Golden film

Woman in Gold is a miraculous & iridescent film that will delight and fascinate you. It tells the true story of Jewish woman who fled Austria just before the outbreak of WW2 and her quest to have her paintings restored to her. One of the paintings is one of the most famous in the world: Woman in Gold / Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I by Justav Klimt. This film is as layered as the painting with superb acting (as always) from Helen Mirren and the rest of the crew.

It features flashbacks to the time of the Anschluss in a seamless way, that could so easily have been very clunky. I didn't know the end of the story, although I assume many who see this film will. But whichever way, I don't think that matters since there is still much to intrigue and explain about the history of the painting and the subsequent litigation. A beautiful film.

Films often feature stories of 'little' people who persist, against the odds, to achieve something against 'big' corporations - or in this case - whole countries! It is an old theme of leadership dating back to Robbie the Bruce & the spider: keep trying and you will succeed etc. But of course what these stories fail to report are all the cases where persistence did not pay off! I have no idea what is the ratio of success to failure is for people who persist with some campaign or plan or something....

But the art of persistence in leadership terms is about knowing when to carry on and when to quit. This is the real trick and essentially it is a gamble because if you do choose to quit, you will never really know whether that was the right decision or not.

How do you know when to quit or when to persist?

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This is the eighty sixth of my 2014/2015 series of blogs about leadership ideas to be found in the movies of our time. You can read here as why I began doing this (with an update at the end of 2014). Please subscribe to this blog if you want to read more. Thanks. Click the label 'film' to see all the others.