Just when you thought they had covered every possible part of WW2, bring on the art collectors!
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“The Monuments Men” is based on the true story of a group of men appointed during WW2 to find a way to recover and return the many pieces of historical art that Hitler and the Nazis confiscated for themselves. Directed by and starring Mr. George Clooney, it also stars a litany of other big names; Matt Damon, Bill Murray, Cate Blanchett, and John Goodman, to name just a few. Now with a cast like that you might think this was a planned Oscar contender for 2013 that got held over for undisclosed reasons… and you would be right. Probably a wise decision as the final product just doesn’t quite hold together.
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Not that it’s all bad. When you are dealing with talent like this, it would be difficult for it to fail on every level. These actors know their craft and manage to pull decent performances out of a pretty jumbled script. Of note specifically, Matt Damon and Bill Murray are really very good in this, both capturing very real characters and pulling emotion out of some very tough scenes. Murray especially shines by selling the humor of the film better than anyone else, which may be the best part of the movie. Seriously, dude’s got such great delivery. But the problem is, there are so many plot lines and characters that we just don’t have enough time with him, or really anyone for that matter. As good as the performances can be at times the way the movie cuts between stories leaves these actors criminally underused.
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And I think a lot of this comes down to the way the plot is structured. Usually in a movie like this we get to watch a team develop and see how the characters interact, but here the players are moved around and away from each other in ways that keep the emotional growth from having a long form attachment. It also creates a sense that the plan for these art lovers to save the art is a lot more convoluted than it needs to be. But the worst thing was that I just didn’t buy into the stakes. I mean, I know these are “priceless” pieces of art, but why on earth are people putting their lives on the line for paintings and sculptures? I mean the movie tried to get me to buy in, explaining the value to culture and historical context. But especially in an era where we already have pictures of what these pieces looked like it all seemed so needlessly risky to me. This isn’t to say that I don’t respect or honor the true life people who undertook the effort, just that I have trouble seeing why they had to. This fact was made even clearer to me every time the story brushed on the real atrocities of that war. Saving canvas and oil just seems so trivial compared to the lives that were extinguished, which steals a bit of the films proposed potency.
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Overall, The Monuments Men, is a well acted, and at times funny movie, whose disjointed scenes and inability to get me to invest in the importance of its subject brought it’s value down to a C
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