Thoughts on 'Woman in Gold'

We went to the Bow-Tie Chelsea on Friday afternoon to see 'Woman in Gold'.  The film, directed by Simon Curtis from a screenplay written by Alexi Kaye Campbell, is about the repatriation of 'Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I' painted by Gustav Klimt.  It stars Dame Helen Mirren as Maria Altmann, Adele Bloch-Bauer's niece, and Ryan Reynolds as E. Randol (Randy) Schoenberg, Maria's lawyer and the grandson of the composer Arnold Schoenberg.

Poster for 'Woman in Gold'

The movie is scattered (quite literally) over three time periods: the early 1900's when the portrait was painted and Maria was enthralled by her glamorous Aunt Adele who died in 1925; the mid-to-late 1930's when Maria married the opera singer Fritz Altmann and they escaped from Vienna after the Anschluss (the Nazi takeover of Austria in March, 1938); and the period from 1998 thru 2006 when Maria and Randy fought the Austrian government all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to regain her aunt's portrait.  The fact that Maria Altmann then sold the portrait to Ronald Lauder for his Neue Galerie for $135 million is touched upon only as a footnote -- in the movie Maria rebuffs Lauder's attempt to finance the legal battle for the painting and seems to reject his interest in acquiring it.  The movie does show Randy looking on the internet for the value of Klimt's works, but implies that this was only to convince his law firm to take on Maria's case.  We are left with the impression that Maria's desire to obtain the portrait which was hanging in the Belvedere Gallery in Vienna at the time was completely personal -- love for her Aunt Adele and retaliation against the people of Austria for their anti-semitism and support of the Nazis.

'Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I' by Gustav Klimt, oil, silver and gold on canvas (1907)
 from Neue Galerie, New York.

The movie is strewn with brilliant cameos, some by well-known actors -- Charles Dance (as Randy's managing law partner), Elizabeth McGovern (as a federal judge), Jonathan Pryce (as Chief Justice William Rehnquist) and many others.  Helen Mirren's central performance as Maria Altmann is remarkably layered, but Ryan Reynolds is merely adequate as Randy.  Daniel Bruhl gives a wonderfully nuanced performance as Hubertus Czernin (who exposed Kurt Waldheim as a Nazi) the Austrian who guides them through the convoluted world of Viennese culture and law.   

The real problem is that the plot lacks a coherent point of view or consistent emotional tone.  It requires too much effort from the audience to put together a jigsaw puzzle of disparate chunks of present and past; fiction and fact; events shown and context surmised.  Instead, this effort should have been supplied by the film's director, writer and editor before it was released.