Good Blending Of A Contemporary Legal Battle With Reflections On History

Rating: 7/10 (29 September 2015)

I wasn't at all sure how interesting I would find this movie. It deals with an issue of importance. It's about the fight for restitution - the fight to return to Holocaust families or their descendants works of art that were stolen by the Nazis in Austria and then never returned by future Austrian governments. In particular, it's the story of Maria Altmann (played by Helen Mirren) - an aging woman whose parents perished in the Holocaust and who desperately wants back from a Vienna museum a portrait (dubbed the Woman in Gold) of her late aunt. To her, the painting represents a connection with her past and with her extended family and with happier times before the insanity of Nazism shattered so many lives. To the Austrian government, the painting is a piece of the national culture, and it's extremely valuable. Engaging the services of a young American attorney (played by Ryan Reynolds) the movie shows us the fight for the painting in both US courts and with various Austrian officials and arbitrations.
That is an important subject. People should have a right to what's theirs, and surely the Austrian government shouldn't want to keep that which was stolen by the Nazis? But, of course, as the movie alludes to, the Austrian government itself is less than open about the country's Nazi history, and many Austrians just want such claims to be tossed aside. I have to say that while the movie certainly makes you sympathize with Maria's battle, in truth I didn't find the legal battle over the painting to be especially riveting. And yet, even if the primary storyline of the movie didn't especially reel me in, the movie worked for me.
What really worked well was the interspersing of Maria's history throughout as flashbacks. We see the family in happy (pre-Nazi) times in Vienna, with Maria loved and cared for by her parents and by her aunt and uncle. We see the beginnings of the Nazi occupation and takeover and the growing anti-semitism of the country. We see Maria's escape (with her husband) from a Gestapo officer as they make it out of the country and to the US, and we see the heart- wrenching good-bye that Maria shared with her parents, as her father made one request of her: remember us. That particular scene came near the end of the movie and it helped put everything else in context. This wasn't about a painting. It was about honouring Maria's past - those she loved and who loved her.
This had the potential to be a sombre movie, and yet it didn't become that, primarily thanks to the interplay between Mirren and Reynolds. They worked well together as a team, and there was often a humorous tinge to this very serious subject that made even the dryness (as I perceived it) of the legal battle over ownership of the painting to be easy to watch.
Personally, I wouldn't rank this as a masterpiece, but it's a well done movie about a very important subject. (7/10)