George Clooney’s 'Monuments Men'

The Monuments Men marks Clooney’s fifth stint behind the camera, and it appears that, as he begins to age past his prime as a box office star, he is building a directorial career on the model of Clint Eastwood. Whether he’ll have the same success is another question. The Monuments Men is a big, earnest Hollywood movie of the sort George Stevens used to make, but it plays surprisingly small and raises far more questions than it simplistically tries to answer.

The monuments men were an elite group, never more than a few dozen, who were tasked with rescuing the masterpieces of Western art from the clutches of the Nazis, and, as the war wound down, from their destruction in Hitler’s last spasm of nihilism. The film’s first scene shows a bearded Clooney persuading a skeptical Franklin D. Roosevelt to authorize the mission. Who he is and how he got an audience with Roosevelt isn’t made clear. The implication is that this will be an American operation, but in fact the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives Programme was begun and to a large extent carried through by the British, who had art and records of their own to protect as German bombs rained down on them.

You wouldn’t know this, though, from Clooney’s redaction, in which seven intrepid souls set out to save Western civilization from the barbarians. Five of them — played by Clooney himself, Matt Damon, Bill Murray, John Goodman, and Bob Balaban — are Americans, and there’s a token Brit (Hugh Bonneville) and a French Resistance fighter (Jean Dujardin) to round out the bunch. The latter two are the only ones who will die during the course of the movie. (American stars used to die, at least occasionally — Kirk Douglas in Ace in the Hole, Lust for Life, Spartacus, and Lonely Are the Brave; Humphrey Bogart in High Sierra and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre — but they are cinematically immortal today.)

History Hollywood style

Clooney’s Seven Samurai — all based on real persons, though the names have been fictionalized — break apart to look, singly and in pairs, for caches of stolen art and for particular pieces, most notably a Michelangelo Virgin and Child and Van Eyck’s Ghent Altarpiece. The key to the quest is a cashiered curator, Claire Simone (the real-life Rose Valland, whose story was told in The Rape of Europa). Claire has kept meticulous records of the art taken from the Jeu de Paume in Paris and as far as possible of their intended destinations. These records will presumably lead to other looted art.

As played by Cate Blanchett, Claire is tight-lipped and suspicious, not unreasonably assuming that the Americans are after the swag for themselves. Damon’s charm can’t persuade her to the contrary, but when he returns a stolen painting to the apartment of its rightful owners she is finally impressed. The problem is that the apartment is empty and its residents gone, so the gesture is meaningless and the painting, if left, is sure to be reconfiscated. Equally unconvincing is his character’s rejection of Claire’s favors over an intimate dinner. Yes, he’s a married man, but it’s wartime, it’s Paris, and even the most high-minded husband has to show a little more chivalry than an embarrassed departure.

The other characters are featured in scenes too fragmented and episodic to connect, in part because Clooney’s troupe seems to be functioning solely on its own. Attempts at comedy backfire, as do those at sentiment, such as a rendition of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” sent from home and blared out over an encampment during the Battle of the Bulge. Eventually, the art is tracked down, and our heroes even blunder into the German gold reserve. A bit of drama is added at the end by the news that the Russians, no respecters of property, are carting off whatever they find for themselves. Clooney’s men just beat them to the punch at one particularly rich site, leaving behind an unfurled Stars and Stripes as a consolation prize.

In the Clooney version, then, America — or rather, in typical Hollywood style, a handful of heroes operating with the dim blessing of their government — save Western Civilization from itself. This is not only false to the record, but it elides America’s own conduct during the war. Clooney’s presentation to FDR includes a still of Monte Cassino, destroyed by Allied bombing. What, though, of the near-obliteration of German (and Japanese) cities, with all their treasures? What of the destruction of historic Dresden in February 1945, with the war almost over and no military advantage to be gained?

Thanks to Edsel’s efforts, the surviving monuments men were honored by George W. Bush at a White House ceremony in 2007. Presumably, none of them was tactless enough to point out how Bush’s armies stood by idly as Iraq’s national museum had been plundered after the capture of Baghdad four years earlier.

But my favorite irony lies in the fact that the American monuments men were operating under the auspices of the Roberts Commission, named for its organizer, Associate Supreme Court Justice Owen J. Roberts. Earlier in his career, Roberts had drafted the indenture of trust for the Barnes Foundation, whose treasures have, of course, been lately looted on behalf of the City of Philadelphia. Michelangelo and Van Eyck were rescued. Cézanne and Matisse weren’t.

For Armen Pandola's story about The Monuments Men, which focuses on the Philadelphia connection, click here.

For Naomi Orwin's essay on of the ultimate worth of art, which includes a consideration of The Monuments Men, click here.