Reviews in the Nick of Time: Monuments Men

Monuments Men is, as they say, “based on a true story,” in this case the story of the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program of the allied armies during World War II, an organization composed of hundreds of (mostly) artists and art historians, from many countries, who attempted to preserve art and historic buildings during the Allied advance through Europe, and who also set out to locate thousands upon thousands of looted artworks, and restore them to their original owners.

This is damned good material, and it’s surprising a movie hasn’t already been made of it.  But now Monuments Men is in theaters, and it’s a big expensive film with terrific production values, and an all-star cast including Bill Murray, Matt Damon, Jean Dujardin, Hugh Bonneville, Bob Balaban, Cate Blanchett, John Goodman, and George Clooney as writer, director, producer, and star.

In accordance with the First Rule of Hollywood War Movies, the hundreds of members of the MFAA are reduced to a handful— there is never any dramatic reason why a movie squad should be more than six men, but in this case we have ten or so, one of whom (Dujardin) necessarily speaks the language of the country they’re traveling through.  (Though of course once the squad gets to Germany, the French-speaker becomes expendable— not that this is a plot spoiler or anything.)

I have elsewhere noted the demise of the service comedy genre.  There is more than a suggestion that Monuments Men should be viewed as a member in good standing of this extinct art form, in that we see the recruiting, training, and deployment of a unit of eccentric, unlikely soldiers, and there’s a lot of humor.  But I’d argue that the movie really isn’t funny enough to be a comedy— the eccentric characters get split up early on, so they don’t get a chance to play off each other as you’d expect in a war comedy.  And war comedies are, or should, involve scheming— scheming not so much to defeat the enemy, but to defeat the military bureaucracy and the stupid, stuffy senior officers who want to put a stop to the fun.

So it’s not a comedy per se, and in fact the film pretty much refuses to be one thing or another.  It’s not funny enough to be a comedy, there’s not enough action for it to be a thrilling war movie, and there isn’t nearly enough gravitas for it to be a Serious War Film along the lines of Schindler’s List or Saving Private Ryan.  (Even though Private Ryan is in fact in the movie.)  Clooney and his co-writer Grant Heskov didn’t quite grok that writing is about decisions, and one of the decisions early on is to decide what the thing is that you’re writing.  All the sub-genres sort of slop over onto one another and the result is a flabby film, and an overlong one.

Nor do I believe that any of these characters are art historians.  I don’t know a lot of art historians, but I bet that when a bunch of them get together, they talk about art.  (Certainly when a bunch of writers get together, they may not talk about writing per se, but they’ll certainly talk about the business of writing.)

Now obviously you don’t want your art historians to deliver a lecture on art history, which would bore the chinos off the audience.  But they can argue over their interpretations of Botticelli or whatever, and it can be a funny argument, and revealing of character.  But the filmmakers were content to avoid the ostensible subject of the movie, and the result is a film that doesn’t have much at its center.

On the positive side, the film looks damned good.  And the characters are all so damned charming, and the actors are so obviously having a great time in each other’s company.  I had a pleasant enough time watching it, though I was looking at my watch during the last half-hour or so.  There are plenty worse ways to spend a couple hours, should you need to escape the weather for a while.

And you get to see some pretty pictures, too.