Touching and emotional but seemingly bland

Rating: 7/10 (23 June 2015)

Woman in Gold is one woman's story and perseverance to reclaim the possessions stolen from her family by the Nazi regime nearly sixty years earlier.
Elderly Maria Altmann, played by Helen Mirren, must return to her home city of Vienna and wage in battle against the Austrian government for one of its most prized national treasures, Gustave Klimt's "Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I." Fighting for restitution in a battle that means near certain defeat, she and lawyer Randy Schoenberg (Ryan Reynolds) engage in a lengthy legal battle to recover the painting to its rightful owner.
A film as much in the past as it is in the present, Woman in Gold perfectly conveys the open wounds left by living through such an atrocity as Nazi persecution. Told through seamless flashbacks to the era and rise of the Third Reich in Austria during World War II, there are two stories being told in the film. The first being the fight of Maria and Randy for the return of her family's heirlooms and the story of outrageous crimes her elders faced.
In the moments when the Nazis are ravaging the homes of Jewish families, a hatred and anxiety will bubble up from within you at the injustice and hopelessness of the events. The blind hostilities that led to near eradication of so many families' histories and how unremarkable Altmann's experience is only fuels the emotional connection the audience has with the narrative.
The judicial happenings are well paced and a lull never occurs, nor does any part of it feel unnecessarily sensationalized for cinematic effect, and the performances are powerful and realistic. While sad, uplifting and historically informative, there is a part of Woman in Gold that feels blandly disjointed. Perhaps it is the lack of creative mark on the drama that leads it to feeling average and not miraculous.
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