The Monuments Men

The Monuments Men

Starring George Clooney, Matt Damon, Bill Murray, John Goodman

Directed by George Clooney

The Story:
Near the end of World War II, Lieutenant Frank Stokes (George Clooney) amasses a band of seven museum directors, curators, and art historians to find stolen art and return them to their owners. These men included Lieutenant James Granger (Matt Damon), Sergeant Richard Campbell (Bill Murray), Sergeant Walter Garfield (John Goodman), Second Lieutenant Jean-Claude Clermont (Jean Dujardin), Private Prestor Savitz (Bob Balaban) and Second Lieutenant Donald Jeffries (Hugh Bonneville).

When they arrive in Europe, they're split up to go to different countries and retrieve the stolen art, and along the way they come into contact with evil Germans, hot-headed generals, and French curator/spy Claire Simone (Cate Blanchett).  As they try to find the valuable artwork before they're destroyed forever, an important question is raised - is finding and preserving these pieces of art worth human lives?

The Synopsis:
"The Monuments Men" came out in 2014, and I was eagerly anticipating to see it.  It had a great cast - including four Oscar winners (Clooney, Damon, Dujardin, Blanchett) and two Oscar nominees (Murray and Balaban), an intriguing true-life tale, and some great European scenery.  Then the reviews came in, and it was pretty much universally panned, and my anticipation waned and ultimately I forgot about it.

Then I finally watched it, and I realized now why I forgot about it.  Because, even though on paper the film had everything going for it, it ended up to be a two-hour snoozefest, with wooden acting, boring camerawork, and a paint-by-numbers tale that you could easily predict a mile away.

The true story of the Monuments Men centers not around seven people - but 345 men and women from thirteen nations who were museum directors, curators, art histories, artists, architects and educators who were assigned to protect cultural treasures so far as war allowed.  That would've been a very interesting tale to tell, but instead it got reduced to seven men out on a fancy treasure hunt.

George Clooney had a real passion to see this film brought to life, but in the end it bored moviegoers to tears.  Wasting talents like himself, Matt Damon, and especially Bill Murray and John Goodman is a true war crime, and the story itself was incredibly off-balanced.  One scene everyone is joking around and having fun, the next one of the main characters is killed.  Then a whole lot of nothing happens, and out of nowhere another character bites the dust.  The pacing is completely off, and it drags in places where it shouldn't and quickens in places it should expand upon.  There's also some subplots that never get fully resolved, nor even given a real point to the story (the biggest being a forced relationship between Blanchett's Claire and Damon's Granger that never takes off).

Now, as someone who's a fan of art and antiquities, I fully understand the point the Monuments Men made in hoping to maintain and preserve the priceless artifacts.  No matter how many pictures you have of something, it will never compare to the original, and once its gone, it cannot be duplicated.  George Clooney said it brilliantly in the film - "If you destroy their achievements, their history, it's as if they never existed."
Hitler wanted to eradicate the Jewish nation, and one way to make sure a nation is eliminated is by destroying its history.  Paintings, sculptures, and other artistic mediums are a part of that history, and if it were all destroyed, so too would any memory of that particular people group.  To correlate that to modern day, it's like what ISIS is doing in the Middle East.  They want to destroy the Christian world, and they're doing that by destroying ancient Christian churches that have existed since the time of Christ, and destroying priceless Christian art.  Once those buildings are destroyed, once those pieces of art are torn down, they cannot be replaced.

That being said, I highly doubt anyone would go to such great lengths to save "The Monuments Men" decades down the road.

The Summary:
While there was a heart to the film, "The Monuments Men" was muddied by an off-kilter script, uninspired performances, and a true waste of talent.

The Score: B