Though this is perhaps a little off topic from history documentaries, I felt I should give you a little review of what I thought about Monuments Men. I know there has been a lot of criticism for this Clooney film, but I decided I should have a crack at it as well.
So the film is set during the final years of the Second World War, and a team of art and architecture experts are brought together by FDR to find and retrieve pieces of artwork stolen by the Nazi regime and return them to their owners. Because, in Britain, we are ceaselessly reminded of the the history of this important war from various but sometimes overworked perspectives, this could have been an interesting way of bringing out a really interesting and quirky story that had such a huge impact. There was room to bring in the context of the Second World War out in more depth and shine a light on some of the smaller yet just as important episodes in this life-changing war. In my opinion, what the audience are given is an extremely linear story without any sense of anything being particularly difficult or dangerous to do.
There were chances to add a little more depth to narratives that sprung from the main story such as the Jews and the Hitler Youth. Perhaps we are seeing Clooney trying to move away so much from the conventional history that he pushes it out almost completely. For example, we never see Hitler other than in a silhouette, nor do we hear him speak. Further, though we see some of the effects on the Jews, they are very passive. You see barrels of gold rings and teeth, and Jewish houses ransacked with anti-Semitic language scrawled on the walls, but as an audience member I was not compelled to feel anything about these situations. So what is making this story feel so unenticing?
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Clooney is questioned about the making of the film. When asked about how accurate he claimed the film to be he answered:
'Listen, the good news is, 80 percent of the story is still completely true and accurate, and almost all of the scenes happened. Sometimes they happened with other characters, sometimes it happened in smaller dimension. But that’s moviemaking. We’re not killing Hitler in a movie theater. And I loved Inglourious Basterds. We’re landing at the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944. We’re not landing there when it was convenient for us to land there. We follow all the rules, we just made the characters more interesting, I think. Not that the real people weren’t interesting. It’s just that, you know, you’re not going to know if somebody had a drinking problem, and we kinda would like to have somebody with a drinking problem.'
My opinion on why it tends to fall a little flat may stem from this: I think that we need to remember first and foremost that the job of historical films and dramas is to entertain using the past as a backdrop. This is not to say that the history should not be as accurate as possible, but there are levels to how much of the truth the film/TV makers want to bring to light. My issue with MM is (beyond the statement that 'the story is still completely true and accurate' because that is somewhat impossible with history) that maybe Clooney needed to realise that by adding a little more fiction to his script it may have grabbed the attention of the audience a lot more, and he could have brought an identity to the film. By this I mean that there were jokes, but it wasn't exactly a comedy. There were deaths and inferences of suffering, but the audience was not particularly compelled to cry or empathise in any meaningful way. And there were triumphs, but they felt so simple (such as finding the Madonna and Child sculpture in the last mine they encountered before they had to leave the country at the end of the War) that there was little suspense or a willingness of the audience to join them on their journeys. The failure seems to be in trying to make it 80% accurate. As a film watcher and not a documentary watcher, I wanted it to bring so much more emotion in such a dark time in our recent history.
Overall, this film appears to be a way of expressing his need to make something epic, lets hope its not his swan song though. The talent of such an impressive cast including Matt Damon, Bill Murray, Hugh Bonneville, Cate Blanchett and of course how could we forget John Goodman, is wasted on a film that has tried so hard to be 'historically accurate' that is lacks what film watchers want: excitement, tears, fear, suspense, elation. I think that in future, Clooney should avoid the confusion between film and documentary, and leave the historical films to those who can do them justice.
(image sourced from: http://www.forbes.com/sites/scottmendelson/2014/02/05/review-george-clooneys-monuments-men-is-important-but-mediocre/)
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