So, back from watching the Monuments Men a few days ago. A nice film overall. Not quite the disaster I was expecting, or the Ocean ripoff it was made out to be. However the fims feels strangely schizophrenic. First an important point: Cate Blanchett is great in it. Her arc is the best developed in the film, and her scenes are mostly done with a taste and subtlety sorely lacking from the stuff involving Clooney. As a native French speaker, I was a bit put off by her accent. At first it sounded too Germanic for my taste, but more on that later. Jean Dujardin is given next to nothing to do apart from a stupid sendoff which sees him hit somewhere in the stomach from behind? At which point he begins swearing profusely in English before he remembers to throw in some Gallic obscenities for good measure. Now, I don’t know about you but even when I am in Britain, I usually let out a “Putain “ or a “Merde” when I hurt my toe and I would imagine a soldier’s first utterances when shot to be in his native tongue. However trivial this instance is representative of what undermines Clooney well meaning effort. Chiefly a lack of (disdain for) knowledge and context. The film rightly starts with Goring coming to the Louvres to select some Renaissance paintings. What Clooney fails/refuses to establish here is the fact that Goring fancied himself as a connoisseur and collector In truth it is more than likely that the works seen in that scene will end up in one of his multiple estates and not in the führermuseum Frank Stokes is so worried about. There is a point I want to make crystal clear in this review. I am not going easy on Goring here. Nor am I saying the Nazis were “normal” people or invaders.They were not. The thing is the people that the film depicts had a life before the war, some of them were cultivated and even had an appreciation for art and in this case, French civilization. In this war, like in any conflict the most awful barbarisms went hand in hand with strange bouts of civility.It would have been nice if the film took a few moments to explore this dichotomy. Sadly it seems that our good friend George cannot afford to go there for we must root for his character and the rest of the boys no matter what. Therefore what we must do with as far as villains go are just a little more than cartoon krauts. What I am describing above exemplifies this flick strange habit of short-changing historical plausibility in favour of plot devices AKA Matt Damon’s sudden speech inpediment. You see they need to send Matt Damon’s James Granger mostly to set up the romance with Blanchett’s Claire Simone. To that end he declares himself fluent in French having studied in Montreal. First problem Damon was apparently unable/willing to learn French dialogue and American audiences have no patience with subtitles anyway. So once on French soil, he proceeds to spout pidgin French in a vaguely accented way before he is quickly advised to switch to English by strangely fluent locals. Second problem Quebec is a French speaking territory and as such, was home to many French expatriates during the war. So there’s hardly any way that Granger was told he was fluent with the level he displays here. Lastly the Quebecian accent is quite recognizable and was even moreso back then when there was less standardization and last I checked Canada was part of the British empire so an enemy nation to the Germans. I find it highly dubious they would have let someone sporting this accent move freely even in soon to be liberated France. In much the same vein much is done of the famous Nero Decree of March 1945 Granger brandishing a copy of it in front of Simone’s nose all the while saying she must help the M-men if not everything she values is going down the drain. No doubt the decree was a radical and insane act and I imagine caused quite a commotion within art circles, but there’s no allusion to the fact Albert Speer, the very man in charge of its execution refused to carry it out Or since we’re in the Paris portion of the picture no mention is made of the actions of general Von Choltitz military governor of Occupied Paris refused to blow the city up. The decree is merely used as a way of explaining Claire’s change of heart.. I have been quite harsh on the movie thus far.However, there is also quite a lot of good stuff in there too Hugh Bonneville is genuinely effective as the uppercrust fallen aristocrat Donald Jeffries, and Cate Blanchett really shines as Claire Simone I alluded earlier to the schizophrenic nature of the picture which is nowhere more in evidence than in portions concerning theses two characters. First there is Simone’s staunch refusal to compromise any more than she already by allowing Stahl her personal nemesis the comfort of speaking German with him. Only when he seemingly empties the Louvres and flees under the cover of the night does she make a point of riding to the train station and hurl some mean sounding teutonic words at him. Her sudden fluency in German might have come out of left field were it not cleverly hinted in Simone’s slightly metallic sounding accent which I mentioned at the beginning, that could originate in either Alsace or Lorraine, thus reinforcing her earlier commitment to speaking French. Blanchett’s Claire Simone also seems to carry much more than she initially lets on as it is demonstrated by the scene in the rue de Nantes house when she does not enter the living room of a family who is likely never to come back while Granger has difficulty grasping the implication of their absence. I would like to think she’s the answer to the dilemma at the center of the film between the value of life and the value of art, but probably do I give Clooney and his writing partner Grant Heslov too much credit. In fact, we seldom see why art is important and its effect on people. One such instance is when Donald Jeffries rides into Bruges also at night incidentally to see if the Madonna is still in the church. The look on his face when when he finally sees it is worth all of Clooney’s Frank Stokes’ voiceovers on how Western civilization is lost if statues or paintings get destroyed and that’s another missed opportunity. The M men themselves never really gel together as in such films as The Guns Of Navarone, or The Dirty Dozen that Clooney wants to evoke with his film there is tension between members of the ragtag team. However, there is also a genuine sense of unwilling camaraderie required to merely survive. No such luck here. I so expected and wished Goodman’s Character, a sculptor, and Bonneville’s to reluctantly bond over a shared love of Michaelangelo’s Madonna. This could have provided an exploration of the two sides of art loving. One informed and technical and the other emotional and almost instinctive. Instead of that Goodman is saddled with mourning for Dujardin as with a sudden limp and Bill Murray is wasted bickering with Bob Balaban. All in all, I’d recommend the film as a rental. This way you could get to the good stuff quickly. Especially since the film falls apart near the end with a ridiculous and to me slightly offensive scene when Clooney talks bagels and deli with a German camp commander while assuring him (his audience?) he is absolutely not Jewish.
Posted on: Thu, 20 Mar 2014 17:00:56 +0000
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