Tom's Two Cents : Woman in Gold

The Franklin County Friends of the Library began its Fall Film Fest this past Thursday with the presentation of a BBC 2015 film, "Woman in Gold," starring Helen Mirren and Ryan Reynolds as Maria Altmann, an older California Jewish woman originally from Austria, and her family friend, Randy Schoenberg, an aspiring young lawyer with Austrian roots.  The film focuses on a Nazi art theft in 1939 during Hitler's occupation of Austria (the "Anschluss ") and its subsequent persecution of the Jews in Vienna in particular.  A poignant series of flashbacks tells both the early story of Maria's growing up years in a wealthy Jewish family in Vienna and her later story as its last surviving member in Pasadena, California, where she owns a ladies' shop.

Ostensibly this is a tale of Maria's attempts to retrieve her stolen art property, in particular a portrait of her Aunt Adele by the famous Austrian artist, Gustave Klimpt, hanging in the Belvedere Museum in Vienna.  She is aided and supported by a young American lawyer, whose grandfather was none other than the famous atonal composer, Arnold Schoenberg.  On a much deeper level, this is a story about family, loss, justice and retribution, all of these threads woven together into a series of legal suspense episodes of the "will-she," "won't-she" obtain justice type.  Like any good legal-suspense story, the movie keeps the viewer guessing almost to the end.  But it is also a true story.

With settings like Pasadena and Vienna, the film has a lot going for it from the beginning, but it is the authenticity of the flashback episodes, especially the intimate scenes of this cultured family in Vienna before the War, that make it work most successfully.  Helen Mirren is, as always, supremely in command of her role, and the interaction between her and Reynolds, both as friend, supporter and sometimes even antagonist, makes for a convincing personal conflict.  Also, among the seemingly endless films about World War II, and the Holocaust in particular, this is a different and more personal perspective.  Quality films of this type rarely make it to the Provinces, and we are especially lucky to have our local Library Friends sponsor such events.