A Stunning FIlme and a Must-See

Rating: 8/10 (27 July 2015)

Warning; review contains spoilers The title of this stunning movie refers to a famous painting. Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I (better known as The Woman in Gold) is a 1907 painting by Gustav Klimt. The first of two portraits Klimt painted of Bloch-Bauer, it has been referred to as the final and most fully representative work of his golden phase.
Adele Bloch-Bauer (1881–1925) was a refined art-loving Viennese woman, a patron and close friend of Gustav Klimt The painting was among the thousands of valuable works of art stolen from Jewish families by the Nazis, and the movie details the true story of Maria Altmann's struggle to regain possession of the painting. The subject of the painting was Altmann's aunt, and Altman was present when Hitler's Nazi thugs looted the artwork from the family home in Vienna.
Helen Mirren gives yet another stunning performance as Maria Altmann, who, after the funeral of her sister discovers letters and papers in her sister's effects that prompt her to begin her journey to recover the painting.
Mirren is one of those rare actors and actresses who actually "become" the role they're portraying. Meryl Streep is another such actress. For example, when you watch a Tom Cruise movie, you're always very much aware that you're watching Tom Cruise at work. When you watch movies with actresses like Mirren and Streep in them the actresses become the character. They somehow have the ability to make you forget that you're watching someone plying a role. Mirren was totally convincing as an aging, machine gun toting, spy in Reds, and she is totally convincing in this film, as well.
Ryan Reynolds portrays the young lawyer who helped Maria Altmann recover her family property, and he showed in this film that he can be so much more than the sexy pretty boy he played in Green Lantern.
During their attempts to recover the painting, the story of Altmann's family, and her escape from Nazi-occupied Austria is told in a series of flashback, and we are reminded yet again of man's inhumanity to man.
Maria Altmann began her fight to recover the painting when she was 82 years old, and she died in 2011 at the age of 94.
At the risk of being repetitious, I will say it again, this was a stunning film. And a moving one.