Movie review: The Monuments Men - a treasure hunt gone awry

Is preserving art worth the loss of human life?.

The Monuments Men is based on Robert Edsel’s best-seller and loosely revolves around the greatest treasure hunt in history. Set in the time of World War II, it revolves around a group of men who took up the laborious task of locating and rescuing culturally significant monuments, fine arts and archives which the Nazis were stealing and hiding for display in Hitler’s proposed Führer Museum.

This adaptation follows the fictional characters of George Clooney and Matt Damon as they recruit half a dozen artists and experts (Bill Murray, John Goodman and Jean Dujardin) to preserve these masterpieces. The group forms an odd lot, gifted and flawed at the same time, as they don’t always get along with each other or their pragmatic GI counterparts. And as if the job wasn’t difficult enough, French curator (Cate Blanchett), who has ties with the Nazis is counting on them to fail. Even though Blanchett was served with a thin role, she is a breath of fresh air as her passion convinces even skeptics that there’s more than canvas and paint and chiseled stone at stake.

The biggest stakeholder in the movie is George Clooney, the man behind the camera and one of the writers of this historical saga. It’s sad to see that Clooney, who has delivered brilliant films earlier, couldn’t do justice to this one. The film could be more entertaining than it was, had it not fallen prey to a weak script. With an A-list cast like this one, you expect powerhouse performances and memorable scenes, but walk away disappointed. On the bright side, the actors do keep the audience partially engaged through continuous laughs from quick one-liners and witty character interactions, but it’s still debatable whether a movie dealing with such a hard-hitting issue should be portrayed so lightly.

The editing is choppy and the movements seem rapid, therefore the story does not come off as cohesive. For example, you would find yourself in France in one scene and the Battle of the Bulge in another, often without any explanation.

The locations used in the movie however deserve a special mention; the portrayal of Normandy Beach, Paris, snow-covered Belgian forests, castles and cathedrals is stupendous. But this is offset by the predictable sets and unrealistic costumes, making art our only sense of reality.

Overall, the movie does not deliver in terms of its historical importance as there wasn’t enough running time to show the whole operation. Additionally, in reality there were 300 men involved in this daunting operation and the script reduced it to seven, making it a guessing game of fact or fiction. This however, does not affect the extremely important question that the film seeks to address: should humanity be sacrificed in the quest to preserve its marks? One should not pass off the film as an aimless effort to delve into history but instead use it to think about all that we have lost to war. It will definitely strike a chord with those who believe that cultural emblems of a race should be protected no matter what the cost.

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Samra Muslim is a digital marketing professional, an avid reader and a movie buff. She tweets @samramuslim 

Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, March 16^th, 2014.