Even if you don’t know it by name, I’d wager a bet you’ve laid eyes on Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I.

Perhaps you’ve caught glimpses of the gold-flecked Gustav Klimt painting in passing while browsing through coffee table books at your local mega-bookstore, or a display of classical art-themed greeting cards at a gift and trinket shop. Maybe, just maybe, you’ve beheld the real thing, whether at the Belvedere Gallery in Vienna, or the Neue Galerie in Manhattan. To many of us, Klimt’s iconic work is simply a thing of beauty (as it was originally intended to be). But if a picture is worth a thousand words, this painting is worth millions (as are many others of its era), not for its obvious aesthetic merits, but for what it represents: The restitution of a precious heirloom to its rightful owner.

 

The Woman in Gold tells just one story out of many about the theft of Jewish family property at the hands of Nazis during WWII, but what a story it is. Helen Mirren stars as Maria Altmann, an Austrian Jewish woman who fled Nazi-occupied Vienna in the late 1930s for California, vowing never to return—that is, until the discovery of old family information regarding stolen artwork prompts Maria to confront her long-buried past. Ryan Reynolds costars as Randol Schoenberg, a struggling Los Angeles lawyer of prominent Austrian descent, who aides Maria in bringing the art restitution case to the US Supreme Court in an unprecedented battle to return Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I and several other valuable Klimt paintings to their intended heiress.

 

With strong performances all around, not to mention a riveting timeline of events, Director Simon Curtis (My Week with Marilyn) has quite a prize piece of clay to mold into a film. For the most part, he does just that, seamlessly weaving vignettes dramatizing the upheaval of the Altmann and Bloch-Bauer family in the face of Nazi annexation of Vienna with scenes of contemporary court proceedings in Los Angeles and Vienna. At times, the film’s grandiose score overwhelms the action at hand; there is one exception, which involves a stirring string performance in one of Vienna’s world-renowned concert halls. Mirren and Reynolds play well off each other, infusing just the right amount of humor into their relationship; so do Tatiana Maslany and Max Irons, as the German-speaking Altmann newlyweds (an impressive feat for Irons, who spoke no German before taking this role). Katie Holmes, Daniel Brühl, and Allan Corduner also turn in memorable supporting performances.

The Woman in Gold opens in theaters on Wednesday, April 1.