Monuments Men

I know this movie received mixed reviews, but I thought it was excellent. With so many disappointing movies lately I was pleasantly surprised that Monuments Men really delivered. I had never heard this story before and I was impressed at how it was presented. The actors were perfect for their roles and it left me feeling proud of what these men were able to accomplish.

One thing that really struck home with me was seeing the beaches at Normandy. My uncle actually landed in the first wave, lost most of his battalion and was wounded. He never spoke about it but I know he carried the scars throughout his life.

"This is our history. It's not to be stolen or destroyed. It's to be held up and admired." Frank Stokes

Considering the great art works recovered from the Nazis in 1944 by the Monuments Men, losing 2 lives in the operation might have been worth it. Or at least that's the struggle of the hero in the titular film inspired by the events: Frank Stokes (George Clooney), a curator at Harvard's Fogg Museum, goes back to the Army to head a small art recovery contingent (7—most out of shape and aging like John Goodman), with echoes of the Magnificent Seven and Dirty Dozen recruiting sequences, promising exceptional wit and action that doesn't materialize.

Why is such a high-concept plot lost in a February opening? Possibly because it's enjoyable but not remarkable, a pastiche of brief episodes not always connected to the plot's central vision (shooting at a German sniper youth thought to be an adult?). The episodes may be meant to establish character while sliding over them to chronicle a not always interesting path to the mines and castle where the Nazis have hidden the loot. At least the studio had the good sense not to pit this modest adventure against, say, American Hustle or 12 Years a Slave in the Oscar prelims in November and December.

The action picks up as they find the destinations, but along the way James Granger (Matt Damon) interacts with Claire Simone (Cate Blanchett) in a low-key romance that finds great art but small love. Changing Claire from the original monument woman Rose into a love-seeking operative angers some historians. Another concern besides history and coherence is tone: Reverence for the mission clashes with the jokey camaraderie of old-fashioned WWII movies.

It is a delight to hear the names of artists like Picasso and Rembrandt even though they had little influence on the film's fair-to midlin' screenplay penned by Clooney and Grant Heslov. Looking for Michelangelo's Madonna of Bruges and van Eyck's Ghent Altarpiece is definitely grand, but the grandeur is not matched by the screenplay.

As for directing, Clooney misses the sharpness of his Good Night and Good Luck while he helms here what seems a small story about an odd group of soldiers struggling to rise to the occasion of history's greatest art reclamation. It's an enjoyable film but not a great one.

I have to say that I think a 6.1 average rating is a little unkind to this film. There are a multitude of super serious, heart wrenching, melancholy dramas about WWII. And I understand that those are appropriate for one of the greatest collective horrors to ever grip mankind.

That said, this movie being more jovial and about kinship amongst the men who swore to save art and culture felt like an appropriate tone. It made the film fun.

Having enjoyed it, there are still flaws. Not enough focus on the actual works of art for one, and for another, a little disjointed and rushed in some spots while other scenes that have little impact on the story take up screen time. It could have been a more art-centric celebratory movie than it was, given the heart of the matter.

This is not a terrible film. Maybe not what some would expect, but I had a nice time watching it, learned a lot, and even at times felt compelled about the accomplishments of humanity. That's a hard feeling to come by, so I embrace and appreciate it.

"The Monuments Men" is a group of men (in real life around 350, and in this film 7) who are tasked with saving the historically and culturally significant monuments, fine arts and archives during World War II. They have to find and return that which the French hid and the Germans were finding and stealing and then hiding. And the film decided to tell this story comedically.

The film took a really long time to get going as they wanted it to be about the men that took on this task. But they changed their names and I also couldn't tell you a single characteristic of any of them. The men were paired off so they each had their own region to investigate, but none of that was interesting. The worst part was giving James Granger (Matt Damon) and Claire Simon (Cate Blanchett, representing the real- life heroine Rose Valland) a love story. They did have a reason for such nonsense, or how about just sticking with how it actually happened.

George Clooney has said the film is about 80% accurate, and that seems fair enough. But the problem isn't the historical inaccuracy; the problem is that the cheap humour diminishes the very people and story they're trying to empower. The humour was just a handful of lines wanting to kill Hitler and standing on a landmine. It just didn't make the film entertaining. The story could have done that but it didn't become interesting until they started discovering where the Germans hid the art. Coincidentally, the same point when the film started following the real story.

"The Monuments Men" very clearly wanted to help remember an important part of history and spark a debate about the cost of war on soldiers, civilians, and history and society. The debate is raging on, but the film missed the level of entertainment by not trusting its audience to be interested in exactly what happened.

Before I review the movie proper, some anachronisms: While there was a song called "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" in 1944 (Judy Garland introduced it in Meet Me in St. Louis), the words Ms. Garland sang then were a little different from what we know today. Like, instead of "Hang a shining star upon the highest bough" which was the line introed by Frank Sinatra in his 1957 recording, the line should have been "Until then, we'll have to muddle through sometime" which Judy sang in that movie I mentioned. Anyway, I very much enjoyed this dramatization of some art experts attempt to save as much of other countries' art from the Nazi regime as possible during World War II. Nice characterizations from Matt Damon, Cate Blanchett, John Goodman, Bill Murray, Bob Balaban, among others, and George Clooney who also did a nice job directing as well. Maybe there could have been a bit more drama in characterization but I was satisfied with what I got. There were some nice humorous scenes as well. So on that note, I recommend The Monuments Men.