You’re too young for this, Helen
Even the great dame can’t save a film about an avenging octogenarian fighting to reclaim a stolen masterpiece
Scarcely has the 50th anniversary passed of one film about a young austrian woman called Maria forced to flee the Nazis in the wake of the anschluss, than there arrives another, also based on a true story.
But that’s where similarities to The Sound Of Music end. Woman In Gold tells the tale of Maria altmann (Helen Mirren), who was raised in a pre-war Viennese whirl of social hob-nobbing, with ‘Dr Freud himself’ a regular house guest. Sixty years later, having escaped europe and made her home in los angeles, she hired a young californian lawyer to help her reclaim possessions seized from her affluent Jewish family.
The most notable of these was Gustav Klimt’s remarkable 1907 painting, depicted largely in gold-leaf, of altmann’s aunt, adele Bloch-Bauer. By 1998, when she and the lawyer, randy Schoenberg (ryan reynolds), began their quest for restitution, Klimt’s Portrait of adele Bloch-Bauer I (its original title, restored after the Nazis removed the Jewish-sounding name and called it lady In Gold) had hung for decades in Vienna’s Belvedere Gallery.
It was considered to be austria’s equivalent of the Mona lisa, an iconic work of art worthy of national pride, not collective shame.
THeaustrian authorities fought as hard as they could to keep the celebrated masterpiece, but in 2006, after a protracted legal battle fought both in austria and the U.S., where the case went all the way to the Supreme court (presided over here by an amiable Jonathan Pryce), the painting and four others by Klimt were returned to altmann.
She subsequently sold it for $135 million to estee lauder’s son ronald, on condition that the cosmetics tycoon display it permanently in his New york gallery.
altmann gave most of the lavish proceeds to various charities and public institutions, but did not escape criticism for ‘cashing in’ — the chief art critic of The New york Times bluntly suggesting that the sale transformed a post-Holocaust story of justice and redemption into ‘yet another tale of the crazy, intoxicating art market’.
Unsurprisingly, British director Simon curtis (who made such a nice job of the 2011 drama My Week With Marilyn) and his first-time screenwriter alexei Kaye campbell leave out that dimension.
Schoenberg, who was himself the grandson of an austrianJewish immigrant, the composer arnold Schoenberg, and altmann, who died four years ago, aged 94, are presented unequivocally as the forces of moral rectitude, with the modern-day austrian establishment as the villains of the piece, practically the spiritual heirs of the goose-stepping Nazis we see in repeated flashbacks.
It is actually in these flashbacks that the film works best. When the young altmann ( nicely played by Tatiana Maslany) flees Vienna with her opera- singer husband (Max Irons) from under the noses of the Gestapo, it unfolds like a gripping mini-thriller. The later legal battle, by disappointing contrast, is decidedly un-thrilling.
This is partly, I think, because reynolds’ performance is strangely bland. Moreover, he looks about as preppy and Wasp-y as any american lawyer ever could, and when he briefly breaks down with the emotion of it all, he appears less like a man wrestling with the historic injustices to the Jewish people, and more with an unexpected hike in his country club fees.
as the older, imperious altmann, like all long-term immigrants sprinkling colloquialisms everywhere and occasionally getting them wrong, Mirren brings her usual blend of acute comic timing and profound dramatic sensibility. She’s such a towering actress that she commands the eye even when she shares the screen with the dazzling lady in gold.
But — and I realise this amounts to lese-majeste —I wonder whether she too is quite right for the part? She is nobody’s idea of a woman well into her 80s, which altmann is meant to be, and had to be when these events took place, having been a 21- year- old newlywed in 1938.
come to think of it, she’s nobody’s idea of a woman pushing 70, which she actually is (she’s 69). I’d have preferred to see another great dame in the role; Maggie Smith, perhaps, or Judi Dench. But maybe the lat-
ter was disqualified by having starred in Philomena (2013), like this a collaboration between BBC Films and The Weinstein Company, like this a tale of a seemingly il l - suited elderly woman and younger man on a quest to right terrible wrongs, but more moving than this, and much more memorable.
i CAN’T argue with the casting of keanu ‘The Matrix’ Reeves as a hitman compelled to come out of retirement to avenge his murdered puppy in the indubitably stylish but revoltingly violent John Wick. And no, you didn’t misread that bit about a deceased puppy. i might have murderous feelings myself if my cute beagle, Daisy, was clubbed to death by a Russian gangster. But i wouldn’t embark on a splatter-fest of a killing-spree which quite possibly yields more corpses than the leading man has syllables of dialogue. Still, Reeves, last seen wielding a samurai sword in the spectacularly misconceived 47 Ronin (2013), is good enough at playing strong, silent types to stop John Wick — both the film and the man, his character — looking completely ridiculous.
He even just about makes it credibly through the first 25 minutes of narrative, which imbue him with a dead wife, a dead puppy and a stolen car, but not much in the way of personality.
ReALLY,
this film is about the infinite ways in which killing can be choreographed, and it’s no surprise to learn that director Chad Stahelski’s background is in stunt co-ordination.
Wick rarely dispatches a heavy the easy way, preferring at least one forward roll before he plunges in the knife or pulls the trigger.
Opposite him, a strong supporting cast includes Willem Dafoe and ian McShane, with Alfie Allen as the impetuous gangster’s son who gets the carnage under way, not realising whose vintage sports car he has stolen and whose impossibly sweet dog he has killed until it is far, far too late.
So, if you are inured to violence, and don’t mind a bloodbath getting a 15 certificate, then maybe John Wick is for you. it wasn’t for me.