By ANDY GILCHRIST
Arts Editor
Which is worse, an overall bad film or a good film that should have been great? A bad film seems to be the initial obvious answer, as the viewer takes nothing away from the movie, unless it’s so bad that it’s laughable. But I’d go with the latter answer— a good film that squanders all of its top-quality resources and simply produces a mediocre product. Such a film leaves viewers with an unfulfilling feeling as the credits roll, leaving them frustrated that what they saw was not nearly as good as the film they were promised.
Sadly, The Monuments Men is such a film. While it is certainly entertaining, switching between relaxed comedy and serious drama, and highlights an important story of World War II not known by many people, the film never lives up to its potential. With Academy Award winners both in front of and behind the camera, and a huge Hollywood budget supporting it, the film should be a triumph, an emotionally affecting film that stays with viewers long after they’ve left the theater. Instead, the film is merely good.
The film follows the historical Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program of the Allied Powers during World War II, whose mission was to recover works of art stolen by the Nazis before they could be destroyed. Led by Frank Stokes (George Clooney), the team consists of painter James Granger (Matt Damon), architect Richard Campbell (Bill Murray), sculptor Walter Garfield (John Goodman), designer Jean Claude Clermont (Jean Dujardin), composer Preston Savitz (Bob Balaban), and Frank’s old friend, Donald Jeffries (Hugh Bonneville).
After getting together and going through basic training, the team splits up and heads to locations all across Europe to look for paintings, sculptures, murals, and more, including meeting French resistance member Claire Simone (Cate Blanchett), who may know where thousands of pieces of art are being stashed. Initially meeting nothing but opposition from soldiers who are disgusted by their pretend-soldier status, their mission becomes even more important, and dangerous, when Hitler gives an order that if Germany falls, all the artwork the Third Reich has hidden across Europe is to be destroyed.
In addition to starring in the film, Clooney serves as director, co-writer, and co-producer, truly putting his all into the project. Clooney’s earlier filmography suggested that The Monuments Men would be a well-made film that audiences would enjoy. In addition, his previous films Good Night and Good Luck and The Ides of March attracted awards buzz at the time of their release. Couple that with Clooney and producing/writing partner Grant Heslov riding a tidal wave of momentum for producing last year’s Best Picture winner Argo, and most critics and movie-goers assumed The Monuments Men would be an early contender for next year’s awards season.
Overall, Clooney has done a good job with the material, creating an entertaining film that makes the viewer both laugh and cry. No expense has been spared to make the film historically accurate, with the costumes, props, and sets all looking the part of 1940s Europe. While the film initially struggles to find its identity, jumping too erratically between comedy and drama from the start, it establishes a serious tone with bits of comedy sprinkled throughout at about the halfway mark and continues this to the end credits. The audience forms an attachment to the characters and sympathizes with them as they face every obstacle thrown in their way. When a member of the team dies in the field, viewers are as devastated as the characters in the film.
But on a technical level, the film is a misfire. Despite featuring an all-star cast, the characters are criminally underdeveloped. The team members’ talents are only shown in a recruitment montage at the beginning, then totally forgotten about. Once they hit basic training, the Monuments Men become a group of men who all have a connection to the art world; their areas of expertise do not matter. Had the two-hour film been 20 or 30 minutes longer, as well as going through a few more script revisions, this problem could have easily been solved.
This lack of character development is astonishing, considering the film takes place over the last two years of the war. Realizing that there was so much material to dive into makes the final result even more unsatisfactory. The film jumps forward months at a time, but these transitions are only recognized by lines printed at the bottom of the screen. Had they not been there, the audience would have assumed the events of the film took place over just a few weeks. When the war ends and the Monuments Men head home, only one or two of them seem to have really undergone any spiritual transformation or have been changed by their experiences at all.
The root of the problem with the film seems to be that Clooney doesn’t know exactly what he wants to do with it. He clearly wants to make a great war film about an important story, and he has absolutely found one here. But he struggles with how to tell that story, trying to cram too much material from a 450+ page book into a 120-minute film. Having already cut down the number of real-life Monuments Men from over 400 to just seven, the film seems more like a series of individual missions rather than one cohesive story. In hindsight, it would have been a much smarter move to adapt the book into a six-hour TV miniseries, which would have allowed for not only more characters, but much more characterization, as well as clearly showing the passage of time and the changes, both physically and emotionally, in the men and women saving Europe’s very culture from destruction.
Ultimately, The Monuments Men will be remembered as a good film, a solid war film that people will enjoy re-watching again and again. But today, it’s just a bit disappointing.
