1 hr & 49 min, color, 2015
There is a statute of
limitations for the prosecution of many crimes, a point in time beyond which
nobody can be brought to trial for their commission, even in the face of
glaring evidence. But there is no such
statute pertaining to the achievement of belated poetic justice, even if only
in small measure. An eighty-one-year-old
Jewish woman named Maria Altmann (Helen Mirren), a Holocaust survivor having
escaped to America in the early 1940s and having made her home in Los Angeles
for the entire intervening sixty-plus years, was given a chance to prove the
truth of that in no uncertain terms. The
screen story concerns her relentless quest to retrieve prized paintings and art
objects stolen from her family by the Nazis in Austria and hanging in Austria’s
Belvedere Art Gallery. She felt they
should be given to her as the sole surviving family member.
It is the private papers of
her sister Luise bequeathed to Maria upon Luise’s death that incite her to
investigate the matter of their ownership and pursue a case. It is difficult enough to fight “city hall”,
but she has to fight a foreign government and the obstinacy of an entrenched
national bureaucracy who consider themselves the protectors of national art
treasures, however obtained. Silently
lurking at the edge of the dispute is the unmentionable complicity of the
Austrian nation in the genocidal perpetrations of the Nazis.
In the company of a young
Jewish lawyer from LA by the name of Randy Schoenberg, grandson of the famous
composer as it so happens, she goes back to Austria, breaking her vow never to
set foot in Europe again. It does not
take them long before they discover that they have a mammoth fight on their
hands, one that keeps them doggedly pushing for years before achieving success.
What we have here is not only
an exciting true tale of contending plaintiffs and defendants, but also a very
emotional story told with great passion and fervor and without
sentimentality. Because of excellent
screen writing by Alexi Kaye Campbell and beautiful directing by Simon Curtis,
the victimized family, with whom we become acquainted in period sequences from
the wartime ordeal, gets under the skin; we are drawn into their heartbreak but
also into their quality of character and courage. I must confess I was far more deeply touched
than I expected to be. The fate of a
canvas became far less crucial to me than the dignity of the human beings
caught in the Nazi grip. I was moved to
considerable tears before the journey ended, emotionally won over.
The movie opens as the
portrait called Woman in Gold is being painted shortly after the turn of the
twentieth century. The artist is the
famous Gustav Klimt, and he is instructing Adele Bloch-Bauer, a teenage girl
who is to become in later years Maria’s aunt, the woman of the picture, on how
to sit and pose. Very little is said
between them, but the brief way the scene is photographed and cut gives the
viewer the unmistakable feeling that this lady growing up will have a very
woeful, unhappy future, that the masterpiece being constructed before her eyes
will outlive her and transcend her. Her
face is unsmiling but not unloving, and in a strange kind of way she seems to
be melting into the texture of what is being created.
Adele died in 1925 from
meningitis a decade or so later, and the painting of her was hung in the home
of Maria’s father (Adele’s brother) where it remained until 1941, when the
Nazis pillaged his entire estate, taking all the artworks with them.
Woman in Gold, as the
painting came to be called, is a fascinating experience of the eye. Adele’s face is embroidered lavishly in all
shades of the color; it is not surprising that the Nazis were drawn to it for
exploitation, nor is it surprising that they obliterated the name of the
deceased subject at the foot of the canvas and made the image one of mysterious
origin. They were not about to regale a
work of art in which the person being portrayed and embellished was
Jewish. The Nazis also stole a costly,
exceedingly beautiful necklace belonging to the family along with the painting. Herman Goering, one of Hitler’s notorious
henchmen, later made the necklace a gift to his wife to display at public
events. It is against this horrific
background of persecution that Maria’s recent story takes on body and soul all
these many decades later.
No doubt we have all
witnessed on screen scenes of separation, when the parties involved know that
the parting is permanent. This movie
contains one that will be hard for me to forget. In one of the erstwhile sequences the young
Maria is virtually begged by her parents to take flight from the country. They prevail upon her to escape to America
and make a new life there with her husband.
They do so, knowing that they, full of years already and lacking the
means or the stamina to escape themselves, will never survive the Nazi
occupation of their city and country, whether they are sent to extermination
camps or not. The three are completely
openhearted to each other; the embracing is about as impassioned and compelling
as a moment on screen could conceivably get.
It tears at the heart, though it ends in a most endearing manner.
Of course the real driving
element in the movie is Helen Mirren.
She works magic in her portrayal of this feisty woman, nothing out of
the ordinary for her. Ms Mirren has put
together an acting career that few female performers now living have ever been
able to match. She not only has racked
up a large quantity of work on the stage and in movies and television over the
last few decades but has proven herself adept at variety. She is a British citizen who has given us
memorable characters ranging between saint and devil and all shades in between
and has filled the shoes of women of various languages and nationalities. Even here she steps outside her native
vernacular to create a convincing profile of an Austrian Jew who has been
Americanized over the better part of a lifetime and who has no trouble
addressing people in fluent German. She
has won countless honors for various performances and was awarded the Dame
Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2003 Queen Birthday Honor
List. But she is a citizen of the world,
not provincial or stuffy and has a great sense of humor as anyone who Googles
her will find out. Keep it going, Helen!
I am sometimes amazed at how
skillfully the younger version of a character is matched with the older lead –
a great fete of casting. A young actress
by the name of Tatiana Maslany, who bears a faint but good enough resemblance
to Mirren, plays Maria in 1941 as a young and desperate soul who has to
improvise her own escape plan with her musician husband to elude the German
dragnet. She projects fear in
extraordinary measure, her face a picture of youthful purity and sweetness
traumatized by insufferable agony over what she sees slipping away from
her. She is every mother/father’s idea
of a misplaced child whisked away by the storm.
An even more impressive
co-lead is Ryan Reynolds, who fills the role of Maria’s lawyer friend
Randy. He comes on like a nervous,
slightly wet behind the ears youth getting his first taste of professional
success with a prestigious law firm but torn and confused by the offer of a
high profile case involving art reclamation that could net him a huge
payoff. He is a little fumbling at
first, but he slowly warms to the friendly urgency of this Austrian lady and
undergoes a sea change when in Vienna he visits the Holocaust Museum and
internalizes how the Holocaust has touched his own ancestry. After that, it is no longer just a job but a
cause célèbre. He eventually becomes a
firebrand in court and works wonders for her.
The art direction and the
color photography were no less than intoxicating to me. And, as I have already reported, the film has
a deep emotional payoff, concerned with the gift of memory and the delicate
work of preserving the sacred continuity between the living and the honored
dead. A fine piece of work all
around!
To
read other entries in my blog, please consult its website: enspiritus.blogspot.com. To learn about me
consult on the website the blog entry for August 9, 2013.
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