The Monuments Men had a bit of a rocky road to the theaters.  The film, produced, written and directed by George Clooney and featuring an all-star cast, was set for release at the height of Oscar-bait season in mid-December, and audiences had begun to expect big things from it.  Then, news broke that it was being pushed back to a February release, due to difficulty finding the right balance of tone in the editing room (or, depending on who you ask, because they needed more time for the visual effects).  Making a PG-13 World War II movie that focuses not on the war directly but on countless works of art that most audiences have never heard of was always a dicey prospect, and from that perspective The Monuments Men is definitely a success, if perhaps not as much as might have been hoped.

In 1943, as the Allies advance into Europe and the Germans retreat it becomes clear to Frank Stokes (George Clooney) that the cost of the war will be greater than the loss of millions of lives.  Between damage from battle and German looting, many priceless works of art and architecture stand to be lost forever, and Stokes convinces President Roosevelt to assemble a group of curators, historians and museum directors to head into the war zone and do everything they can to protect these invaluable cultural treasures.  This group becomes the “Monuments Men” (technically the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program), and as the war rages on they struggle to track down art stolen from private collections by the Germans for Hitler’s planned art museum, fight to convince the American forces to fight in a way that protects these treasures, and race against the clock to beat the Russians, who plan on claiming the stolen art as repayment for the 20 million Russian lives lost in the war.

It’s a fascinating setup for a movie, made all the more interesting from the fact that it’s based on generally true events, but the structure of the film is a bit unusual and robs the film of some of its potential for drama.  Stokes recruits 6 men to his cause, four Americans (Matt Damon, Bill Murray, John Goodman and Bob Balaban), a Frenchman (Jean Dujardin) and a Briton (Hugh Bonneville), and the group heads off to Europe after a brief stop at basic training.  However, once they arrive at the war, the film loses some of its narrative focus as the group splits up to go after separate targets and the story is comprised more of vignettes than of something resembling typical film structure.  This has some advantages, as it allows 7 characters to illustrate the work of the 400 members of the actual “Monuments Men,” letting the film cover more ground and have more variety.  On the other hand, some of the characters we barely get to know at all.

Clooney’s Frank Stokes oversees operations, coordinating with the different groups via radio and popping up here and there when the group occasionally comes together.  Bill Murray and Bob Balaban head off in search of a particular piece of art while having some tense encounters with abandoned German soldiers and with Nazi officers in hiding.  John Goodman and Jean Dujardin see some actual combat as they’re pinned down by a sniper before getting caught in the crossfire between German and American forces.  Hugh Bonneville risks his life to save a particular statue in order to redeem himself of some crime in his past that we never learn (perhaps a victim of the editing process).

Matt Damon’s character, James Granger, is the only one of the group who gets anything resembling a character arc.  He is sent ahead of the rest of the team to Paris, where he meets up with Claire Simone, played by Cate Blanchett.  Simone, a museum curator, unwillingly worked with the Nazis as they appraised the art they stole and decided whether it would go to Hitler’s museum or to their own private collections.  After the Nazis withdraw, she is arrested for collaborating and is uncooperative with Granger.  She thinks that he wants to find the stolen art just so America can claim it as their own, sending it back to museums in the States.  He has to find a way to earn her trust and convince her that their only goal is to return the art to its rightful place, before the Russians can claim it or the Nazis destroy it on Hitler’s orders.  Their relationship grows and evolves, and hints at romance, and it’s one of the highlights of the film, in part due to the abilities of Blanchett and Damon to elevate the script.

The vignette aspect of the film has its ups and downs, and though there is little that is especially new or surprising it’s all handled well by Clooney as director.  We’ve seen standoffs between individuals who don’t speak the same language, encounters with unexploded mines, emotional letters to and from home and many of these other scenarios before, but they all play well, in part due to the extreme talent of the cast.  Bill Murray and the rest may not have especially deep characters to play, but they make the moments feel real largely by the quality of their performances.  All of the pairings have great chemistry, and while the characters are unexplored they still feel rich and alive, where in the hands of a different director and cast they might feel wooden and interchangeable.

The film does some clever things in order to tie the various groupings together.  In particular, the decision to focus the art recovery effort on two particular works of art, the Ghent Altarpiece and the Madonna of Bruges, gives the film a drive in its final act that would have otherwise been missing.  These two works come to symbolize the entire mission for the group as they develop a personal attachment to them as do we as the audience, making things more interesting and dramatic than if the film had contented itself with chasing art in general.  As things progress it also becomes clear that Damon and Blanchett’s characters have a key role to play, and things come together in the end in a way that is surprisingly satisfying.

With such a narrow focus for a war movie, The Monuments Men can feel a little off at times.  This is not Saving Private Ryan or Schindler’s List, and we see little of the bigger events surrounding our heroes.  There are references to Nazi death camps and barrels filled with gold teeth, and to the costs of battle, but it would be hard to make the saving of artwork seem important when overshadowed by these seemingly bigger issues.  However, that’s also where the power of The Monuments Men comes into play, because one tragedy does not cease to be a tragedy just because a bigger tragedy also occurs.  The film’s mission seems to be to tell us that while the loss of artwork may not seem important when compared to the Holocaust or the war, it still is important in its own right.  As far as I’m concerned, that’s a sentiment worth calling attention to.  Anyone who has ever been to Europe and walked through its churches and museums can appreciate the history and culture that is represented by this art and understand what its loss would have meant.  And, while thousands and thousands of paintings and sculptures were saved by the Monuments Men, many were destroyed or never returned.  There’s a visceral reaction to watching the Nazis burn one-of-a-kind artwork into ash, for no reason other than to prevent its return to the proper owners, and that kind of injustice is worth being highlighted so that it is not forgotten and repeated.

The film benefits greatly from its extensive on-location filming, using both familiar landmarks (Neuschwanstein Castle) and the greater European countryside to great effect.  The movie feels very authentic, even if the tone is lighter than we’d expect from a World War II movie, although it plays a bit loose with history.  The film gives the impression that these 7 men were the entirety of the mission, when in actuality the operation was much larger (though still small compared to the rest of the war).  It also plays up America’s role in the program while downplaying the British role, and has some factual inaccuracies as well.

However, the overall truth of the film still stands, that in the midst of one of the most cataclysmic events in human history a small group of people took the time to ensure that despite the loss of life the culture and soul of Europe would not be lost as well.  If the film convinces viewers that art is worthwhile and worth saving then it will have accomplished what I feel it set out to do.  Often when it comes to the depiction of war there’s a hierarchy of importance.  Soldiers are treated as more important than civilians, who are in turn more important than infrastructure and resources, followed lastly by art and culture.  Perhaps that’s true and perhaps it isn’t, but if The Monuments Men can remind us that the seemingly least important casualties of war are still worth acknowledging and protecting, maybe we can strive to ensure that nothing of value is lost if we can at all avoid it.

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