It’s telling that all of the cast of George Clooney’s film said what a great time they had making it. It was a party every night, they said, he’s a great guy, very relaxed, it was a blast. That would explain why it is so disappointing it’s almost like watching people at a party to which you’re not invited.
The really disappointing thing is that Monuments Men is based on such an interesting and important story. As the Nazis stormed across Europe they ransacked its art. Material that Hitler despised, basically all of the important 20th century art “degenerate he called it – was burned, but paintings from the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and the Dutch masters were stolen. The idea was to house them in a huge museum Hitler was planning in his home town in Austria when the war was won.
The reality was of course that from 1943 onwards German soldiers were in retreat, so destroyed many priceless masterpieces and hid the rest in mines. The Allies, realising the importance of the works in the story of European civilisation, formed a special unit of Americans and Brits to try and save as many pieces as they can, and this is their remarkable story.
The problem with Clooney’s film is there is no sense of that importance. No matter how many times he writes himself a line explaining how this is Europe’s history under threat, how art represents different cultures and Nazis are hell bent on destroying those cultures, his film comes across as more of a caper than a film with any weight. Clooney simply cannot resist turning the whole thing into a jolly jape, undercutting any serious message the film may have.
Having stock characters is fine, having them wander around like cardboard cutouts shouting clichés is certainly not. The tone of the piece is all over the place, from John Goodman mistakenly believing blanks are being fired at him in basic training, to a scene with a sniper which should be tense, but ends up with another silly pay-off. A scene where the Unit come face to face with a boyish Nazi with a machine gun they end up bonding over a cigarette is just weird.
Clooney is far more interested in giving his mates some cameos than concentrating on what makes this story so interesting. One of the two pieces of art crucial to the plot, the Ghent altarpiece, is one of the most dazzling, extraordinary works of art in the western world so why do we hardly see it? Clooney clearly isn’t trying very hard the left-hand side of the altarpiece was stolen in the 1930s, so why do we see it whole being packed off by the resistance trying to save it?
The last film Clooney made with Cate Blanchett, the Good German, was equally forgettable and throwaway. Here he decides to cast her as a mousey French museum curator with a brother in the resistance. She mistrusts the Americans and keeps a list of the real owners (mainly Jewish) of the ransacked art again a crucial plot point, but the fact she is won over by Matt Damon’s flirting reduces the whole theme to a soap opera. She has an accent straight out of Allo Allo, he looks vaguely embarrassed, and the pair have the sexual electricity of a half-used AA battery. It’s hard to believe this is the same Cate Blanchett who is almost nailed on to win an Oscar for her brilliant Blue Jasmine.
At one point the unit cracks the Nazi code of where these artworks are hidden, and the whole film becomes a Raiders of the Lost Ark-style caper, with lots of jeep chases and the Russians hot on their heels. Hugh Bonneville wanders about looking out of breath, Bill Murray looks like he’s in the wrong film, Jean Dujardin lacks any weight. A pointer as to how off kilter the film has got is in a crucial scene at a key Nazi’s home the same Nazi who deals with Cate Blanchett’s brother in which his identity is revealed, played entirely for laughs. At this point the question of taste comes into things. Almost all of the Nazis have nasty moustaches and haircuts, all of the American soldiers are well fed, healthy and with hardly a drop of blood or mud on them.
With its cheesy sweeping music, dull visuals and inevitably an over-long running time, Clooney’s film is a dud on just about every level. It was rumoured to be withdrawn from the awards season for re-editing surely a euphemism for “oh dear, we’ve messed this up. Based on such a fascinating story this has to go down as a huge disappointment.
Overall verdict: Misfire of a film which has the chumminess, matiness and appeal of an end-of-season rugby club dinner. It takes a great story and turns into a silly crime caper, which the material does not deserve.
Reviewer: Mike Martin