Dizi Planet
The Woman in Gold

The Woman in Gold

Movie · 2015 · 15 people

Simon Curtis directed The Woman in Gold (Altınlı Kadın in Turkey) from a script by Alexi Kaye Campbell, a 2015 British-American biographical courtroom drama. Based on a true story, it follows the fight to return an artwork looted by the Nazis to its rightful heir. It premiered on February 9, 2015 in the Berlinale Special Galas section of the Berlin Film Festival and reached cinemas in April 2015.

The story follows Maria Altmann (Helen Mirren), an elderly Jewish refugee living in Los Angeles. Forced to leave Vienna under Nazi rule, she decides after some sixty years to reclaim her family's belongings, above all Gustav Klimt's famous portrait of her aunt Adele Bloch-Bauer. A young, inexperienced lawyer, Randy Schoenberg (Ryan Reynolds), helps her. The pair spar with the Austrian government for nearly a decade, and the case goes all the way to the United States Supreme Court. For Maria the struggle also becomes a confrontation with the secrets of her past. The cast includes Daniel Brühl, Katie Holmes, Tatiana Maslany, Max Irons, Charles Dance, Elizabeth McGovern, Jonathan Pryce and Moritz Bleibtreu.

Filming took place in Vienna, Los Angeles, Beverly Hills and London. The producers included Origin Pictures and BBC Film. Helen Mirren was nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award for her performance.

DirectorSimon Curtis
Production companyOrigin Pictures

Reactions

You can pick up to 3 reactions.

Cast

Names without a link have no profile here yet.

Moritz Bleibtreu Moritz Bleibtreu Film actor · 55 years old Gustav Klimt Aslı Bayram Aslı Bayram Film actor · 45 years old Helen Mirren Ryan Reynolds Daniel Brühl Katie Holmes Tatiana Maslany Max Irons Elizabeth McGovern Jonathan Pryce Olivia Silhavy Tom Schilling Nina Kunzendorf Justus von Dohnányi Antje Traue

Also in the cast: Charles Dance

Through different eyes

History & Society Lens Asks about the period, the social background and what the work reflects.

The film turns one of post-war Europe's still-unsettled accounts, the return of art looted under the Nazis, into a personal story. Maria Altmann's case shows that a painting can be at once a family's memory and a country's cultural heritage, and the near decade-long dispute with the Austrian government shows how hard that tension is to resolve. A refugee confronting, some sixty years on, the city she was forced to leave also draws attention to the way displacement marks people across generations. As a work based on real events, it is a reminder that justice can be as much about memory as about law.

Cinephile Looks at script, editing and directing choices; keeps a distance from formula films.

Simon Curtis's film applies the safe conventions of the biographical courtroom drama with care: a stubborn older woman and a young, inexperienced lawyer as the mismatched pair, a legal battle that escalates step by step, and a reckoning with the past running alongside the case. The structure never strains the viewer, but it never surprises either; for anyone who knows the real case, the tension rests largely on the relationship between the two leads. Helen Mirren's Screen Actors Guild nomination shows whose shoulders that weight falls on. Alexi Kaye Campbell's script carries the gravity of the subject, yet it sometimes tends to fit the horror of Nazi looting into a familiar emotional formula.

Family Viewer Asks whether the whole household can watch it; cares about humour and heart.

This is the kind of film to watch with teenagers and talk about afterwards. It shows what the Nazi era cost one family through a painting and a court case rather than battle scenes, which makes it a good way into the history. But the subject is heavy: a city left behind under force, a family past that was taken away. Small children may find it too serious and slow. Middle- and high-schoolers watching with adults will get a lot out of it.

These are not reader reviews: they are short editorial takes written from different viewer perspectives with AI assistance. Reader reviews are below.

Reviews (0)

Log in Log in to write a review.

Comments