The Monuments Men
(2014)
How do you end up making a movie with a cast and premise this
good so goddamn boring? I had hopes for The
Monuments Men, based on both those good solid reasons; it was in my films
to see for both 2013 and this year, even though I should have heeded the
warning signs when the release date was delayed. After all, it couldn’t be
anything but at very least entertaining. Could it? Unfortunately this is George
Clooney the director in complete disarray, clueless over to how to string a
plot together (with co-writer and frequent collaborator Grant Heslov) and inept
at introducing any kind of pace, urgency or drama into his filmmaking. He’s not
even that endearing in his familiar anchoring star turn.
He and Heslov previously teamed on Good Night, and Good Luck and The
Ides of March, both buoyed somewhat by having a politically invested Clooney
(even if his points are relatively soft
and familiar ones). Heslov also directed Gorgeous George in the oft chastised
but actually quite enjoyable The Men Who
Stare at Goats (the ending stinks, and the attempts to string Jon Ronson’s
episodic journalistic tome/TV series into a coherent narrative are patchy at
best, but there’s enough offbeat goodness in there to satisfy). You can quite
see why they snapped up the rights to The
Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves and The Greatest Treasure Hunt in
History by Robert M Edsel but even the title of his true tale of the quest
to find art treasures looted by the Nazis is more exciting than their
“dramatisation”.
Perhaps there was no story to muster? The hunt of the title
was merely a misnomer, and the Yanks just fell upon the art as fortuitously as
they do in the movie. In which case, Clooney and Heslov should probably have
dispensed with any pretence towards fidelity and made something up with the
loosest of connections to the historical subject matter. At least the result
might have been involving. You’ve got a load of bumbling old duffers inept at
any attempts to engage in warfare? Watch some old episodes of Dad’s Army for inspiration, Grant and
George; the box set is pretty cheap these days. Stuck for how to make a quest
for treasure colourful? How about Kelly’s
Heroes or (George’s own) Three Kings?
It seems not. Clooney and Heslov are caught in the trap of earnest respectfulness, when what
this needed may have been outright irreverence. At every turn (or exceedingly slow
sideways movement) they sink into a mire of lumpenly saluting these brave men
but forget to make them in any way brave or charismatic. How could you not want to spend time in the company of
John Goodman, Jean Dujardin and Bill Murray? Bill Murray! Usually Murray’s
dryness invites the viewer in on the joke. Here it’s a sign of how disenchanted
he is with the whole enterprise. Or maybe, as he has said, he had a ruddy good
time. It just doesn’t translate to the viewer.
I don’t think the serious-funny push-pull (depending on how
you believe, the delayed release reflects the tonal struggle or incomplete
special efects) is nearly as problematic as how inert The Monuments Men is structurally. At no point is any momentum
built up. Every single (traditionally successful) plot device falls flat on its
face; rounding up the usual suspects, sending the unprepared recruits into a
war zone, splitting them up for their individual missions, then the race (read,
sedate stroll) against time to get hold of the goodies before the damn
Russkies. It could be a charmless
affair but still tell an intriguing story, but there’s nothing to fire the mind.
The philosophical points are beaten out with all the
subtlety of a claw hammer on the cranium, so much so that, come the final
scene, we even get the President directly asking Lieutenant Clooney the very
dilemma George has been repeatedly mulling throughout (is art worth a man’s
life?) This, without naming names, comes up because a couple of top chaps are
dispensed by the terrible Boche. The incidents themselves lack any impact, but
we’re asked to mourn these men and believe that the remaining group are
terribly affected by their loss. Just so we’re sure of this, the truly rotten
score by Alexandre Desplat tries to stir the emotions. For the rest of the time
Desplat follows the most hackneyed, militaristic drumroll.
Surely if you’re going to make a movie about the importance
of art you need to instil an appreciation of the same? There has to be awe, and
wonder, and beauty. You never once believe that any of these guys give a shit
about paintings. Murray only wakes up when he finds an immense cache of gold
(any hope that his scene at the dentist will find him reliving his cameo in Little Shop of Horrors quickly
evaporates, and Stripes is a lifetime away). As does Clooney the director momentarily, which tells you a lot
about where the guy who thinks the Elgin Marbles should be returned to the
Pantheon (sic) has his priorities.
Even Cate Blanchett, in an utterly thankless supporting role as a frumpy
secretary with a yen for Matt Damon’s man sandwich, seems more preoccupied with
loathing her occupiers (she’s French, but Clooney must not have been interested
in employing a genuine croissant enthusiast) than expressing her love of the
old masters. Clooney and Heslov set as the great prize Michelangelo’s Madonna and Child but this pursuit is as
lifeless as the sculpture itself. Phedon Papamichael’s cinematography is
sometimes quite pretty, but that’s about as artistic as this movie gets.
The attempts to make Damon the butt of jokes (he’s really
crap at French) make you long for the days of Ocean’s 11 and, while it’s nice to see Bob Balaban in a high
profile role, his pairing with Murray never really sparks. It’s still more amenable
than Goodman and Dujardin, between whom there is zero chemistry. Hugh
Bonneville is a complete bore, but he’s in Downton
Abbey so that puts him on any anglophile’s casting list. Apart from him and
Jean, the Allies = the Americans. Which is obviously the case, as anyone who’s
seen U-571 and Saving Private Ryan knows. The Germans and Russians are all
faceless goons (Dimitri Leonidas’ “good German” aside). A scene where a Nazi
officer is discovered posing as a civilian, “fakes” adorning the walls of his
house, briefly threatens to become dramatic but quickly resumes the picture’s
otherwise listless form.
Somehow The Monuments
Men hasn’t completely tanked. Itmay be set to take up residence alongside Leatherheads as stillborn Clooney
picture, but it wont stop studios giving him the greenbacks to make more. It
says something about the lack of achievement here that you’re left idly contemplating
how, if the Nazis had destroyed all
that art, at least we wouldn’t have had to sit through this movie.
**
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