Would you believe Ryan Reynolds as Arnold Schoenberg’s grandson?
Another random discovery last night on Netflix: “Woman in Gold” (2015), a Helen Mirren film that somehow escaped my notice. Mirren plays Maria Altmann, an 82 year-old Jewish refugee living in Los Angeles in 1998, who fights to reclaim from the Belvedere Museum in Austria a portrait of her aunt, painted by none other than Gustav Klimt, that was stolen from her family sixty years earlier by the Nazis. Assisting her in her quest for justice is an untried underdog lawyer, played by Ryan, whose grandfather happened to be one of the 20th century’s most influential composers.
The painting in question was originally titled “Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I,” more commonly known, both for simplicity’s sake and, for the Nazis, to hide the subject’s inconvenient ethnicity, as “Woman in Gold,” but described by one of the characters in the film as “The Mona Lisa of Austria.” Predictably, Austrian bureaucrats throw up any impediment they can to retain ownership of the painting.
Following the pattern of every rogue cop movie ever, young Schoenberg’s gruff boss (Charles Dance, who’s the actor you call for these things when Christopher Plummer is too busy) goes from bemused indulgence to forbidding him to pursue the case any further. In response, Schoenberg quits the firm and rides his scrappy gumption all the way to the Supreme Court – and beyond. Every time either he or Altmann are on the verge of throwing in the towel at the latest setback, they get one another riled up again and off they go.
The entire exercise is diverting enough for a slow evening when you’re not feeling particularly demanding, and it may get you thinking about injustices past and present, and the struggles for restitution for the survivors or descendants of families who lost everything, but I’m afraid on the whole the execution is rather TV movie-like.
All the traditional elements are in place; all the beats fall where expected – the very opposite, in fact, of Arnold Schoenberg’s music. There is lip-service paid to Schoenberg’s revolutionary twelve-tone method, but it’s telling that the only Schoenberg we actually hear is “Transfigured Night” – Schoenberg for people who think they don’t like Schoenberg. Tonal, romantic, and entirely movie-friendly. To compound the irony, the film’s unremarkable score is cranked out by Hans Zimmer and company.
Mirren is fine, as always, and I did get some enjoyment out of all the unexpected casting choices, as many familiar faces turn up, some for only a single scene – Charles Dance, Jonathan Pryce, Elizabeth McGovern, and Allan Corduner (who played Arthur Sullivan in Mike Leigh’s Gilbert & Sullivan homage “Topsy Turvy”). Katie Holmes has little to do as the crusading lawyer’s understandably concerned, but always supportive wife.
As for the lawyer himself, Schoenberg’s grandson, Reynolds does okay, especially when called on to be a fast-talker, but it’s hard to buy him as the actual real-life E. Randol Schoenberg. He has my respect for trying something different, I thought after the enormous success of “Deadpool.” But it turns out “Woman in Gold” was released the year before!
While we’re considering the timeline, the film is a Weinstein production, so I had to check the dates to see if Harvey’s recent woes may have had something to do with its comparative obscurity. But Weinstein’s sins didn’t really boomerang in a big way until 2017 – two years later. Then I thought maybe Covid had thrown a wrench in its distribution. Nope, that would have been 2020. Maybe I just wasn’t paying enough attention.
The director is Simon Curtis, whose credits include “My Week with Marilyn” (2011), for which Michelle Williams and Kenneth Branagh earned Oscar nominations for their portrayals of Marilyn Monroe and Laurence Olivier, respectively, and television adaptations of “Cranford” and “David Copperfield.” He also directed the most recent “Downton Abbey” movie. Ah, so he’s actually married to McGovern!
In the end, “Woman in Gold” is not much better than a by-the-numbers courtroom drama in which justice is inevitably served. (If you think that’s a spoiler, it’s recent history and the outcome has graced many a headline.) There are some lovingly shot Klimts, beside the predictable outrages, once the Nazis march into Austria, and also some fleeting suspense. Closer to the present, there’s the infuriatingly smug Austrians on the board of the Belvedere Museum who stand between Altmann and her stolen property. The film is well-intentioned, but winds up being fairly anodyne. Good for undemanding viewers who enjoy the kind of easy fuzzies you get from watching a Penny Marshall or Rob Reiner movie.
All told, it was definitely better than “Orca.”
A couple of parodies that actually hold Schoenberg in greater affection:
“187 Hits from the Beloved Twelve-Tone Masters”
“Gimme Some of That Ol’ Atonal Music”