The Monuments Men [Movie Review]

Is it just me or are tag-lines getting stupider?
What the greatest art heist? The liberation of the art from the Nazis or the Nazi accumulation of art across Europe? Anyways, I owed a friend a movie, so we went and saw The Monuments Men.

Based off a book about a true story.

I was actually interested in see this, and since I made a promise to see it if we saw Robocop, it all worked out.

This was fun. It was not a fast movie, or an action filled movie, but it was a fun movie.

3.5 out of 5 stars

Alright, let me explain.

What a vile bastard. But, oh, all that art...

I have a degree in film, I have an art history background. Watching a movie filled with great artworks was just thrilling. I'm used to war movies, especially World War II movies, being just filled with gun fire, bombings, tanks, explosions, more gun fire, and often even more gunfire. 

I'm not saying that The Monuments Men was devoid of these elements, it was not, and no WWII movie really could be, but what I am saying is that the movie was not about those. It was about a group of soldiers put together in order to save and return thousands of pieces of stolen art.  It was about sending old men with very little combat experience into a war zone, risking their lives, all to preserve culture.

The back ground of the story begins as thus, the Nazi's had been rounding up artwork and shipping it to locations awaiting further transport to the eventual Führermuseum, a complex in the German city of Linz. The complex, like so much other Nazi architecture, was designed by Albert Speer. The museum would have been a giant, unimaginably massive, stone and mortar prison for innumerable stolen pieces of art. The plunder of artworks by the Nazis had begun well before the beginning of WWII.

I was really worried about a shoe-horned romance.

In 1943, Frank Stokes persuades President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to create a group of specially skilled and tasked soldiers to protect and recover artwork and cultural sites in Europe. FDR asks if Stokes thinks that the preservation of this art is worth a soldiers life (don't worry, this is the running theme). He gathers some old art world contacts and puts them through basic training and they eventually land on the beaches of Normandy. Their initial efforts at art reclamation are stymied by their own forces who refuse to 'not bomb a church if it means saving a few soldiers.'

George L. Stout (I think) / George Clooney as Frank Stokes

They begin their work across Europe. Matt Damon's char goes to Paris, Hugh Bonneville's char goes to Bruges, Belgium. They scatter through Europe seeking famous artworks, and information on where the Nazis are transporting them.

They are seeking certain specific masterpieces such as the Madonna of Bruges, and the Ghent Altarpiece. They also recover several tens of thousands of other pieces.

I'm not going to spoil any of the rest of the story.

Rose Valland / Cate Blanchett as Claire Simone

Let us not pretend that there is absolute historical accuracy.

There is not.
But this is Hollywood, we have to accept that even in movies 'based on true events,' are largely fictional. The frame story, the major story is based upon true events, but the details are muddled by the brush of the camera.

Historical archival photograph. Look at that art.

For one thing, in reality there were not simply seven monuments men. The Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program (MFAA) also known as the Monuments Men were some 345 person from 13 different countries. They rarely if ever worked together.

Names were changed for the movie. George Leslie Stout is the real person, Frank Stokes is the movie person. Rose Valland is the real person, Claire Simone is the movie person. You know what, just go here: History vs Hollywood. They did a pretty darn good job face matching.

"Why did you do something like that?"

And of course there is plenty of Hollywood in other parts of the film. There is almost a shoe-horned in romance that is thankfully avoided, the Monuments Men work as team (as opposed to reality) making this a party picture (as in an RPG party).

There are times when the action or scenes slowed too much or too oddly, and there is a lot of added pathos. And there is George Clooney, who honestly hands in the flattest and most boring performance in the entire movie.   

But you know what was awesome to see in a movie again? Bill Murray! Honestly, every actor and actress handed in a good performance other than George Clooney, he never sold his character to me.  

My art history professors would have been proud of me. I knew quite a bit of the artwork show in the film, and not just the obvious famous pieces. Is it worth seeing? I say yes, I'm a nicer critic than a lot of them I guess, seeing as how this movie is being panned on a lot of review sites. 

Madonna of Bruges, Michelangelo