Woman in Gold (2015)

Film: Woman in Gold (2015)
Stars: Helen Mirren, Ryan Reynolds, Daniel Bruhl, Katie Holmes, Tatiana Maslany, Max Irons
Director: Simon Curtis
Oscar History: Considering the SAG Award nomination, I suspect this was way closer than anyone was willing to admit, but it thankfully wasn't included.
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

The problem with Woman in Gold starts in the premise, and not in the way you would expect.  This is a really interesting subject.  I love the idea of art telling a story, and in particular of a painting having decades of impact.  And this particular story, that of Gustav Klimt's masterwork The Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, and the way that it was stolen during World War II only to eventually be recovered by the subject's niece Maria Altmann (played by both Tatiana Maslany and Dame Helen Mirren), is so fascinating that you instantly want to know about it.  The problem, however, is that this sets up expectations-the story is so compelling that it feels like the director, writers, and some of the actors coast on the "wow!" moments too frequently, not giving us enough character definition in some side performances, and creating a wholly uneven experience where certain scenes are magnificent and others are abysmal.

(Real Life Doesn't Have Spoilers) The movie alternates between different histories of the painting, both its initial unveiling, when Maria is just a child, to the events leading up to its theft by the Nazis all the way to the late 1990's/early-aughts, when the painting was recovered and reconciled with Maria.  The film spends most of its time, however, in the present-day, with one of those tales-as-old-as-film-itself: the unlikely pairing.  Mirren's Maria is a sassy older woman, frequently spending her days in a shop, and occasionally just a little bit in the past, who decides that she should pursue recovering her aunt's portrait, and in the process, perhaps finding some closure from the trauma that resulted in her fleeing Austria under the threat of the Nazi government.  She is joined by Randy Schoenberg (Reynolds), the grandson of preeminent Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg, who has not lived up to the family's illustrious roots.  The two clash at first (when does that not happen in movies?) but end up forming an unlikely friendship in pursuit of a common goal.

That last sentence made me shutter just writing it, and I think instantly probably turned off certain sections of you from wanting to see this film, and with good reason.  The movie doesn't do a good job in rising above the challenge of "been there, done that," with Maria/Randy's relationship.  Perhaps in part it's because it's hard not to side with Maria in almost every circumstance.  Only toward the end, when she doesn't want to pursue the case, does he finally seem to be in the right, but most of the time we see how she became a relatively accomplished woman despite the horrors of her past, and he is in his mid-to-late-thirties and hasn't accomplished much without the help of his family name.  Part of the problem is that we know little about Randy as a character-he remains unknowable in the script and is supposed to be something of an audience proxy, except of course that the audience was with Maria from the beginning so there really isn't a need for a proxy.

The other part of Randy's problem is that Ryan Reynolds is dreadfully miscast in the co-lead role.  Reynolds at once is too old for the part and has absolutely no panache in what he's doing.  I'm kind of sick of Hollywood insisting on him as a movie star, quite frankly.  He can't act, he's not popular enough to open movies, and while he's handsome, he isn't strikingly beautiful (he's probably the third best-looking guy in the cast) and is more of a generic Abercrombie adonis than anything else.  The film demands him to have emotional revelations that are laughably bad onscreen (his breakdown, crying in a men's room, is uncomfortable to watch, and not in the way it should be), and while the script does him few favors (are we to actually believe a man his age hasn't given thought to his ancestors' role in the Holocaust?!?), Reynolds has no sense of acting timing or sensibility to be able to carry a non-descript character, and fades horribly when put next to a performer like Mirren, who may occasionally pick lazy roles that don't challenge her, but is always insanely watchable and a game actress.

Mirren is considerably better.  The film suffers a bit from a case of the Philomenas (doesn't know whether it's a comedy or drama), but she seems confident in it being a dramatic picture, and sells well even the most cliched of scenes (particularly toward the end, when we're forced to have her realize things that we expect she probably already knew, like her inability to ever properly forgive herself for escaping an impossible situation).  Mirren's wonderful on occasion, finding quiet moments of reflection, and she's aided by a bravura big screen performance by Tatiana Maslany, who is wildly popular for her work on Orphan Black.  I haven't seen her small screen wonder (but I have been chided for missing it on multiple occasions), but I am duly impressed with her work here, making nearly every flashback scene riveting and engaging.

Really, therefore, it's an odd conundrum of a film.  It was a good way to spend two hours, but it's treatment of some actors was either insanely bland (Daniel Bruhl's character lifts right out of the script without ANY issue, and I think the writers knew it, but for some reason he stays in) or tragically-cast (Reynolds), and it doesn't have enough inventiveness to carry the film when it isn't relying on the big moments or Mirren/Maslany's interpretations of Maria.

Those were my thoughts, anyway-how about you?  What did you think of Woman in Gold?  Do you agree that it had problems with the "filler" scenes?  Do you also think that Ryan Reynolds is arguably the worst actor headlining movies today?  Share your thoughts in the comments!