17 Thoughts I Had While Watching "Woman in Gold"
Saturday, August 8, 2015 at 11:00AM Have you seen Woman in Gold which has been out on DVD for a bit now? It's about an old Austrian Jew (Helen Mirren) who immigrated to America during the Holocaust and attempts to get her family's original Gustav Klimt paintings back which were stolen by the Nazis and now "belong" to a museum in Austria.
Here are a dozen plus thoughts I had while watching it...
What do you know about art restitution?
• Nothing? It's okay. I didn't either. Helen Mirren will teach us. She speaks most of her lines as if to a small child. In fact, a lot of the characters do. They're constantly explaining the movie's plot and conflicts to us. And after explaining things there's sometimes bits of dialogue like...
Slow down! You can explain everything to me over lunch."
ARGH. But he already explained everything to you. Coddling screenplays like this make me batty.
• Katie Holmes has a really useless part in this movie as Ryan Reynolds's wife. She shows up every 20 minutes or so to either a) pat Ryan on the shoulder or b) express brief concern at how he's obsessed with this art restitution thing or c) gaze at him adorably. ACTING!
• Charles Dance (The Imitation Game and countless other movies) is also in this movie as Ryan Reynold's boss. Every time I see him in a movie my mind jumps to that rumor in the 80s that Meryl Streep & Tracey Ullman hated him on the set of Plenty.
• This is actually really a fascinating topic for a movie so they can get away with a lot and still keep you interested. The flashbacks to the past are really inelegantly introduced... usually by Helen Mirren looking at a photo. Cue: memory! Sometimes the memories stare right back at her or are shown within the present. This plays a bit cheesy though if more confidently or consistently handles it might be stylish or bold.
• Daniel Brühl (always welcome) hails Helen & Ryan down in Vienna when they come for a Restitution Conference. (Somehow he already knows who they are and just walks right up like 'Hey, We're All Actors in this Movie. Let's Do Our Scene!') He's a Walking Exposition Machine to help them through Viennese politics and psychology. Helen likes him immediatly but Ryan doesn't trust him. (Perhaps he's seen "Stolz der Nation"?)
• Helen Mirren cups her hair/wig a lot in this movie. Apparently you cannot make it as an actress past 60 if you are not constantly touching at your iconic face (see also: Meryl Streep and Jessica Lange) to remind people how awesome it is. I thought about counting how many times but quickly forgot because....
this scene plays like comedy, like he'll spill the coffee on himself. Haha what a klutz. But then he doesn't.
• ...Ryan Reynolds kept hogging the movie. He is not a lawyer. He just plays one in the movies. We know this so why is the movie making efforts to schlub him down so we don't get distracted by his hunkiness? Ill fitting ugly suits. There's even a brief reference to how handsome he is, so why pretend otherwise? This is a movie. Embrace the star glamour filmmakers, because clearly you're not going for gritty realism! Or even an ACTING movie since you hired Ryan & Katie, two of the blandest around.
• Late in the movie Katie sports one of the fakest pregnancy bellies I've ever seen. What shape is that child?
• It seems like whole huge scenes are missing. At one point we walk into a room and Ryan & Helen have been warned that the records they're looking for will be nearly impossible to find. We get a 'good luck you'll need it' type intro to a shot of a room with infinite boxes and shelves and such. Cut to: Next scene. They're perusing all the documents they needed trying to come up with their legal game plan. Finding records in Austria is apparently the easiest thing ever!
• The German actor playing Helen's husband Fritz in flashback is ridiculously good looking. (IMDb trip: He's not German. That's Max Irons. LOL. Jeremy's son! I have no excuse for not realizing this.)
• But look at the framing! It's awful. I did not edit or crop that photo. That's the actual frame from a key scene at their wedding. It's not even from a zoom in. That's just how theyr'e photographed. Why are the director and cinematographer so close to the actors that they're cutting off his head at the eyebrows and her at the chin? Jesus Christ. Back up a little. Tatiana and Max can act and the camera will read their emotions if you're a few inches further back. I PROMISE YOU. The movie is also super overlit in some scenes which makes it look like a made for television movie at times.
• MVP: Tatiana Maslany. She's so convincing as both a native German and, importantly, as a younger version of Helen Mirren that I had to race to IMDb afterwards to learn more about her (I've seen a handful of episodes of Orphan Black in which she is a technical virtuouso but I knew nothing about her otherwise). Turns out she is from Canada but speaks at least three languages fluently: German, English, and French. This obviously accounts for her ease with accents and her phenomenal vocal range. Not only do her clones on that show have different voices but they also have different national origin and accents.
• In fact, Tatiana is so good in this that I kept wishing the other scenes were flash-forwards and we could just mostly spend the movie with her. The present means expository scenes. Dame Helen being sassy (which she can do in her sleep just like Dench & Smith). And Mr and Mrs Ryan-Katie Blanderson.
• Was this movie wholly funded by the Neue Gallery? It's like a 2 hour teaser saying 'you really wanna see this painting in person. And there's only one place you can see it!'
• I've always love this painting...
• As the credits were scrolling I realized Moritz Bleibtreu (Run Lola Run, Das Experiment, and more) was playing the artist Gustav Klimt. No fair to cast him as the artist of the work that the movie is about and then barely show him? Free Bleibtreu! Free Bleibtreu!
• This movie is not very good. The end.
Reader Comments (23)
I have seen Mirren give one for the ages performance & that is G/PARK.
Maslany is amazing. It's not just technical proficiency-- the accents, etc.-- in Orphan Black she gives all of her characters emotional depth (even the psychotic assassin).
Ryan Reynolds is so pretty. He should just keep doing that.
I love you. So much.
The bits about expository dialogue and ridiculous framing were the best.
But then you made Maslany sound like a Supporting Actress candidate and now I'm screwed!! I was going to skip this movie!
So I love you so much, but right now I'm furious at you a little bit.
Nick -- NOoooo. don't do it to yourself. Oscar will not know that this movie exists. so you aren't required.
Thank you for saving me the time. Ryan Reynolds should just stick to comedy.
Yes, I also thought, is Tatiana Maslany really speaking German? Is there no end to this person's versatility?
I had thought that the Orphan Black producers were just really lucky in finding such a gifted lead. But in reading up, it seems that Maslany was well known in her stage work as being an actress that could do a wide range of eye catching roles.
I haven't seen Plenty in ages.
That's funny, this film is still in theaters down here in Mexico and it's a hit with a certain crowd down here (mostly among the population that anjoys Jewish-themed middlebrow efforts). I went to see it because my mom wanted to and while it was mostly what I feared it would be, there's plenty of good stuff, and yes, Tatiana Maslany is best in show. I love her on Orphan Black and I was frightened they would stick her with a thankless role here, but she became the beating heart of this movie and electrifying when she was onscreen.
Also, Nat, she was in a couple of episodes of Parks and Recreation. Don't you remember (she was Nadia, a doctor that Tom has a crush on and then spends an episode trying to win a stuffed bear for her (she was delightful, even if she wasn't putting on an accent). I hope to see more of her, because she is very talentes.
Nick, I wouldn't say her performance is reason enough to see the movie (which is mostly pretty harmless), but if anyone ever makes a cut that is only Tatiana Maslany's scenes, I recommend you watch that...
I realize that Ryan Reynolds is widely considered to be a heartthrob/hunk. He is attractive, but he's so generically attractive that I have a difficult time recognizing him on screen and in photos. Is this part of what you mean when you say he's bland, Nathaniel? Or is it just his acting or (lack of) charisma?
I purposefully did not see this since the trailers looked so bland and the reviews only seemed to confirm that impression. BUT just this morning I met up with friends from out of town at the Neue Galerie and saw Klimt's painting and it really is stunning. Actually the whole exhibit they have there right now is really great, but we kept looking over our shoulders or going back into the room just to look at her again and again.
In short: See the painting. Don't see the movie.
I kind of just wish this had all been a period piece specifically designed to highlight Tatiana's acting. The whole World War Ii portion of the film was at least competent, and Tatiana held it together. The contemporary narrative was so dull and poorly written. Even Dame Helen couldn't save it.. for shame.
Lol @ Katie Holmes, though. She is an actress I can safely say I've never enjoyed in anything. What is she even known for again?
I thought the movie was so very....okay. It's always great to see Dame Mirren on screen and Tatiana Maslany was a nice surprise, I'm not an Orphan Black watcher so she was unknown to me, but otherwise eh. The art was pretty and there were some tense moments in the flashbacks but none in the present day.
Katie Holmes part could have been excised completely and the audience would never even know it. She's not an arresting performer but I'd rather see her in that role than see a better actress, say her old castmate Michelle Williams, making time in a throwaway role like this.
"Oscar will not know that this movie exists."
I doubt the director knows, either.
Nathaniel what did you think of Mirren's dark contact lenses? I found them hugely distracting as her eyes looked like two black holes into hell!
I watched this just for Maslany. AShe was worth it but the movie was pretty dull. Katire Holmes character was breathtaking useless.
Also fun fact about Maslany, she goes out with Tom Cullen (from Weekend)
She's also amazing, which is the reason why I even watched this turd lol.
I did like the flashback scenes in general, they should have been the main part of the movie!
Ouch!
But this movie did truly suck.
You mentioned Katie's fake pregnancy belly twice and yet it sounds so awful that it's appropriate that you did so.
Glenn -- editing slip. But it haunted me!
Katie Holmes= TERRIBLE line readings in this film.
Ryan Reynolds is attractive in the sense of if he hit on you at a bar you'd be giddy and go with him, but put him up against Gosling, Gyllenhaal, Hemsworth, et al he doesn't really stand out as beautiful by Hollywood standards.
I actually liked this more than I expected to, expecting complete and utter banal, feel-good oscarbait blandness. But I finally cried uncle and saw it at the Angelika after it had been taking up space there for months. I found Mirren enjoyable, Reynolds pretty good, Holmes blah, and Maslany amazing. I think I was so pleasantly surprised by the whole flashback sequence that I didn't even know would be a part of the movie that I overlooked flaws elsewhere... I basically just found it much more entertaining that I expected to; I wasn't expecting much at all.
This film was no disappointment. It revealed how the Austrian government despite a pretense of wanting to distance themselves from their Nazi past, still couldn't bear to return property to its rightful owner, even though it was acknowledged as the property of her family...where even the model for the painting was her own aunt.
It also exemplified what greedy nasty little people the Nazis were...like talentless, lazy neighbors who are always looking in your yard for what they might steal, then feeling so clever when they finally succeed.