{"id":4248,"date":"2015-04-07T06:37:52","date_gmt":"2015-04-07T10:37:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=4248"},"modified":"2015-04-30T06:50:13","modified_gmt":"2015-04-30T10:50:13","slug":"woman-in-gold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=4248","title":{"rendered":"Woman in Gold"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Klimt,

Adele Bloch-Bauer I by Gustav Klimt (photo: wikimedia)<\/p><\/div>\n

In Woman in Gold<\/em> (trailer<\/a>), Helen Mirren, chameleon-like, inhabits the body and personality of Maria Altmann, niece and heir of a prominent Jewish family in pre-WWII Vienna. The family\u2019s best-known member today is Maria\u2019s aunt Adele, whose portrait Gustav Klimt painted in 1907.<\/p>\n

The painting was appropriated during the Nazi era and for many years hung in the Austrian state\u2019s famous Belvedere Gallery, as \u201cthe Mona Lisa of Vienna.\u201d<\/p>\n

After her sister\u2019s death, Maria finds correspondence suggesting the painting was perhaps not left to the government of Austria in her aunt\u2019s will, as it claimed, and therefore not rightfully Austrian property. She hires a family friend\u2019s son, Randol Schoenberg (played by Ryan Reynolds), a young down-on-his-luck Los Angeles attorney, to look into the matter. Schoenberg, grandson of the composer\u2014another refugee from Nazified Austria\u2014is out of touch with his family\u2019s past and slow to recognize the significance of Maria\u2019s quest.<\/p>\n

Initially unwilling to take on the case, he is gradually drawn into it. Their bureaucratic battles with stonewalling Austrian officials soon unite the pair, and they are joined by a crusading Austrian journalist, Hubertus Czernin. Formidable legal and bureaucratic hurdles stand in the way of Maria being reuniting with the painting\u2014\u201cWhen you look at this painting, you see a work of art,\u201d Marie tells a reunification commission, \u201cI see my aunt.\u201d<\/p>\n

The story is another in a long line of mostly not happy stories of stolen art works in World War II, brought to renewed public awareness by movies and books like The Monuments Men<\/em><\/a> and Pictures at an Exhibition<\/a>. The opportunity to reunite beloved works of art and their owners is rapidly disappearing, yet this beautifully filmed movie, directed by Simon Curtis, shows the importance of continuing these efforts.<\/p>\n

Because this film is based on a true story, and I for one remembered how it ends, a certain inevitability about the outcome guides the plot. Perhaps this is what has caused reviewers (not me!) to find it dull, though they find the actors captivating. The movie\u2019s Rotten Tomatoes critics rating is a paltry 49%, but audiences were more in my camp, giving a rating of 88%. As a result of the audience reception, the film\u2019s distributor announced yesterday<\/a> that it will greatly expand its national distribution. If you like stories that touch on beauty, truth, and justice, you will like it, too!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Woman in Gold (trailer), Helen Mirren, chameleon-like, inhabits the body and personality of Maria Altmann, niece and heir of a prominent Jewish family in pre-WWII Vienna. The family\u2019s best-known member today is Maria\u2019s aunt Adele, whose portrait Gustav Klimt … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Woman in Gold - \"You see a work of art; I see my aunt,\" -- M. Altmann.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[266,118,57,104],"tags":[336,337,162,416,84,129],"class_list":["post-4248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-memoir","category-movies","category-the-morgue","tag-gustav-klimt","tag-helen-mirren","tag-movie","tag-real-life","tag-true-crime","tag-wars-and-conflicts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-16w","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4248"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4248\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4250,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4248\/revisions\/4250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}