterise the heavy-handedness of the screen play and of the score, by Martin Phipps and Hans Zimmer.
The casting of Reynolds as Randy is especially unfortunate.
Playing a lawyer, this, some say, Hollywood light-weight, given glasses to make him look serious, delivers, some say, a bland, colourless performance.
OTHERS LOVE HIM.
As Randy’s deepening involvement in the case becomes an obsession, causing him to quit his job and devote everything to Maria Bloch’s cause, Reynolds works hard and even breaks down in tears, but his performance is, to some, shallow and unconvincing.
Playing a lawyer, this, some say, Hollywood light-weight, given glasses to make him look serious, delivers, some say, a bland, colourless performance.
OTHERS LOVE HIM.
As Randy’s deepening involvement in the case becomes an obsession, causing him to quit his job and devote everything to Maria Bloch’s cause, Reynolds works hard and even breaks down in tears, but his performance is, to some, shallow and unconvincing.
It remains for Mirren to salvage a film that without her would be a laborious slog down a well-trodden path.
“Woman in Gold” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Some disturbing thematic elements and brief strong language.
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