George
Clooney lacks a knack for adapting material. His adaptation of the Beau Willimon
play Farragut North – retitled The Ides of March, which he directed,
co-wrote and produced – wholly missed the mark, transforming a complex, revealing
study of modern political machinations into a broad, familiar story of scandal
and betrayal.
At
least, though, The Ides of March had
a slick look, and featured a range of strong performances. Clooney’s newest, The Monuments Men, is the sort of
failure that’s hard to believe. Working off of an acclaimed non-fiction work of
the same name, and gathering an unmatchable cast of actors ranging from John
Goodman to Bill Murray to Matt Damon, it seemed like a film that would work on
at least that Ides of March level.
Alas, it does not.
 |
| Bill Murray and Bob Balaban (Columbia) |
In
fact, The Monuments Men is quite
awful; a strange combination of gung-ho patriotism, near-constant speechifying
set to a triumphant score, characters that may as well take the name of the
actor playing them, and shoddy production design that utterly fails at
capturing the feel of war, rather opting for a look comparable to an episode of
M*A*S*H.
The
question that needs to be asked of Clooney, really, is why adapt this into a
film? Nothing new is brought to the table; a broad, constantly-recited theme
about the preservation of art, and of how not enough people care that the Nazis
are stealing and destroying it, works in a book well enough.
The
exploration of the theme ends with Clooney’s character, a professor tasked with
rescuing stolen works of art during World War II, telling the government why
the art needs to be saved. In terms of artistic exploration of the theme, there
really isn’t any.
More
baffling still is Clooney’s depiction of the war. The score, a rare misfire for
Alexandre Desplat (nominated for an Oscar last year for Philomena), aggressively and strangely alternates between excessive
patriotism, broad screwball farce and Schindler’s
List-level melodrama.
Despite
a pair of Monuments Men falling during wartime, one never gets even the
slightest sense of danger from the surroundings, and the razor-thin
characterization of each player in this film renders each post-death scene
beyond cringe-worthy.
Beating
on Monuments Men is a little
senseless, because this really is a harmless piece of blockbuster moviemaking.
The frustration lies in just how many things the movie does wrong, and how much
better it could be. We are hardly short of WWII movies, but the idea of Monuments Men is an interesting, even
fresh, one. What does it mean to fight for our culture and way of life if we
are letting its core disappear, and fall out of our hands? Clooney is not
interested in this question – an unabashedly romantic patriotism makes this
film feel very 1960s, at best – and rather tells his story procedurally and
simply.
Even
more disappointing is what he does with his actors. From Goodman to Murray to Damon, and extending to great character actors like Bob Balaban
(Moonrise Kingdom) and Hugh
Bonneville (Downton Abbey), it’s been
a while since I saw such a depth of great performers uniformly given so little to do.
Murray plays it satirically, Goodman boorishly, Balaban cowardly – the very
essence and style of each of these actors.
The
only performer asked to really put something on screen is Cate Blanchett as a
French spy, but a mix of clichés – in particular, an obsession with what is
“French,” citing wine, cheese and, yes, romance – and a poor accent prevents
her from making any sort of an impact.
The Monuments Men
was pushed out of the 2013 awards season and into February 2014, and Clooney
explained that the movie was never intended to be a prestige project. Yet at
the very least, you’d expect it to have something to say, to not have such a
disastrous grip on its tone, to bring out something in its remarkably capable
team in front of, and behind, the camera. In the end, perhaps Clooney’s words
ring true. This is not an awards player or a prestige project – rather, just
another empty blockbuster.
Grade: D
Available on DVD and via streaming