Woman in Gold
Directed by: Simon Curtis
Written by: Alexi Kaye Campbell
Starring: Helen Mirren, Ryan Reynolds, Daniel Brühl, Katie Holmes, Tatiana Maslany, Max Irons, Charles Dance, Antje Traue, Elizabeth McGovern, Jonathan Pryce, Frances Fisher, Moritz Bleibtrau, Tom Schilling, Allan Corduner, Henry Goodman
Drama - 109 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 30 Mar 2015
Written by: Alexi Kaye Campbell
Starring: Helen Mirren, Ryan Reynolds, Daniel Brühl, Katie Holmes, Tatiana Maslany, Max Irons, Charles Dance, Antje Traue, Elizabeth McGovern, Jonathan Pryce, Frances Fisher, Moritz Bleibtrau, Tom Schilling, Allan Corduner, Henry Goodman
Drama - 109 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 30 Mar 2015
Austria has a crack team of P.R. consultants. They convinced most of the world Adolf Hitler was German and Beethoven was Austrian, when the reverse is true. After the Anschluss and the systematic annihilation of Vienna’s Jewish population during World War II, Austria and others benefitted from the looting and crimes against humanity conducted by the Nazis. Austria’s museums and art galleries flooded with the intake of stolen masterpieces; how they received these works of art were conveniently left off the paintings’ histories. Woman in Gold is ‘based on the true story’ of one woman who fled Vienna, lost everything, and much later in life fought the Austrian government to recover what was stolen from her family.
The eponymous Woman in Gold is actually Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I. It is oil and gold leaf, enormous, and was considered Austria’s Mona Lisa as it hung in the Belvedere Gallery after its rightful owner was murdered in a concentration camp. 60 years later, the heir to the painting, Maria Altmann (Helen Mirren, 2014’s The Hundred-Foot Journey), wants it back. Hiring a distracted, young lawyer son of a good friend who has both a new job and a new baby, Randol Schoenberg (Ryan Reynolds, 2012’s Safe House), the two begin a David vs. Goliath legal adventure launching them from wry amusement and mockery all the way to United States Supreme Court and making the sovereign Austrian government quake in their boots.
The eponymous Woman in Gold is actually Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I. It is oil and gold leaf, enormous, and was considered Austria’s Mona Lisa as it hung in the Belvedere Gallery after its rightful owner was murdered in a concentration camp. 60 years later, the heir to the painting, Maria Altmann (Helen Mirren, 2014’s The Hundred-Foot Journey), wants it back. Hiring a distracted, young lawyer son of a good friend who has both a new job and a new baby, Randol Schoenberg (Ryan Reynolds, 2012’s Safe House), the two begin a David vs. Goliath legal adventure launching them from wry amusement and mockery all the way to United States Supreme Court and making the sovereign Austrian government quake in their boots.
Alternating between the recent present and the long ago past, Woman in Gold shines brightest when it shows off the grandeur of Vienna’s inter-war years. Before the Nazis marched into town, Vienna was a cosmopolitan ground zero for a bevy of Jewish intellectuals, artists, and musicians. Sigmund Freud, Gustav Mahler, and Arnold Schoenberg were all Viennese giants. Coincidentally, Maria’s lawyer, Randol Schoenberg, is Arnold’s grandson. Real life Randol never knew his grandfather and never gave much thought to his ancestral Austrian past as he was raised a California boy through and through. Randol experiences an emotional awakening as he fights his way up the judicial ladder and confronts the evils from the not so long past. Schoenberg arrives at his realizations a bit too overtly for the film ending up crying in a public restroom. Randol’s obsession with righting past wrongs also leads to far too many conventional run-ins. Randol’s wife, Pam (Katie Holmes, 2014’s The Giver), accuses him of irresponsibility and Randol also annoys his boss who plays the Police Captain role ordering Randol to stay away from this case.
Director Simon Curtis says the painting’s story is emblematic of the 20th century. It was painted in 1907 in Old World Austria, the seat of the declining yet still powerful Austro-Hungarian Empire. It was stolen by the Third Reich and left for all to see as one of Vienna’s most treasured centerpieces. Ending up where it is now (as I try to refrain from spoilers), the painting witnessed the collapse of the Old World Order, its choppy reconstruction, and the New World’s ascension. Curtis appears to relish telling stories based on real people and episodes as his first film, 2011’s My Week with Marilyn, charted Ms. Monroe’s life during the filming of The Prince and the Showgirl. He has a knack for thoughtful storytelling founded upon overlooked historical tidbits.
Curtis mirrors famous photographs and reference material of the Nazi’s initial march into Vienna recreating what actually happened. He was allowed to hang swastikas from the emblematic town hall and lined up cheering crowds throwing flowers and waving Nazi flags. Director of Photography, Ross Emery, contrasts past and present using color saturation, or lack of it. Present day Los Angeles and Vienna are bright, hi-def, and full of color. 1938 Vienna is almost gray, dusty, and worn. Curtis plays around with the audience a little bit with the compare/contrast between now and then. The film’s most startling edit occurs circa the year 2000 in Vienna watching a mom and her children enjoy a sunny day at an outside café. A car cuts in front of the camera for a split second and all of a sudden we’re looking at the same location, the same café, but in circa 1925 of Adele Bloch-Bauer and her niece, Maria. It is a phenomenal shift.
First time screenwriter Alexi Kaye Campbell juggles multiple narrative threads through a myriad of time periods including 1998-2006, 1938, the early 1920s, and even a brief scene of the portrait’s creation. Bravo to Curtis for shooting the scenes set in Vienna in German and not German-accented English. This is a win for authenticity and a fuller appreciation of the weighty historical subject matter. Woman in Gold ends with a strong message as 1938 Maria (Tatiana Maslany, Orphan Black), just about to initiate her escape plan and evade certain death, says goodbye to her parents. Their message? “Remember us.”
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