Film Review: Woman in gold

Being based on a true story is a bit of double-edged sword for a movie: we all know that truth is stranger than fiction so it often provides the best storylines but it is those little words ''based on'' that are the kicker.

 

WOMAN IN GOLD

Director: Simon Curtis
Cast: Helen Mirren, Ryan Reynolds, Daniel Bruhl, Tatiana Maslany, Max Irons, Allan Corduner, Antje Traue, Henry Goodman, Katie Holmes, Charles Dance, Elizabeth McGovern, Jonathan Pryce, Frances Fisher
Rating: (M)
Five stars (out of five)

 

They tell you that what you are about to see is only sort-of true. Usually the film-makers will have tried their best, but the most we can hope for is emotionally true.

If you go on that handy fact-checker, the internet, often another very different story emerges.

Woman In Gold (Metro and Rialto) is a story in two parts.

There is the distant past where Adele Bloch-Bauer (Tatiana Maslany) sits for Austrian painter Gustav Klimtis and the more recent past where Maria Altmann (Helen Mirren) acts to reclaim her uncle's legacy, artworks looted by the Nazis the Austrian Government claims now belong to the Austrian nation.

The film's nail-biting scenes of Maria's flight are movie bunkum.

The truth is so much more interesting.

After the war, Austria claimed to be in the same category as any other place invaded by Germany, but Maria remembers the joy with which the Nazis were greeted and the gleeful rigour with which the Austrian people turned on their fellow Jewish citizens.

She had vowed never to return but the prospect of finally being able to reclaim her property forces her to return to face the ghosts, good and bad, of her privileged past.

- Christine Powley 

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