The Monuments Men is a 2014 American-German war film directed by George Clooney, written
and produced by Clooney and Grant Heslov, and starring Clooney, Matt Damon, Bill Murray,
John Goodman, Jean Dujardin, Bob Balaban, Hugh Bonneville, and Cate Blanchett.
Loosely based on the non-fiction book, The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves
and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History, by Robert M. Edsel, the film follows an allied
group, the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program, tasked with finding and saving pieces
of art and other culturally important items before their destruction by Hitler during
World War II.
The film, co-produced by Columbia Pictures and Babelsberg Studio, was released on February
7, 2014.
Story In 1943 during World War II, the Allies are
making good progress driving back the Axis powers in Italy.
However, Frank Stokes persuades the US President that victory will have little meaning if the
art treasures of Western civilization are lost in the fighting, either as collateral
damage in combat or looted.
To minimize that threat, Stokes is directed to assemble an Army unit nicknamed the "Monuments
Men" comprising seven museum directors, curators, and art historians to both guide Allied units
and search for stolen art to return it to the rightful owners.
In occupied France, Claire Simone, a curator in Paris, is forced to allow Nazi officers
like Viktor Stahl to oversee the theft of art for either Adolf Hitler's proposed Führermuseum
in Linz, or as the personal property of senior commanders like Herman Goering.
While she is nearly arrested for helping her Maquis brother unsuccessfully recapture such
items, all seems lost when she discovers that Stahl is taking all of her gallery's contents
to Germany as the Allies approach Paris.
When she runs to the railyard to confront Stahl, he fires on her with his pistol; although
she does not seek cover, she is not hit, but can only watch helplessly as Stahl escapes
with the stolen artwork.
As for Stokes' unit, it finds its work is frustrated by its own side's combat units
which refuse to restrict their tactical options for the sake of preserving architecture, while
James Granger finds that Simone will not cooperate with those whom she suspects are art looters
themselves.
The unit splits up for various objectives with varying degrees of success.
Donald Jeffries of the British Army attempts to arrange the safety of a Belgian church
with valuable artwork and is killed attempting to prevent the Nazi Colonel Wegner from stealing
a statue of the Madonna and Child by Michelangelo.
Richard Campbell and Preston Savitz attempt to track down a stolen Belgian panel set of
religious artwork, and in doing so, find and arrest Viktor Stahl, hiding as a farmer, when
they identify the paintings in his house as originals stolen from the Rothschild Collection;
Savitz uncovers Stahl's loyalties by tricking his indoctrinated children into saluting Hitler
when prompted with "Heil Hitler".
Walter Garfield and Jean Claude Clermont blunder into a Wehrmacht patrol and Clermont is mortally
wounded.
Meanwhile, Simone reconsiders when Granger shows her the Nero Decree to destroy all German
possessions if Hitler dies or Germany falls, and when she sees Granger return a painting
looted from a Jewish family murdered in the death camps to its rightful place as a symbolic
gesture.
Realizing the Americans are serious in their intentions, she eventually provides a comprehensive
ledger that provides valuable information to identify stolen art.
Even as the team learns that the artwork is being stored in various mines and castles,
it also learns that it must now compete against the Soviet Union which has units of its own
seizing artwork as war reparations.
Meanwhile, Colonel Wegner is systematically removing and destroying whole art collections
as per orders.
Eventually, the team has some success as it discovers at least one mine with over 16,000
art pieces as well as grotesque caches such as barrels of gold teeth from victims of the
death camps.
In addition, it also discovers gold assets of the Nazi German national treasury, the
capture of which effectively bankrupts the regime.
Finally, the team finds a mine in Austria that seems destroyed and is in what should
become part of the Soviet occupation zone.
However, the team discovers that only the entrances were damaged by the locals in order
to fool the Nazis and it manages to gain entry even as its fellows delay the oncoming Soviets.
As a result, the team evacuates as much artwork as possible, including the sculpture Jeffries
died defending, before the Soviets arrive.
Finally, Stokes reports back to President Truman that the team has recovered vast quantities
of artwork and various other culturally significant items.
As he requests to stay in Europe to oversee further searching and restoration, Truman
asks Stokes if his efforts were worth the lives of the men that he lost.
Stokes firmly replies that they were.
In 1977, the elderly Stokes takes his grandson to see Michelangelo's Madonna sculpture, amid
large crowds of youth appreciating the pieces of humanity's creativity that his men sacrificed
so much to preserve in war.
Cast George Clooney as Lt. Frank Stokes, loosely
based on George L. Stout Nick Clooney plays the aged Stokes in the
film's final scene.
Matt Damon as Lt. James Granger, loosely based on James Rorimer
Bill Murray as Sgt.
Richard Campbell, loosely based on Ralph Warner Hammett and Robert K. Posey
John Goodman as Sgt.
Walter Garfield, loosely based on Walker Hancock Jean Dujardin as Lt. Jean-Claude Clermont
Bob Balaban as Pvt.
Preston Savitz, loosely based on Lincoln Kirstein Hugh Bonneville as Lt. Donald Jeffries, loosely
based on Ronald E. Balfour Cate Blanchett as Claire Simone, loosely based
on Rose Valland Sam Hazeldine as Colonel Langton
Dimitri Leonidas as Pvt.
Sam Epstein, loosely based on Harry L. Ettlinger Grant Heslov as the Army Field Surgeon
Production
The Monuments Men is an American-German co-production of Columbia Pictures and Studio Babelsberg.
The film was funded by the German Federal Film Fund with €8.5 million, Mitteldeutsche
Medienförderung, Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg as well as Medien- und Filmgesellschaft Baden-Württemberg.
Casting was held in February 2013 for thousands of extras for the military scenes.
Principal photography began in early March 2013 at the Babelsberg Studios in Potsdam,
Germany, in the Berlin-Brandenburg region and the Harz.
The mines around Bad Grund, particularly the Wiemannsbucht and the Grube Hilfe Gottes were
used in the filming of outdoor scenes.
Other outdoor locations were the towns of Clausthal-Zellerfeld, Goslar, Halberstadt
and Osterwieck.
Some of the scenes, including flights and American war base footage, were filmed at
Imperial War Museum Duxford, Cambridgeshire, UK.
Filming was scheduled to last until the end of June 2013, wrapping up in Rye, East Sussex.
Release The film was originally set to be released
on December 18, 2013.
A trailer was released on August 8, 2013.
On October 22, 2013, the film was pushed back to an unspecified date in February 2014, because
post-production was taking longer than expected due to issues balancing humor with the serious
nature of the subject matter.
On October 24, 2013, it was announced that the film would screen on February 7, 2014
at the 64th Berlin International Film Festival.
The film was screened at UNESCO on 27 March 2014, on the occasion of the panel discussion
"Modern Day Monuments Men and Women" on the preservation of heritage in times of conflict
and the fight against the illicit trafficking of cultural property.
Reception
Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a 32% rating, with an average score of 5.2/10, based on
212 reviews.
The site's consensus reads: "Its intentions are noble and its cast is impressive, but
neither can compensate for The Monuments Men's stiffly nostalgic tone and curiously slack
narrative."
At Metacritic, the film has a score of 52 out of 100, based on 43 reviews, indicating
"mixed or average reviews".
Film critic Peter Travers in Rolling Stone Magazine gave it 3 out of 4 stars, noting
that while some of the dialog and emotions seemed inauthentic, the physical production
and cinematography was "exquisite," with shooting done on locations in Germany and England.
In comparing the film with current ones, he considers it a "proudly untrendy, uncynical
movie," where the story involved people seeking something more valuable than money: "Clooney
[as director] feels there's much to be learned from these unsung art warriors.
. . . What Clooney has crafted in The Monuments Men is a movie about aspiration, about culture
at risk, about things worth fighting for.
I'd call that timely and well worth a salute."
Historian Alex von Tunzelmann, writing for The Guardian, noted several historical faults
and said of the plot, "If you're getting the sense that the film is episodic and poorly
structured, unfortunately you'd be right", and "There are far too many characters, so
the screenplay splits them up into little groups and sends them off on various errands.
Some of these are more exciting than others – but they do not add up to a satisfying
plot.
A TV series might have been a better vehicle for the "monuments men" stories than a feature
film...
The story is fascinating, but this film's good intentions are hampered by its lack of
pace, direction, tone and properly fleshed-out characters."
In its review, the right-wing Spanish newspaper La Razón says The Monuments Men follows the
model of a "Hollywood war propaganda" movie.
Historical accuracy Although the film is based on real events,
the names of all characters are changed, and a number of further adjustments to the historical
facts were made in the interests of drama.
Clooney is quoted as saying "80 percent of the story is still completely true and accurate,
and almost all of the scenes happened".
Dr Nigel Pollard of Swansea University awarded the film only two stars out of five for historical
accuracy.
Pollard wrote that "There’s a kernel of history there, but The Monuments Men plays
fast and loose with it in ways that are probably necessary to make the story work as a film,
but the viewer ends up with a fairly confused notion of what the organisation Monuments,
Fine Arts, and Archives program was, and what it achieved.
The real organisation was never a big one, but the film reduces it to just seven men
to personalise the hunt for the looted art: five Americans, one British officer, the first
to be killed off and a Free French officer, marginalising the British role in the establishment
of the organisation.
This is presented as set up at Clooney’s initiative after the bombing of Monte Cassino.
In fact, its origins actually went back to British efforts in Libya in 1942, and it already
existed when the Allies invaded Sicily in July 1943."
See also Is Paris Burning?
Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program Rescuing Da Vinci
The Rape of Europa The Train
References
External links Official website
The Monuments Men at the Internet Movie Database The Monuments Men at Box Office Mojo
The Monuments Men at Rotten Tomatoes The Monuments Men at Metacritic
Monuments Men book