The Monuments Men review

In war, do you attempt to save art and architecture? That is the question at the core of co-writer, star and director George Clooney’s The Monuments Men, a World War II comedy/drama that benefits from telling a story that we haven’t heard before. 

Clooney stars as Frank Stokes, an art historian who convinces the U.S. army to back a special platoon of art experts who search for stolen art in Belgium, France and Germany. Clooney’s team includes such familiar actors as John Goodman, Bill Murray, Matt Damon, character actor Bob Balaban and Jean Dujardin, the Academy Award-winning French actor from The Artist.

These actors aren’t so much asked to play characters as to bring their well-known screen personas to the proceedings. The few attempts at further character definition — like Hugh Bonneville as a drunk seeking redemption — are familiar cliches.

This is the kind of film that relies on our knowledge of the actors’ previous work to fill in the blanks in character development. The film works purely on the goodwill we feel towards these actors.

The tone of the film also helps smooth over some of the rougher edges. This is not a dark, probing drama and rumination on war. Instead, for the most part, it is a light romp right down to its whimsical score by Alexandre Desplat. Nearly all the combat encounters are played for laughs.

All this may seem like it trivializes the war and the real-life story of these men, but by making the material accessible to a mass audience it helps to deliver the film’s lofty message about the importance of art preservation.

This isn’t to say the film doesn’t have its serious moments sprinkled throughout the jauntier overall feel. A storyline featuring Cate Blanchett, giving the film’s most understated performance as a French museum curator forced to work with the Nazis in the art thieving, is largely played dramatically.

There’s also a moving scene of Murray listening to a recording of his daughter and grandchildren singing “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”. The look on Murray’s face when he hears the voices of his family is a reminder of just how good of an actor Murray truly is.

The film doesn’t shy away from showing the death of two of the Monuments Men, although, these scenes feel oddly rushed as if a film about war doesn’t want to be too much of a downer.

 Alec Kerr