This Should Have Been Everyone’s Favorite Movie
How many ideas on paper sound so amazing that it’s not even funny? I’m sure they’re as infinite as a snowflake in a snowstorm. As a writer, I’ve experienced this feeling many times: ideas smushing together in my mind, only for me to try and draft them out to dismal results.
It used to bother me, but less so now. One factor that mitigated my disappointment was the bewildering not-epic smash hit movie, The Monuments Men.
Now that looks cool.
The Greatest Premise Ever
Based on a 2009 book of the same name by Robert Edsel and Brett Witter and released in 2014, The Monuments Men is a World-War II drama. The film stars (deep breath in) George Clooney, Matt Damon, Bill Murray, Jean Jujardin, Bob Balaban, Hugh Bonneville, John Goodman, and even Cate Blanchett. Now that is an all-star cast. Fred Friendly, Jason Bourne, Sully from Monsters Inc, Peter Venkman and Lord Grantham all team up to shoot Nazis and save Da Vinci paintings?
It gets even better than that. While there is sadly no Ghostbusters work to do, the mission they are undertaking is just as epic. This ensemble cast portrays members of the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archive section, abbreviated ‘The Monuments Men’. This real-life organization was created to help Allied bombers and ground troops spot priceless historical treasures such medieval churches to avoid blowing them up with heavy artillery. In addition, the MFAA was responsible for tracking down art stolen during the German occupation of Europe. Nazi art plundering was systemic, and someone in the Allied military needed to track it down. Nearly forgotten until the book and then the movie came out, soldiers of the MFAA had arguably one of the coolest missions in the war and undoubtably preserved the fruits of civilization.
With such a premise, it’s unsurprising George Clooney recruited such top-tier talent to join him on this war drama to tell one of World War II’s least appreciated stories. And with an A-List cast like that, surely the movie was one of the biggest hits ever, surpassed only by the likes of Citizen Kane and Star Wars.
Right?
Well, no.
It Only Barely Worked
Obviously that is not what happened. Odds are good you have never heard of this movie before coming across this blog post. It is by no means obscure, but it was not the immediate smash hit that it should have been. The film received mixed reviews and was a mild box office hit. Reviewers unsurprisingly praised the cast and the cinematography; it was filmed on location in Britain and Germany, lending the film an air of authenticity lacking in most World War II dramas. I will also add this film’s score is one of my personal favorites of any film ever. Alexandre Desplat turns in another sensitive, emotional soundtrack, and he even makes a cameo appearance in the film as a French farmer.
However past that, most reviewers found the narrative to be a bit ‘meh’ and the historical accuracy highly questionable. Though all the characters are based on real persons in the MFAA, none of their actual names were used. The result is fictionalized composite characters of varying interest.
But upon rewatching, I realized the biggest problem with the movie is just that, it’s a movie. If one looks at the ensemble cast, they’d realize something: how are all those characters going to fit on the screen? This winds up being the film’s biggest problems. As there are so many characters—a problem I highlighted in my Legend of Korra review—Clooney and his co-writer Grant Heslov had little choice but to splinter the group off into pairs to flag down specific artworks of interest. In a TV mini-series of six or seven episodes, the characters would have more time to focus on their episodic missions, build on-screen chemistry, and establish the historical accuracy, so a more realistic portrayal of the real heroes could develop. But the unrelenting runtime of a movie forced everything to keep moving even in instances where more time was needed.
In fairness to Clooney, he wasn’t working with straightforward source material. Edsel and Witter’s book is a bizarre reading experience. The book is written so journalistically that the actual story of the Monuments Men is hard to untangle amidst the blizzard of facts. Many sections of the book were simply unadaptable, so I see why Clooney got his friends together to film a World War II story where they all looked awesome. The film tries valiantly to highlight the sacrifice of these brave men and women. Two MFAA soldiers were indeed killed, similar to what is depicted in the film (though the actual events are wildly different), and it tries to highlight artwork still unrecovered. Its heart is absolutely in the right place.
But at the end of the day, that is all too much for just one movie.
Conclusion
Critics might have been mildly indifferent to The Monuments Men but I’ve always had a soft spot for it. As mentioned, the music is some of my favorite ever and the cinematography is a delight to see every single time. I also think the premise still holds up. But at the same time, I can see the shortcomings. I wish we had more time with these characters and that they used the real names of the people they were based on. It’s rare for source material to cause Hollywood problems because its story is lacking; most times the source material is so revered that Hollywood ruins it. Yet Edsel and Witter’s book is weirdly not part of the solution.
Overall, I recommend the movie. It’s one of my favorite movies, but it should have been everyone’s favorite movie.