Maria Altmann has been living in California since she and her late husband managed to flee from Austria when World War 2 started. Now that her sister has just died Maria has uncovered several documents concerning all the art and other valuables that the Nazis had looted from their family home. One of them was a portrait of her Aunt Adele by Gustav Klimt which had been embellished with gold leaf and is considered one of his finest masterpieces. However since the War it has been hanging in Austria’s National Gallery at the Belvedere Palace and has come to be regarded as the country’s Mona Lisa.Maria asks Randy a young struggling lawyer if he will look over the papers to see if she has a case to get her family’s possessions back. He eventually agrees to pursue the matter even though the pair of them make such an odd couple. She is very correct and proper with her curt clipped accent and her no-nonsense approach whereas he is a bit of a gangly nerd who only begrudgingly takes on the project as a favor to his mother who is an old friend of Maria’s.
The movie faithfully follows the couple’s long journey through the Courts where the Austrian authorities do their very best to thwart them at every step. The first time that Maria returns to her home country after all these decades is very emotional as it stirs up all the memories of the family that never survived the War.
Some of the best parts of the movie are all the flashbacks seeing a very young Maria and her handsome Opera singer husband at home with her parents who were one of the leading wealthy Jewish families in Vienna. She enjoyed a really privileged life in their old-world rather grand apartment which the family shared with Aunt Adele until her untimely death from meningitis when she was just 42 years old.
Maria and Ryan hook up with an Austrian journalist who is the only one in the country who is prepared to help Maria to be reunited with the picture and he digs up some useful information that will help prove her rightful ownership. However no matter how solid the evidence is the Austrian Government steadfastedly refuse to budge from their rigid insistence that the picture is theirs. All the years the case drags through the Courts takes their toll on both Maria and Ryan who take it in turns to want to withdraw but they battle it out to the end and all’s well that end’s well.It’s based on a very real emotional story that is about one Jewish survivor seeking to be reunited with what the Nazis stole as the spoils of the war but that doesn’t excuse the fact that the telling of it left so much to be desired. As ‘Maria’ Dame Helen Mirren is a shining beacon making light work of some of the heavy-handed and rather inane words that the script placed in her mouth. It is a wonderfully entertaining performance and makes up a little for Ryan Reynolds somewhat awkward turn as the Lawyer who may have won his case in court but would never be able to convince anyone he was remotely Jewish.
Despite supporting roles played by such talented actors such as Daniel Bruhl, Max Irons, Allan Corduner, Jonathan Pryce and Katie Holmes this second feature film from TV Director Simon Curtis felt it more rightly belonged to the small screen as of it Lifetime TV’s movie of the week.
