Familiar Tale not Without its Clichéd Elements, but Compelling Nonetheless

Rating: 6/10 (23 July 2016)

WOMAN IN GOLD mines the apparently inexhaustible subject of Nazi atrocities during World War Two. This time it centers around Maria Altmann (Helen Mirren), an Austrian refugee forced to leave her homeland after the Anschluss of 1938, when Hitler's troops invaded. They came in and stole many of the family's treasures, including valuable paintings by Gustav Klimt. Three years later the paintings were given to the Belvedere Museum in Vienna, where they are still on display.
After burrowing through long-lost paperwork, Maria and her companion, hotshot lawyer Randy Schönberg (Ryan Reynolds), the grandson of another refugee, the Austrian composer Arnold Schönberg, decide to take on the museum in an attempt to restore the paintings - especially the eponymous "Woman in Gold" (a painting of Altmann's aunt) to their rightful owner. There follows a series of courtroom battles, following the familiar trope of the little person taking on the institution.
While Mirren offers us a convincing Austro-English accent, she is manifestly too young for the role (the real Altmann was in her eighties when she began efforts to pursue the Belvedere through the courts). At times it seems as if Mirren is offering us a reprise of her role in THE QUEEN (2006), right down to the sliver of lip-gloss on her otherwise pale features. Reynolds doesn't have much to do except to put on a concerned expression, especially while trying to deal with his wife Pam (Katie Holmes), and stand up bravely in court against the apparently implacable attorney working for the Austrian government (Rolf Saxon).
What redeems the film is its palpable seriousness of purpose. Production designer Jim Clay has worked hard to recreate the atmosphere in the immediate wake of the Anschluss, where cheering crowds of Hitler supporters are counterbalanced by antisemitic mobs keen to root out as many so-called "enemies of the state" as possible. Most of the sequences taking place in the past are photographed in washed-out colors (by Ross Emery), that serve the symbolic function of suggesting how the Nazi occupation deprived what had been a multicultural society of much of its life-blood.
Based on historical fact, the outcome can be easily discerned from about halfway through the film. Nonetheless director Curtis prompts us to reflect on the ethics of the entire campaign - although Maria deserves to have her family property restored to her, is the persistent campaign conducted on her behalf really worth it? What good does it do to rake up the past, especially the series of traumatic events leading up to and including her enforced flight from her homeland?