A Fight to Reclaim Art Stolen by Nazis

Rating: 8/10 (9 September 2016)

This movie brings together an unlikely cast of Helen Mirren, Ryan Reynolds and Daniel Bruhl in what I found to be a highly satisfying drama, based on a true story concerning a great work of art by painter Gustav Klimt from from early 20th century Venna. I have always admired Helen Mirren's acting and I knew about Klimt from an exhibit at the National Gallery in Ottawa, some 15 years ago. We learn the background through a series of flashbacks that play through Mirren's memory as Maria Altmann, the child of a highly cultured family in Vienna, who were targeted by the Nazis during the occupation of Austria in World War II. She lived through the Nazi reign of terror during which Jewish families were humiliated, their property stolen and eventually they were deported to death camps. (There is one highly-charged chase scene that took place on foot through streets, and dark passages that had me on the edge of my seat.) As an older woman living in Pasadena she becomes acquainted with a young lawyer who is also part of her extended family. Ryan Reynolds as Arnold Schoenberg is at first reluctant to take on a mission to recover a work of art; he is busy starting a career and family, when they meet. However, he becomes engrossed with Maria's sister "The Woman in Gold", one of Klimt's paintings and soon becomes the catalyst keeping Mirren focused on her goal of getting some justice done. Daniel Bruhl, as a young Austrian journalist trying to erase the stain of Austria's flirtation with the Nazis, is their chief contact in the fight against a few arrogant elitists who seem to have learned nothing from their country's history. All told, it was a great movie--entertaining and tragic both but lightened by touches of humour and an alliance among three different people trying to deal with the evils of the past.