Review The Monuments Men [Small spoilers alert] During the chaos at the end of WW2 as the Russians and Americans are circling the wreck of Europe, a man with a plan collects a motley team of art experts together to help retrieve and return a continents mountain of looted art treasures to its rightful owners. If youre looking for action, violence and large scale spectacle you wont get it – what this film excels in is its charming blokey friendships, with a lets get through this sense of humour and a different agenda at odds with the rest of the Allies. Visually stunning recreations of the destruction and devastation of city, art and life mix with astonishing real archive images of stacks of priceless treasures and their epic hiding places. Standouts are Hugh Bonnevilles charming failure, Bob Balabans underused prickly expert, while Jean DuJardin and George Clooney have the kind of faces that simply dont belong in our time – and time is doing magnificent things to Clooney. Bill Murray in the shower hearing a recording of his daughter singing to him played over the camp tannoy is a revelation in a restrained and gentle scene. Cate Blanchett takes a minor role as a buttoned-up enraged French woman forced to work to support the looters. Her cramped little apartment life is beautifully created, her tentative reach-out for romance kindly rejected by Matt Damons all-round decent guy. In fact theyre all so damn decent theres an unexpected jolt of loss and an a. when the inevitable sometimes happens. Theres a sense of subtlety in performance and Clooneys direction that might lack excitement for some, and the fact that the story is at odds with the true events of the time has caused controversy. Dont expect a historically accurate documentary; its an entertainment, and for me, this simple tale, straightforwardly told - get the gang together, throw them some problems, and get most of them out the other side – works.
Posted on: Sat, 22 Feb 2014 12:09:23 +0000
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