Mawkish but barely saved by Mirren's stiff upper lip

Rating: 4/10 (7 April 2015)

Mawkish, Simon Curtis' Woman in Gold is worth seeing for Helen Mirren as Maria Altmann, a Viennese Jewish refugee, who, after the death of her sister in the 1990s, fought for the return of Gustav Klimit portrait of her aunt Adele Bloch-Bauer—the woman in gold—as well as Apfelbaum, Birkenwald and Haueser in Unterach am Attersee, confiscated by the Nazis after Anschluss in 1938.
After the war, they were prominently displayed in the Belvedere museum. For Austria, Adele Bloch-Bauer I was considered the Mona Lisa of a resurrected and reunited Austria.
The Austrian authorities claimed that Adele Bloch-Bauer, who died of meningitis in 1925, had expressed a wish in writing that the Klimits should hang in the Belvedere.
As it turns out, the painting belonged to her husband, who, in his Swiss exile, bequeathed the paintings to his heirs, among whom Maria Altmann, neé Maria Victoria Bloch-Bauer.
So the stage is set for us to watch attentively Altmann's battle to reclaim what rightly belongs to her. As the narrative unfolds we become aware that restitution of art objects seized by the Nazis remain on the whole unreturned to the rightful owners or heirs.
George Clooney's Monuments Men touches on the matter, but the return of the art remains unanswered. The film's apotheosis glorifies how the US Army rescued it from the hands of the Russians, an early indication of the Cold War that lay in the ruins of Hitler's Third Reich.
Helen Mirren, it seems, is born to the role of the regal-bearing Maria Altmann, born into the Viennese haute bourgeoisie. She finds the right tone to the role thanks to the aloofness and solitary demeanor she displayed as Queen Elizabeth in her Oscar-winning role in The Queen. And to the countless noble women she say played in Shakespeare's and Racine's plays.
Straight backed, no nonsense, Altmann, albeit conflicted at times, pursues her goal with great poise and self-confidence that money and breeding in early life have provided. With her lawyer, the grandson of the Viennese composer Arnold Schonberg, nebbishly played by Ryan Reynolds, she attains her goal through arbitration in the liar of the Austrian lion.
Had the Austrian state openly acknowledged its complicity with the Nazis, and the robbery of her family heirlooms, Altmann would have been open to leaving the Woman in Gold in her full dignity and centrality in the Belvedere. But even today Austria claims victimhood, despite, as the film shows, the Viennese welcomed Anschluss with Germany gleefully and with open arms.
Curtis briefly davens to the Holocaust by Randol Schonberg's visit to the Holocaust monument in Vienna, fulfilling a promise he made to his mother. Our eye is firmly stilled by brief scenes of humiliation of Jews Altmann's return to the city of birth conjures up vividly.
In fact, she has vowed never to return to Austria, but her business requires it. Although the youthful Altmann speaks German, the older Altmann refuses to speak her mother tongue throughout the film, until the end.
To vanquish disturbing dragons of the past, Altmann returns to the luxurious apartment of her youth. And it is then as she ascends the Art Deco winding stairwell, she finds the doors open, and to her surprise, it is not occupied by a family but by the state-run railway firm ÖBB, taken aback she asks in German if she could visit the rooms.
And as she wanders through the vast apartment, the happy moments of her privileged youth are fondly recalled and then at the crowning moment of recollection the salon doors open and there is her aunt Adele smiling and welcoming and behind her hangs Klimit's Woman in Gold in all its glory.
Altmann sold Adele Bloch-Bauer I to the Ronald Lauder for his New York Neue Galerie for $135 million, and on one condition that Austria's 'Mona Lisa' remain on permanent display.
With her newfound wealth, she helped set up Schonberg's law practice specializing on art restitution and made charitable gifts to cultural and social organizations. She died at 94 in 2011 knowing that in her own way she had righted, even so slightly, history's wrong.
For as she tells Schonberg at the film's beginning, what she is doing is to remind the young of the past and to seek justice.