Woman in Gold (2015)

'Woman in Gold' makes for a dazzling movie experience (even if at times it may leave you questioning it's authenticity). Having not been an admirer of Mirren's early screen work - she seems to have become better with age (well, for me anyway), I was taken with her portrayal of Maria Altman from start to finish (as also in 'The Queen'). Ryan Reynolds gives good support as the young Lawyer taking on a case above his station. Reynolds, whose style is somewhat reminiscent of a young Kevin Costner, plays the Randol Schoenberg part with conviction.

London born director Simon Curtis gives the proceedings an easy to watch style and with the help of documentary editor Peter Lambert, they keep the viewer engaged throughout. Curtis also gets to direct his American wife (in a guest style role) Elizabeth McGovern, who has since made England her home. First time feature screenplay writer Alexi Kaye Campbell has fashioned an interesting interpretation of the writings of Altman and Schoeenberg's own life experiences, looking back at yet another of humanity's all time low past atrocities - although as mentioned, for some, certain sections of the screenplay may not always ring true (?)

Cinematographer Ross Emery (Matrix) gets a chance to prove he's also good without the help of tons of big budget CGI. It's hard to tell who did what with the music score, credited to both Martin Phipps and Hans Zimmer but, it's pleasing in an unobtrusive manor. Design Guru's, Andrew Ackland-Snow and brothers Dominic and Giles Masters (Harry Potter) with the help of others, ensure it looks good - perhaps while also getting a chance to strut their stuff without being drenched in CGI.

As a minor point, some location settings in Austria seemed a little too devoid of people to give an accurate representation, still, it's an amazing human story, both informative and entertaining. It should please most sophisticated audiences, while letting us reflect on an episode from our dark past.

Fmovies: My original perception was that this was an indie flick that only played in the art houses because it was an artsy film. the truth is that it's a great film that simply didn't get the luck of the draw when it came with mass distribution. Woman in Gold would be at home with any of the Oscar nominees and contenders and would easily be considered more of an outright crowd pleaser than a film like Danish Girl (which got nominated in acting categories) or Brooklyn (which did make the final cut for Oscar).

The film is based on an eight-year-long quest by a California-based lawyer of Austrian descent and a longtime family friend from the motherland (the prior relationship between the characters is erased in the adaptation process) to reclaim confiscated art by the Nazis.

The film's main strength is that it's neither a holocaust story nor is it a standard courtroom drama, but it's a fresh new take on both genres. As for the former, the film feels fresh through its specificity to the Austrian experience and the specificity of a wealthy family. The film is more relatable to the experience of anyone descended of an immigrant who had to leave the old regime. As for the latter, the film's main challenge wasn't showing a guy having his flashy day in court but rather a long slog as it was taking a toll on his life. The film handles this challenge in pacing admirably.

More than that, the film flies on the strength of its central relationship. You never think of Ryan Reynolds (best known for subversive leading men or a smug action stars) and Helen Mirren as occupying the same universe but the chemistry between the two goes a long way towards making this film transformative.

The film is a powerful one about remembrance and loss. It teaches that one can't fix the past, but healing those wounds is a noble cause.

A WWII true story drama that deserves to be told on the screen. Helen Mirren gives yet another astounding performance and I was pleasantly surprised by Ryan Reynolds. What would attract audiences to WOMAN IN GOLD is its David Vs. Goliath story, everybody loves a story about an underdog taking on the impossible and that's what WOMAN IN GOLD essentially is.

Directed by Simon Curtis who gave us "My Week With Marilyn" four years ago, Helen Mirren plays an elderly Jewish woman named Maria Altmann who sixty years after she fled Vienna, Austria to escape the Nazis, starts her uphill legal battles to retrieve a valuable painting that was seized by the Nazis, a painting that is now in the possession of a museum in Austria. A young lawyer, Randy Schoenberg (Ryan Reynolds) helps Maria in her quest that receives resistance from the Austrian establishment. All the while her quest forces Maria to finally confront her past WWII provides a ton of stories for cinemas to depict, they will never run out of WWII materials, this one tackles the fact that thousands of artwork and paintings, that were stolen by Nazis, to this day, have never been restored to their rightful owners. Maria's story is just one of the thousands, and I think it's fascinating that WOMAN IN GOLD basically says that yes, sometimes we need to leave the past where it belongs, the past, but when the past committed a great deal of injustice on us, one can't just easily dismiss it and simply use 'the past' as an excuse to not pursue justice. It's obvious too from Helen Mirren's performance, Helen understands that Maria carries a certain guilt all these years, guilt that she blames herself for abandoning her family and abandoning their possessions. Mirren is excellent at presenting us this tortured conflicted soul, caught between being haunted by the past and the desperate need to forget and move on. And Ryan Reynolds holds his ground as the young persistent lawyer. I think people don't give Ryan enough credit because he's a heartthrob, but the man can pass as a struggling family man with strong conviction. I think WOMAN IN GOLD is an important film, unfortunately I doubt that it would be remembered during award season mainly because we're still fresh from another Weinstein Company's drama, "Philomena" a couple of years ago which also showed an elderly woman accompanied by a young lad, both on a crusade for the truth.

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Woman in Gold fmovies. Helen Mirren and Ryan Reynolds star in "Woman in Gold" from 2015, a true story about the quest of Maria Altmann to recover art stolen from her family by the Nazis in Vienna, the seat of anti-Semitism in Europe.

I just want to point out, to answer some of the reviews, that this is not a documentary, it's a movie. Movies combine events, change them around, omit them. No one wants to watch a tedious film that recognizes that it took a huge amount of time to get to the Supreme Court. If you want the actual, factual story of Maria Altmann's journey, you will need to read about it or see one of several documentaries. Films are meant to pique our interest.

Altmann speaks with a young attorney, Randy Shoenberg, about recovering The Woman in Gold, a painting by Klimt that is considered a symbol of Vienna. Klimt in fact painted a series of stunning portraits of Altmann's aunt, Adele Bloch-Bauer, who died of meningitis at the age of 44.

In her will, she asked her husband Ferdinand, who had seen the writing on the wall in Vienna and fled to Prague, to donate the paintings to the Austrian State Gallery.

Although he has just started a new job, Shoenberg travels to Vienna to see the will. Along the way there are flashbacks of Vienna in the '30s, where the Bloch-Bauer family lived in opulence. When the Nazis came to their home, they stripped the place of everything valuable - and there was a lot -- and put the family under house arrest.

Maria and her husband, an opera singer, manage to escape in a harrowing scene. In flashbacks, Maria is played by the remarkable Tatiana Maslany, the star of "Orphan Black," who looks incredibly like a brunette Mirren.

This is a touching, beautifully told story of one man's sacrifice and determination and a woman facing up to her past in order to seek justice.

Helen Mirren is one of my favorite actresses - here, she is a vibrant, energetic octogenarian who finds the struggle for the painting uncomfortable - several times, meeting a roadblock, she is ready to wash her hands of it, but Schoenberg won't let her. It represents her family to her, and some uncomfortable memories. You can see all of that in Mirren's multilayered performance.

Reynolds is excellent as a young man who believes in taking a chance - - he started and failed in his own law practice - and in this case, going for the gold, despite the fact that he has a wife (Katie Holmes), a baby, and one on the way, and an intolerant boss. It doesn't faze him and when Maria wants to quit, he is furious.

I disagree that there was no connection between them. In fact, there is a deep one. The quest for the painting comes to represent to him what it means to Maria

I highly recommend this film. There are tons of movies about the horrors perpetrated on Jews by the Nazis. The recovery of stolen art is one part of that horror. "You see a painting," she tells a group. "I see my aunt."

In Woman in Gold, Helen Mirren, chameleon-like, inhabits the body and personality of Maria Altmann, niece and heir of a prominent Jewish family in pre-WWII Vienna. The family's best-known member today is Maria's aunt Adele, whose portrait Gustav Klimt painted in 1907. The painting was appropriated during the Nazi era and for many years hung in the Austrian state's famous Belvedere Gallery, as "the Mona Lisa of Vienna." After her sister's death, Maria finds correspondence suggesting the painting was perhaps not left to the government of Austria in her aunt's will, as it claimed, and therefore not rightfully Austrian property. She hires a family friend's son, Randol Schoenberg (played by Ryan Reynolds), a young down-on-his-luck Los Angeles attorney, to look into the matter. Schoenberg, grandson of the composer—another refugee from Nazified Austria—is out of touch with his family's past and slow to recognize the significance of Maria's quest. Initially unwilling to take on the case, he is gradually drawn into it. Their bureaucratic battles with stonewalling Austrian officials soon unite the pair, and they are joined by a crusading Austrian journalist, Hubertus Czernin. Formidable legal and bureaucratic hurdles stand in the way of Maria being reuniting with the painting—"When you look at this painting, you see a work of art," Marie tells a reunification commission, "I see my aunt." The story is another in a long line of mostly not happy stories of stolen art works in World War II, brought to renewed public awareness by movies and books like The Monuments Men and Pictures at an Exhibition. The opportunity to reunite beloved works of art and their owners is rapidly disappearing, yet this beautifully filmed movie, directed by Simon Curtis, shows the importance of continuing these efforts. Because this film is based on a true story, and I for one remembered how it ends, a certain inevitability about the outcome guides the plot. Perhaps this is what has caused reviewers (not me!) to find it dull, though they find the actors captivating. As a result of the strong positive audience reception, the film's distributor will greatly expand its national distribution. If you like stories that touch on beauty, truth, and justice, you will like it, too!

I just got home from seeing this film, and I very much enjoyed it. I've been reading some of the negative reviews and trying to understand what they're on about, but I just don't get it. I think it was a great film and I'm glad I saw it. OK, maybe following all the legal machinations gets a little dry at points, but I'm happy with this. It means that the film makers *respect* the story. This isn't one of those atrocities that claims to be based on history, but in fact plays so fast-and-loose with the facts that what you are getting is almost entirely fiction (yes, "The Imitation Game", I'm looking at *you*). While I don't know the details of the actual history in this case, from what I'm able to make out it seems like this film stays pretty true to the facts. I, for one, am glad they resisted the trend of schmaltzing the thing up.