If only we couldn’t see every beat of Woman in Gold coming from a mile away, it might have been a fascinating tale of identity and family and the American Dream. Instead, it’s a merely adequate tale of identity and family and the American Dream. It’s a sad Hollywood tradition to take amazing, bizarre true stories, sterilize them, prune them, buff them, and smoosh them into a uniform, textureless box. Simon Curtis’ new historical drama is unfortunately just another package shipped out from the factory. There’s no risk, no flair, no imagination involved; just a series of moves and tropes we’ve seen a million times before.

The true story on which the movie is based is awe-inspiring. Helen Mirren plays Holocaust refugee Maria Altmann, who with the help of American attorney Randy Schoenberg (Ryan Reynolds) attempted to recover a Gustav Klimt painting of her aunt, Adele Bloch-Bauer, which had been stolen from her family by Nazis. When Maria fled from Europe to California with her husband during the war, the painting stayed in Austria and over the years became the country’s veritable Mona Lisa. Understandably, the Austrian population was outraged at she and Randy’s threat to wrest the painting from the Belvedere Palace where it hung and fly it to America in the ’90s, despite irrefutable evidence that proved it belonged to Maria by law since the war ended.

It’s a thought-provoking dilemma of both personal and international proportions, but Curtis and screenwriter Alexi Kaye Campbell employ hackneyed storytelling tactics that get in the way and make Altmann’s improbable, once-in-a-lifetime story feel old hat. Mirren is so seasoned that she occasionally manages to give the mostly flat script a little volume and depth, triumphing in the moment, but since every obstacle and revelation she happens upon is so easily anticipated, we’re two or three steps ahead of her, a deadly situation for any actor. Still, the screen veteran is always worth watching, and her turn as a woman torn apart by the unfinished business of her forgotten past is the best thing the film has going by a landslide. As Maria she embodies dignity and an internalized hunger for justice that bubbles to the surface every now and a gain in controlled yet spontaneous-feeling bursts.

As Schoenberg Reynolds has about as much charisma as a roll of Reynolds Wrap. He’s a quiet, unremarkable young man wearing unremarkable ’90s lawyer clothes. It’s not a bad performance per sé, but Curtis makes him shed all the energy and magnetism that got him to this point in his career in the first place, turning him into a Clark Kent-like bumbling nerd. Reynolds is good enough to hang with Mirren on-screen, but without his sharpest tools, he winds up coming off as woefully dull. His character’s inner turmoil isn’t explored deeply enough, and his subplot involving supporting his wife (Katie Holmes, in a wasted role) and kid is utterly disposable. Daniel Brühl makes a decent impression as a local journalist who provides insider information to aid Maria and Randy, but like Mirren, he has lukewarm chemistry with Reynolds.

The impetus for the eventual friendship between Randy and Maria is one of parallel family history: though he was born in America, Randy’s family fled here just like Maria did. Randy’s just landed a sweet job at a big L.A. law firm, but he takes time off to help Maria recover her family painting when he discovers it’s valued at over $180 million. He insists Maria return to Austria to appear in court, but she’s rightly horrified and conflicted by the idea of returning to the place she once called home, which has long since been tarnished by memories of violence, indignation and injustice. She’s indelibly linked to Vienna, and her struggle to suppress the fact that she has no choice but to be defined by her sordid past life is the heart of the film. Her journey to self-acceptance isn’t told elegantly enough by Curtis, but a surrealistic final scene serves as a beautiful, poetic cinematic statement that says much more than the around 100 minutes that preceded it. It’s a shame the rest of the movie isn’t as refined, imaginative and piercing as the finale.

About a third of the film is made up of intermittent flashbacks to war-time when Maria was a child living in her well-heeled family’s house in Vienna that the Nazis eventually pillage. One scene sees Maria and her husband, under house arrest, elude one of their Nazi guards in a street-level foot chase. It’s one of the more engaging sequences in the film, though it feels strangely protracted and slightly out-of-place. The film may have benefitted from dedicating more of its runtime to the ravishing period flashbacks, whose set and costume design are pretty stunning. Instead, the film plays out like a store brand court drama about a true story that’s much more interesting without Curtis’ cinematic machinations.

Simon Curtis’ Woman in Gold chronicles the true story of Jewish refugee Maria Altmann, who decades after fleeing Austria for America took on the Austrian government to recover a painting of her aunt Adele that had been stolen by Nazis during the war. It was a hard-fought legal battle, as the painting had become the country’s veritable Mona Lisa, but with the help of American attorney Randy Schoenberg (the grandson of Jewish refugees), she ultimately found justice and inner peace, reclaiming her family’s painting and reconnecting with her past life. We spoke to Curtis while he was in San Francisco promoting the film.

Above anything the film seems to be about how Maria struggles with being tethered to her past.
She was forced to leave her home. The scene where she says goodbye to her parents is the last time they’re ever together. A bit of her is locked in that moment, and I think that’s what propels the film: at the end of her life, she’s the last one living who was part of that community.

Is that what fascinated you most about the true story?
I think it is. I love the fact that Maria’s life is a story about the twentieth century in a way. Vienna at the beginning of the century was this amazing place, a melting pot of all these great ideas. She and the painting ended up in America at the end of the century. It’s about America’s policy of immigration, too, because this refugee who lived 50-60 years in California teams up with the grandson of another refugee, and they take on this campaign.

Is one of the biggest hurdles of promoting Woman in Gold getting the idea out of people’s heads that it’s a Holocaust movie?
I’ve never worked out how many minutes we spend in the past, but most of it is in the present. That was very important. There’s a speech in the end where Randy says, “this is a moment where the past is asking something of the present.” That tussle is in this. It’s really a story about Randy and Maria in the present going on this voyage of discovery. He discovers the importance and value of his history, and she re-confronts her memories. That’s the story of the film.

You consider yourself an actor’s director. When you’re helping Ryan and Helen, are you molding their performances as a unit, or do you do it separately.
It’s both. But I was thrilled that they hadn’t even met before. They got on immediately, and there was a real spark. They offered much more humor than I was expecting. I love hearing people laugh during the film; it’s a great feeling.

Do you think actors are better at social interaction than the average person?
I don’t think there’s a rule for that. It’s certainly not true that actors always like being the life and soul of the party. There’s this thing of, “Notice me. Leave me alone. Notice me. Leave me alone.” The more I work with actors, the more I realize that every actor has a different version of how you can help them. My job is to work that out. Some actors want you to talk about everything, some want to be left alone. You have to intuit that in a sense.

Do you prefer directing for theater?
No, actually I don’t. I used to, but now I love doing a scene and then moving on. Theater is about having to recreate a scene time and time again.

In theater, performances build over time.
And they can get worse as well!

Do you feel a higher sense of urgency directing movies since you film a scene, and then it lives on forever?
There’s definitely a sense of urgency, but again, if you flip that around it becomes a part of the creative process.

The scenes set in the past look amazing.
Ross Emery is a brilliant DP. Really, there were three time periods in the film: the Adele “golden years”, the modern scenes, and the past, which was the end of an era.

It must be magical to walk through those period sets.
There’s certainly something magical about filming 1938 Vienna in Vienna. It got to us all. It was really poignant and moving. When the Nazi vehicles come in or when the Jews are painting on the wall, we were recreating actual footage and photos we found from the time.

Was the ratio of past scenes to present scenes always the same?
I don’t know. I always imagined it was about a fifth of the film in the past.

Was this your first time shooting an action sequence? It must have been fun.
Yes. Tatiana Maslany is extraordinary. She spent days running around Vienna. Days.

I think something people don’t talk about enough when it comes to actors is how they act with their bodies as opposed to just their voice or their face. I think Helen is great at that.
I agree. It’s interesting because some actors do the same thing every take, but she’s always doing something slightly different. But when you cut it together, it feels really secure. It’s a strange thing. Her instinct is fantastic, and she’s always incredibly well-prepared. I was always excited to start filming, and I always trust her instincts.

I grew up in the ’90s. I think that decade is far enough in the past now that we can sort of dress people up according to ’90s fashion, and it’s really weird.
I read somewhere that clothes in the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s were all so different, but we’ve pretty much been wearing the same clothes from the ’90s onwards. “The GAP years.” So it’s sort of tricky to recreate the ’90s. The cell phone Ryan has at the beginning was a big thing in those days.

The final almost dream sequence is something else.
We wanted something up-lifting. If you’d lost family, it would be lovely to see them one more time.

Tonight marked the 20th anniversary of the Screen Actors Guild Award show, an award ceremony that has become a great precursor to help predict how the acting categories could turn out for the Oscars. The biggest reason for this is that the actors who make up this guild also make up a large part of the voting group for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Tonight Lupita Nyong’o took home a Screen Actors Guild Award for her brilliant role of 12 Years a Slave, beating out Jennifer Lawrence who recently won at the Golden Globes. Arguably the most exciting category was for the Best Male Lead category, where Matthew McConaughey, Bruce Dern, and Chiwetel Ejiofor all had a fair shot of winning. Though it was Matthew McConaughey (Dallas Buyers Club) who puts himself in the front of the race for the Oscar with the win here. McConaughey’s counterpart in the film, Jared Leto, also walked away a winner. Unsurprisingly, Cate Blanchett (Blue Jasmine) won for Best Female Lead and American Hustle for ensemble cast.

On the television side of things, Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad) and Michael Douglas (Behind the Candelabra) continued to add to their trophy collection from their Golden Globes wins from last week. Other big winners were Julia Louis-Dreyfus for Veep and Maggie Smith for Downton Abbey. Also, Rita Moreno received a Lifetime Achievement Award for her work in film, broadway, music, and television.

The full list of 2014 Screen Actors Guild Award Winners:

Film

Outstanding performance by a cast in a motion picture
12 Years a Slave
American Hustle
August: Osage County
Dallas Buyers Club
Lee Daniels’ The Butler

Outstanding performance by a male actor in a leading role
Bruce Dern, Nebraska
Chiwetel Ejiofor, 12 Years a Slave
Tom Hanks, Captain Phillips
Matthew McConaughey, Dallas Buyers Club
Forest Whitaker, The Butler

Outstanding performance by a female actor in a leading role
Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine
Sandra Bullock, Gravity
Judi Dench, Philomena
Meryl Streep, August: Osage County
Emma Thompson, Saving Mr. Banks

Outstanding performance by a male actor in a supporting role
Barkhad Abdi, Captain Phillips
Daniel Brühl, Rush
Michael Fassbender, 12 Years a Slave
James Gandolfini, Enough Said
Jared Leto, Dallas Buyers Club

Outstanding performance by a female actor in a supporting role
Jennifer Lawrence, American Hustle
Lupita Nyong’o, 12 Years a Slave
Julia Roberts, August: Osage County
June Squibb, Nebraska
Oprah Winfrey, The Butler

Television

Outstanding performance by an ensemble in a drama series
Boardwalk Empire
Breaking Bad
Downton Abbey
Game of Thrones
Homeland

Outstanding performance by an ensemble in a comedy series
30 Rock
Arrested Development
The Big Bang Theory
Modern Family
Veep

Outstanding performance by a male actor in a drama series
Steve Buscemi, Boardwalk Empire
Bryan Cranston, Breaking Bad
Jeff Daniels, The Newsroom
Peter Dinklage, Game of Thrones
Kevin Spacey, House of Cards

Outstanding performance by a female actor in a drama series
Claire Danes, Homeland
Anna Gunn, Breaking Bad
Jessica Lange, American Horror Story: Coven
Maggie Smith, Downton Abbey
Kerry Washington, Scandal

Outstanding performance by a male actor in a comedy series
Alec Baldwin, 30 Rock
Jason Bateman, Arrested Development
Ty Burrell, Modern Family
Don Cheadle, House of Lies
Jim Parsons, The Big Bang Theory

Outstanding performance by a female actor in a comedy series
Mayim Bialik, The Big Bang Theory
Julie Bowen, Modern Family
Edie Falco, Nurse Jackie
Tina Fey, 30 Rock
Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Veep

Outstanding performance by a male actor in a television movie or miniseries
Matt Damon, Behind the Candelabra
Michael Douglas, Behind the Candelabra
Jeremy Irons, The Hollow Crown
Rob Lowe, Killing Kennedy
Al Pacino, Phil Spector

Outstanding performance by a female actor in a television movie or miniseries
Angela Bassett, Betty & Coretta
Helena Bonham Carter, Burton and Taylor
Holly Hunter, Top of the Lake
Helen Mirren, Phil Spector
Elisabeth Moss, Top of the Lake