Of actor-director-producer George Clooney’s directorial credits to date, there are only a few common characteristics with which to recognise his approach, but they’re all quickly apparent. All films will feature the relaxed charisma of the star himself, usually alongside an eager string of renowned character actors, and near-always, they are distinctly old-fashioned excursions.
From the crisp, monochrome melodrama of Good Night and Good Luck(easily his strongest to date), to the low-key screwball laughs ofLeatherheads, to the vintage political thrills of The Ides of March, Clooney pictures most often seem to be cast-heavy exercises rooted in a wide-eyed affection for the Hollywood of yore and his latest, the WWII caper The Monuments Men, is also a cut from the same cloth.
The Monuments Men is modelled unabashedly after the historic Hollywood melodramas of the '50s and early '60s; and from the jaunty, classic score of Alexandre Desplat to the unflashy, stately photography of Phedon Papamichael to the general spirit of jovial male camaraderie and unironic sentiment, it’s almost refreshing to see a film so thoroughly unconcerned with what’s currently fashionable.
Detailing the efforts of a small outfit of seasoned art scholars, tasked with venturing into Nazi-occupied Europe and locating stolen artworks of cultural and historical significance, The Monuments Men has already proved somewhat divisive among critics, and for every praise of its classic charms is an equal measure of stabs at how frequently dull it is. So why exactly is it such a snooze?
There’s much more of substance embedded in any one of those masterworks than in Clooney’s direct, impassioned monologues.
I suppose the fraught mission of collecting Rembrandts and Vermeers – as opposed to, say, one-hundred Nazi scalps – already lacks a certain tension, but Clooney seems stubbornly resistant to engineering any extra for the sake of it. Across his top-drawer ensemble, very little characterisation occurs; in fact, aside from Hugh Bonneville’s disgraced past of alcoholism and Bob Balaban’s short-man syndrome, most of the distinguishing factors between the cast are solely reliant on our recognition of the actors in question.
This is probably a fair compromise to be in the company of such a calibre, but it immediately comes at the sacrifice of any real stakes. Clooney’s splitting-up of his cast essentially dices our investment from one crucial outcome to a casual interest in a handful of subplots, puncturing any accrued suspense with each diversion. Least consequential of these is the pointless non-romance between Matt Damon and Cate Blanchett, seemingly only existing to offer that women are just brief, pleasant distractions from all that male camaraderie.
But any real complexity is antithetical to Clooney’s objectives and it’s a conflict as notable thematically as it is within the film’s momentum. Any occasion in which the fellas aren’t exchanging witty digs or bromantic banter is an opportunity for Clooney’s leader to heavy-handedly explicate the film’s driving idea, which is basically just that art is pretty important. The thought that Hitler’s intention to acquire the great masterpieces of the world essentially symbolized his laying claim to the cultural histories of entire peoples is a ghastly conceit indeed, and illuminative of the way our artistic achievements can represent so much more than just the individual attributes of any particular piece.
But this could have been communicated quite effectively by one of these guys just expounding upon the properties and histories of any featured work and of how that achievement is reflective of its own specific context. There’s much more of substance embedded in any one of those masterworks than in Clooney’s direct, impassioned monologues.
But unlike much of the works it fawns over, The Monuments Men has little room for ambiguity, pessimism or moral confusion. Against what will always be remembered as a dark, sickly chapter of human history, Clooney’s work is consciously breezy, brazenly patriotic and unwaveringly faithful in human triumphs, and on these grounds, it’s a pretty difficult film to hate, even if it comes at the expense of anything to chew on.
It’s a picture fashioned much after the persona of George Clooney himself; charming, handsome, inextricably tied to a classic, romantic vein of Hollywood cinema and, of course, exceedingly laidback. I’ve read often over the years of actors, producers and directors all exclaiming George Clooney’s uncanny knack for relaxing the high-pressure tensions of a movie-set and creating an environment in which everyone is supremely comfortable. However, as a director, that’s starting to feel like a problem.
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