The Monuments Men: A Room With No View Movie Review

The Monuments Men, Directed by George Clooney

As I mentioned in my last post, I would put up a review of the new George Clooney movie, The Monuments Men.  Since I promised to do it, I will fulfill my promise.  However, as much as I loved the book, I was not impressed with the movie.  I try to keep things upbeat and positive on this site, but I plan to take a slight break from that and get a little critical.

Something you know about me is that I do not disparage movies based on books just because I am a book lover.  I know plenty of people who are condescending when it comes to Hollywood presenting their version of a much loved literary classic.  And much of that is well-deserved.  However, I don't mind Hollywood taking a book and tweaking it a little bit to increase the cinematic effect of a story.  After all, it is a movie, not a book, and it should have elements that make it worthwhile to watch in a dark theater.  I don't even mind if they change a few things.  The best example of this I often discuss with movie buffs and book lovers is the way Peter Jackson switched out Glorfindel in the Ford of Bruinen with Arwen.  As a kid, reading the Tolkien story, I was in awe of Glorfindel, holding off the Black Riders with his elf-magic.  However, though at first I squirmed to see Arwen--a girl, no less--saving Frodo instead of Glorfindel, I quickly saw just how great a switch it was.  It is now one of my favorite moments in the entire movie trilogy.

However...

The director, George Clooney, having a drink and some
fun with pal Matt Damon in The Monuments Men

When making a movie based on historical events, I don't like to see major changes just to make things more interesting.  Tighten the anxiety a little in a scene that is historically accurate?  That's fine, I get the need to gig the audience a little.  But when several characters are smashed together to form a completely new character for time savings, or when a character is portrayed almost one hundred per cent accurately but their name is randomly changed...these things bother me.  If the story can't be told in two hours and you feel you have to make amalgamated characters, just don't make the movie.  So right off the bat, George Clooney, the producer, director, screenwriter (with co-writer Grant Heslov), star, and promoter of the film, uses both of these tricks to muddy his historical film.  And that didn't sit well with me at all.

But let's ignore the fact that he chose to change most of the story of the Monuments Men.  After all, you can read Robert M. Edsel's excellent book of the same name as the film if you want the facts.  We'll be generous and suggest that the film is simply meant to be an entertaining look at an odd little historical bit of World War Two.  And maybe we'll give a nod to the noble cause of championing the importance of culture and art in a civilized world and how much of that culture was in danger of being lost.  How, in fact, a few men saved the soul of Western Civilization.

So full of expectations, having waited nearly six months to see what I figured would be the film of the Christmas season, I set out to the theater in February (due to its being delayed from a Christmas release--more on that later) to see a movie set in World War Two about the importance of Western Art.  It seemed too good to be true.

Yeah...

First, let's hit the high points:

Clooney does a flawless job of recreating Paris and greater Europe at the end of the war.  I wasn't there originally, since I wasn't exactly in existence then, but I feel pretty certain he did an above average job of giving us a peek into that time period.

Bill Murray And Bob Balaban in The Monuments Men

As a fan of Bill Murray, I was thrilled to see him working again.  It has been a few years since I've seen him do any serious work.  And here he is mostly used as light (very light) comic relief, with a scene or two that is meant to be poignant.  The same can be said of John Goodman, though his moments of comic relief are much more heavy-handed.  Sadly, his are mostly clownish in nature.  Goodman is a great dramatic actor, and like Murray, can handle the deft skill of presenting a comedic character as both funny and heartbreakingly tragic.  This was a movie that should have used more of Goodman's skills in this area.  Instead, Clooney chose to give Goodman the bright red nose with the balloon animals.  A poor choice, I thought.

I thought the strongest character was the Frenchman Lt. Clermont, played by French actor Jean Dujardin (known most recently for his lead role in The Artist) who brings a natural charm to a role that allowed him to showcase his little known skills to the American public.  He should have been in Hollywood years ago.

As entertainment goes, the film was fun to watch.  Lots of laughs, good guys catch and punish the bad guys, and famous works of art are rescued in a dramatic and timely manner.  We feel great about what the Monuments Men have done,  a little sad at all the destruction, and proud that we spent some time watching a movie that had a tad more culture in it than the latest Superheroes CGI extravaganza.  Roll credits and walk out of the theater with a slightly good feeling.

Now, let's examine why that feeling was only slightly good.

The guys, having fun fighting Nazis.

From the beginning, George Clooney seemed to have one goal in mind for this film: let's get my friends together to make a cool, fun film.  So with Ocean's Eleven/Twelve/Thirteen pal Matt Damon in tow, he goes around and collects some old film stars to help him make a fun movie.  Neat-oh!  And don't think I'm being cruel here, folks.  You can see the gleeful smile on Clooney's face from the moment he is briefing the shadowy figure of FDR to the very end, when he is lecturing the evil Nazi on just how evil he is and how little he means now that he has lost the war.  Heh-heh.  If you need an example of this sort of oops-didn't-mean-to-smile-during-that-scene atmosphere, just watch Ocean's Twelve.  In that movie, Clooney wasn't the only one doing it.  The whole cast did it.  You know that each and every time Clooney yelled "Cut!" the crew let out chuckles, a few giggles, and some good-natured finger-pistol pointing that ended with a wink.

But I exaggerate.  Not in the whole film.  There are many moments when the film turns serious.  Bill Murray gets his ten dramatic minutes during a shower scene, of all things, that should have been the stuff that wins him an Academy Award nomination.  I'm serious.  It is a great scene, lost in the silliness that is this film.  It even has a great Christmas song that covers the scene, and could be added to the traditional Christmas movie favorites list.  I loved it.  Especially if it had opened Christmas day as it was supposed to.  Did I mention that before?  I did.  In fact, I said I'd get back to that.  So let's do that now.

Damon and Clooney with some British guy in between them
with those smiles that filled the picture.  (Actually, that's Hugh
Bonneville in the center, who handled his role quite well.)

The movie was supposed to come out at Christmas, but it was delayed.  Most of the time these delays come from the director tweaking his film, trying to fix something or other.  It turns out Clooney was having trouble getting the mix of drama and comedy right.  (This he admitted to TheWrap, which I only discovered while researching for this post.  But I knew it was the problem as soon as I saw the finished picture.  Honest.  Ask my wife.  Oh never mind.)   Pushing the film back didn't help.  Clooney never did solve the riddle.  Instead, he left the film muddled, and I felt this ambiguity acutely early in the film.

I won't spoil the film for those who haven't seen it, but members of the troupe die along the way.  And as this happens, we should feel a shift from the early, eagerness to join the war, to a sobering reality that all war movies tend to produce.  But Clooney never seems to settle in his mind that he wants to go there.  It is too bad, since all the elements are there to bring this off.  But inexplicably, it just doesn't happen.

Take for instance when the a Nazi who is set up at the beginning as a really bad guy finally gets captured.  It should be a tense scene that ends in the sudden relief that comes when a villain is captured.  A moment of "finally!"  Instead, there were chuckles in the audience.  It was funny that the really bad guy was captured.  What a lark.  Hee hee!  I have no idea what Mr. Clooney was thinking here, but whatever it was, he should have discarded the thought and tried again.

I'm a fan of Bob Balaban, and love the dry, emotionally drained roles he often takes.  Here he gets a great one.  A somewhat shy, slightly grouchy sensitive man who wants to get in the war and do something, despite just being an art expert.  He has some good chemistry with Bill Murray but he gets relegated to the clown role, much like Goodman.  However, Balaban is the sad clown, with the tears painted on his face instead a big red ball on the end of his nose.  Man, that really burned me up.  For what he did to Goodman and Balaban, Clooney deserves this review.

Cate Blanchett, hiding behind a veil of
smoke, hiding her acting skills in a role
that did not ask much of her.

I still wouldn't say the movie is a total wash.  It has some value, especially as a starting point for the discussion of the role and value of art in a world gone mad with war.  It is fun to watch, and there are performances that probably shouldn't be missed.  I've said little about Cate Blanchett's role.  And that's on purpose.  She sleepwalks through this thing, and it is mostly because her character is terribly boring.  Not much more to say about it.  She's prim, determined, secretive, and the fact that she sort of throws herself at Matt Damon was uninteresting to the story and not accurate to the history of the book.  But I'll give Blanchett this much--she can looked worried really well.  I believed her.  She looked worried that Nazis were in her Paris.  Really worried.  Maybe she was channeling her inner artist, who knew that Clooney's screenplay was full of bad dialog.  For someone like her, this had to be something to worry about.  After all, it was bound to make her character boring.  And it did.

The best moments of this film are captured in the trailer, with Shawn Lee's haunting song Kiss the Sky as the backdrop.  For me, I think this trailer sunk the movie.  It made it look like an Oscar contender.  Like a movie that would reach inside me and rip out my heart with the dramatic story of how courageous men stood up to the Nazis and saved the world's most precious non-living treasures.  For that, I'm mad at the man who edited this awesome trailer and that other man, George Clooney, for not making a film that stands up to its trailer.

So watch the trailer only if you want to risk ruining a slightly entertaining movie.

My View of Van Gogh (Part One)

Red Vineyards Near Arles, 1888
The one painting Van Gogh sold.

If everyone says you're dead, you need to lie down.
  Perhaps the greatest artist who ever lived took this advice too literally.
  Having spent spent ten years on his craft, sketching and painting over two thousand art pieces, unable to sell more than one painting, it is generally believed that Vincent Van Gogh shot himself in despair, perhaps while he was ill.  Astonishingly, the oil paintings we know him by were done in a five year period.  There are over 800 of them.  During this time, his brother Theo, an art dealer, supported him, as did other artists, though they could not find buyers for his work.

Self-Portrait, 1889 (Inset, Vincent at 18)

  Though we might believe that a man who painted 37 self-portraits was awfully vain, I think it actually shows us how insecure he was.  Study the many different ways he painted himself: his nose is crooked in some paintings, smooth in others, his cheeks, his eyes, even the shape of his head changes.  Was he, in fact, trying to find out who he really was?  Was he trying out different visualizations of himself, in order to avoid the one vision he could not accept- that of a failed artist?  Imagine if you were Vincent Van Gogh, with his artistic eye, and you were told that the works that you had painted were worthless.  It staggers the mind.  It did his.  It certainly staggered his soul.    And one day in July, 1890, either in a wheat field, or in a barn--his isolation so complete that no one even knows where he was that day--he shot himself, then walked back to town, dying 29 hours later.  The fact that no pistol was ever found, and the artist was not known to own one, leaves many questions.  The writers Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith, authors of Van Gogh: The Life, have even postulated that Van Gogh had either been accidentally shot by mischievous boys or shot by a teenager in town with whom Van Gogh was known to argue.
  Whichever it was, I know one thing.  Early on, Vincent was not the melancholy spirit I had always believed him to be.  I've been reading his letters, and have found that he was a very happy, enthusiastic young man.  He was not a revolutionary painter who wanted to redefine the art world.  He was always speaking of the great artists who had come before, as well as his voracious search for new artists.  He was not a genius who disdained the talent of others.  In January of 1874, while in London, Vincent wrote to Theo about his (Theo's) new interest in art:

     I'm glad you like Millet, Jacque, Schreyer, Lambinet, Frans Hals, etc., for as Mauve says, "That's it."  That painting by Millet, L'angules du soir, "that's it," indeed- that's magnificent, that's poetry.  How I wish I could have another talk with you about art; but we'll just have to keep writing to each other about it.  Admire as much as you can; most people don't admire enough.

  And so I offer these works of Van Gogh, for all to admire.  If you are interested in reading more about Van Gogh, Delphi Classics has a great ebook collection of his work (all of his paintings) as well as a biography by Van Gogh's sister-in-law, and over 800 of his personal letters.  It can be viewed on your browser, so you can see all of his paintings in color.  The collection is $2.99.  Find it here.

Prisoners Exercising, 1890

Backyards of Old Houses in Antwerp, 1885

Olive Trees with Yellow Sky and Sun, 1889

Girl in the Street, Two Coaches in the Background, 1882

Crab (Upside Down), 1889

Good Art (Part 1)

  I have recently been having conversations with friends and family regarding art, and what constitutes good art vs. bad art.  (Pardon my simple labels.  If you are looking for highly educated criticism, please, don't continue reading.)  A co-worker related his experience at a local museum.  He was intrigued to hear that our local museum had an exhibit of Andy Warhol paintings.  He announced his intentions of going to view the exhibit.  I did not comment.  I thought I'd let him form his own opinions.  When he returned to work, he told me that he was less than impressed.  In fact, the words he used to describe Warhol's work are words I'd rather not use in my blog.  Needless to say, he felt the seven dollars he spent on the viewing would have been better spent on two coffees at Starbucks.

  I could have saved him the loss of cash.  A Warhol fan I am not.

  But many people are.  And that's the magic/frustration of art.  Anybody can like nearly any type of art.  And I'm fine with that.  If there are people who wish to ignore serious skill and beauty in art for the crass, mundane, or even the ugly, so be it.  As far as we know, there are people in the world who actually enjoy eating bugs.  As they say, there's no accounting for taste.

  This sort of logic calms me when I realize that people would rather spend money on the latest Stephen King foolishness instead of a book by a more sensitive author like, say, yours truly.  It is comforting to know this happens because some people just can't recognize real talent.

  But I digress while attacking another artist in my field.  (Which, by the way, is the number one pastime of just about every artist who ever lived.  Seriously.  I'm not joking.)

  So let's look at what I consider to be good art.  (Great Art sound better?  Or maybe Exceptional?)

  For this post on Good Art, I'm going straight to the top.  No fooling around.  Let's look at the master.



The Road Menders (Wikipedia image) 

Here you can see Vincent Van Gogh's "The Road Menders" (1889).  Please take to the time to click on this image and enjoy the detail of this exquisite work.  Gaugiun, who spent time painting beside Van Gogh, once remarked that Van Gogh's painting looked nothing like the scene they were both painting.  Van Gogh's reply was along the lines that he was painting what the scene looked like to him.  And that's what makes this so wonderful; the chubby trees, the golden swirl of the sun.  There is so much to see in this moment that he has captured; the women passing by, the men working, backs bent to their tasks.  Doesn't matter that they are not fleshed out with detail.  The real focus here is on the trees.  They not only hold the center of the painting, they also seem to be holding up the top of it.

Churchyard in the Rain (1883)
Image from The Van Gogh Gallery
(www.vangoghgallery.com)

In this pencil and pen drawing, Van Gogh sticks with the image of workers, only this time, they are not hidden by the overpowering trees and golden sun.  They are more centralized, though now the rain covers them.  In fact, so many of his workers are covered by something.  His famous wheat field series portrays sowers and plowmen and reapers with storm clouds overhead, or the sun beating down, or even just the full blue sky bulging overheard as if the workers are about to be inundated with blue paint.  I don't think I've ever seen one of these workers looking up at the sky.  They are always bent low, their backs turned away.  They are too busy in their work to pay attention to the stunning views that surround them.  That is for Van Gogh to see.  It is his job to paint it so that the rest of us may see it. 

Le Moulin de la Galette Terrace
 and Observation Deck
 at the Moulin de Blute-Fin,
Montmartre 1886
(photo by Jason Reeser)

This next painting I had the honor of seeing in person at the Art Institute of Chicago a few years ago.  The photo on the left is my own.  What strikes me about this is that fact that nearly every artist would make an effort to perfect the alignment of the streetlights.  Symmetry!  But not Vincent.  He is far more interested in the whole.  Seriously, look at the lights.  They don't really even match.  But in the end it doesn't matter.  Standing in front of this I was taken in by the whole scene.  I didn't care that the lights look mismatched.

  If we are to believe the history, Van Gogh only ever sold one painting in his life.  That did not stop him from producing over two thousand pieces in a ten year span.  It, however, keep him from earning enough money to promote politicians on his day-time television show.  So maybe his obscurity was a good thing.
  But it was, really.  Do we really believe he could have kept up this pace if he had been a public sensation?  Probably not.



  At this point let me add that if you are interested in Van Gogh, there is a book that you must read.  I mean it.  It may just be the best book I've ever read on art.  The book is called The Yellow House: Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Nine Turbulent Weeks in Arles.  It details the time when Van Gogh and Gauguin spent time together.  It is a great chance to learn about both artists as well as learn about what makes an artist, and you might learn what art means to you in the process. 

What do you consider to be great art?  I will come back to this subject again, and add to my examples.  It won't all be paintings.  It won't always be from famous artists.  And it will always be my opinion.  So add your own to this by leaving my your thoughts.  Because art should always hit us on a personal level.  If it doesn't, it may not be good art.