"Woman in Gold" and Getting It Right

Cafe Society
1

Since Woman in Gold is not going to be well-remembered from a critical standpoint, I want to post a thread here saying that, in terms of the details and the basic tone, it Gets It Right.

First, Helen Mirren was an Austrian-American woman while she was playing Maria Altmann. She got the accent down perfectly. She got the mannerisms down perfectly. Every “My dear” was in place, every time she didn’t quite get American humor, every time she was a bit more brusque than someone who was raised in America would be. I had an Austrian-American grandmother, now recently deceased, who did survive the War and who did come to America soon after the War, and the accent and mannerisms and home décor were spot-on. They even got the strudel right! The only thing they didn’t show was the classic Austrian penchant for firm handshakes.

Second, they set it in 1998 and then took the time to make it look like 1998. Cars, clothing, and computers, from the lingering pastels to the big CRTs to the big tinted glasses on Maria (a decade or so out of date then, but perfect for the frugal Austrian-American War survivor), I could not find a single thing to nitpick. They even resurrected an ancient version of AltaVista to use as a prop search engine, in a scene set a few years prior to Google sweeping that space mostly clean of everything non-Google. No laptops, no cell phones more advanced than a flip-phone, and they even showed an ancient CRT TV set with an old-at-the-time VCR underneath it, reflecting the fact that people keep old shit. Yes, DVDs existed. No, they didn’t immediately make every VCR crumble to dust and blow away.

And, third, of course they got Vienna right. It’s Vienna. It’s right there. Filming there is a no-brainer if you have the budget, but you first have to care, which they obviously did. The only possible nitpick I could mention is that they didn’t show anyone having to pay to use the crapper; everything else is perfect.

So, no, the film likely won’t win awards and it will likely have a disappointing box-office. It is, however, an example of how perfectly a character can be brought to life, and how perfectly a specific scene can be set. If you want mimetic fiction, this is mimesis in action.

2

In 1998 *nobody * owned a DVD player. I knew literally nobody who owned one, including millionaires with expensive home entertainment systems. DVDs never entered the home in a big way until the release of the Playstation in 2000. It wasn’t until almost 10 years later that more houses had DVDs than VCRs.

CRT TVs were also the only thing found in homes in 1998. There were a few rear-projection type home theatres around, but those were exceedingly rare. It wasn’t until 2005that flat screen TVs became more than an oddity and it wasn’t until 2010 that they became more common than CRTs.

So showing a CRT TV with a VCR player in 1998 isn’t an indicator that people didn’t throw things out. It’s a bare minimum level of set realism. That combination was what was found in 99.999% of homes at the time. This wasn’t because people were not throwing things out. People were buying them brand new in 1998.

3

Blake: I could have been clearer, but had you seen the particular style of TV and VCR in the shot, well, they were of a variety that was old at the time.

4

I owned a DVD. Robin Hood Prince of Thieves, which came out in 1997. I don’t remember if we had a stand-alone player, but the family computer had a dvd drive. Also the Playstation came out in 1994. The PS2 was 2000.

5

Realism is one thing but do you really want to see people going to the toilet in movies? I don’t.

6

Blake’s more right than wrong, though. DVDs were vanishingly rare before 2000. If memory serves, I got my first DVDs in '99, and my dad and I tend to be somewhat bleeding-edge on that kind of stuff. '98 was entirely in the VCR-era.

The Playstation didn’t play DVDs in '94; that was the PS2.

7

I got my first DVD player for graduation in 1999. It was definitely cutting edge, but I wouldn’t saya they were vanishingly rare. You wouldn’t find them in an average living room, but they’d be common enough among tech-enthusiasts.

8

I don’t give a crap what the critics say; I saw it this afternoon and loved it. Mirren’s performance was brilliant just like everything else she’s been int.