In the heart of New York in famous Fifth Avenue is Die Neue Gallerie. It houses a portrait by Gustav Klimt of Adele Bloch Bauer a  beautiful Austrian Jewess.

This movie is about how this, one of Austria’s most famous paintings, came to  America. It was sold by Marie Altman , Bloch Bauer’s niece, to the Gallery for $135m on the condition it be on permanent display. An onerous condition without which she could have got a much higher price.

For Marie Altmann, however, it was never about the money. The painting was ripped from the walls of her home in Austria by the Nazis ,and after the war they refused its return. Altmann reluctantly enters into a battle for its recovery.

Helen Mirren plays the part of Altmann. It is a delightful nuanced performance of a spirited woman , at once wise witty and determined to see justice, and at other times drowned by an overwhelming past.

Ryan Reynolds plays her lawyer, Randol Schoenberg, himself  the son of Jewish refugees from Austria and grandson of Schoenberg the composer.

This is also a David and Goliath story for Schoenberg is a young rookie lawyer facing the might of the Austrian and American Establishment.

Interwoven with the story are are Altmanns flashbacks her life in Austria, and its brutal destruction by the Nazis.

It is all done extremely well. The script is well balanced, never absorbed by pity and sadness, it is a story of light versus dark , of moving forward and of restitution.

At the end of it all, Altmann goes back to her her small bungalow in LA and buys a new dishwasher.The rest of it she gives away.

A great movie.