Review: A Woman In Gold with Helen Mirren and Ryan Reynolds

4 / 5 stars
A Woman In Gold

WHAT price the past? In the case of elderly Jewish woman Maria Altmann (Helen Mirren) the answer is comfortably over $100 million.

 Helen Mirren and Ryan ReynoldsWEINSTEIN

Helen Mirren and Ryan Reynolds star in Woman in Gold

Director: Simon Curtis

Stars: Helen Mirren, Ryan Reynolds, Katie Holmes, Max Irons

(12A, 109mins)

That’s the rough valuation of a famous portrait by Gustav Klimt looted by the Nazis from Altmann’s family in Austria when she was a young woman. 

The Woman In Gold tells the remarkable story of how Maria - now in her twilight years and living in Los Angeles - sought to retrieve it and other artworks by teaming up with an inexperienced young lawyer, Randy Schoenberg (Ryan Reynolds) in the late Nineties and taking on the Austrian establishment.  

Of course she’s not in it for the money. Maria, an elegant, amusingly feisty woman, wants to make sure people remember the atrocities of the past “especially the young”, notably Randy himself who is also of Austrian extraction but shows little interest in his forebears, including composer Arnold Schoenberg (his grandfather). 

However, is it a past that Maria is prepared to truly confront and what are the implications for Randy of delving into his Austrian heritage? 

The lawyer with hotshot ambitions and the responsibilities of a young family finds himself putting everything on the line as he feels a powerful connection to his father’s home country. How much is factual is open to question (the filmmaker admit Randy’s characterisation is largely fictitious) but the result is that a potentially dry and disjointed legal to-and-fro which spanned several years becomes a thought-provoking and heartfelt human drama about who we are; a little clunky and lacking subtlety in places but compelling and finely acted. 

Mirren is terrific as Maria, a splendidly forthright widow who tries to gain redress for her family following the death of her sister and the discovery of papers suggesting she may have a chance of getting back the paintings which now hang in Vienna’s Belvedere Gallery; especially under new restitution laws in Austria. 

It is absorbing and, come the ending, unexpectedly moving

However, pleasingly Maria’s no battle-axe or stereotypically pugnacious Jewish mama (in fact, a little oddly, we never see any of her four children). She’s conflicted towards her traumatic past - episodes of which we witness in flashbacks - and wary of returning to Vienna which she hasn’t visited since escaping as a young woman with her opera singer husband Fritz (Max Irons); an episode grippingly reconstructed here. 

Randy - the son of a family friend keen to make his name - persuades her to to go to Vienna and so begins the pair’s lengthy struggle against the Austrian authorities. 

The centrepiece of their quest is now a “national icon”, Klimt’s Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, Maria’s beloved aunt, known simply as the Woman In Gold after the Nazis chose to erase the woman’s Jewish identity.

The picture is representative of Austria’s own complicated relationship with the past and trying to wrest it back opens up a “Pandora’s Box” in the words of local journalist Hubertus Czernin (Daniel Bruhl) who assists Maria and Randy.

The battle takes some intriguing twists and turns on both Austrian and US soil as Randy refuses to give up while Maria wrestles with doubts. “The past is the past and now we must let it go,” she says.

There is a streak of playful humour which helps offset the tragic historic circumstances borne out amusingly in the back-and-forth between Maria and Randy, although there is a serious undercurrent to their teasing.

Why are the young always in such a hurry? There is a nice moment when Maria visits Randy in his office early on and ignores his protests that he does not have time for lunch. “Everyone here is having a nervous breakdown,” she says, dragging him to a favourite deli to impart a bit of history. 

Reynolds (The Proposal, Safe House) is very good in a rare straight role, relaxed and likeable and enjoying an obvious rapport with his leading lady.  Confidently directed by Simon Curtis (My Week With Marilyn) from a smooth, well-constructed screenplay by Alexi Kaye Campbell the picture is too conventional to be an award contender but it is absorbing and, come the ending, unexpectedly moving.

Woman in Gold Official Trailer #1 (2015) - Ryan Reynolds, Helen Mirren Movie HD

Would you like to receive news notifications from Daily Express?