Movie Reviews

Woman In Gold refers to a painting by Gustav Klimt that is now on display at the Neue Galerie for German and Austrian Art in New York. How it got there? Well, that’s what this movie will tell you.

Maria Altmann (Helen Mirren) is a Jewish widower who fled to the US during WWII after the annexation of Austria and vowed to never return to her homeland. That changes however when Maria finds out that before she died, her sister had been fruitlessly trying to recover the painting (which is in fact a portrait Klimt made of her aunt) from the Austrian government. Together with the young and rather inexperienced lawyer Randy Schönberg (Ryan Reynolds), Maria continues the legal battle. As discouraging as it may seem.

Yes, The Woman In Gold is a movie about a legal procedure involving a painting. Doesn’t seem very exciting, does it? But it kinda is. Both Mirren and Reynolds are on a roll here and deliver some strong performances. The script might be a little too paint-by-numbers at times and some of the flashback scenes are a little jarring, but this one is definitely way more entertaining than the failure that was The Monuments Men.