Convincing sleight-of-hand

Rating: 8/10 (8 February 2014)

Actors are professional pretenders. Movies that depict real life events, or literary works,are successful if they present persuasive indications, hoping to capture the spark of reality on stage or screen.
George Clooney is a sentimental man who conceals his sentimentalism well. He makes movies whenever he can about topics, people, and issues he cares about.
Having read the book this film was based upon, I was looking for gestures, expressions, persuasive indications of a movement most people, including me until very recently, were not aware of.
A story in today's Wall Street Journal proclaimed that the desire to save, protect, salvage and restore, and allow the present and the future to continue to enjoy art - is ongoing - even in such places as Afghanistan and Iraq. That article also dramatized General Eisenhower's efforts to ensure that American soldiers were respectful and appreciative of other countries' cultures and their artistic and other achievements.
I thought that the exposition, the part of the movie that was slowest moving, where each character had to be introduced and developed, then inserted into the rather tense and nervous camaraderie, such as it was, was the weakest part of the film; but even this part had the feel of a recapturing of the mis en scene of 1944 global Armageddon in the world.
I often forget that many of the Chicago group that made Saturday Night famous: John Belushi, Bill Murray and many others, were classically trained actors. Bill Murray listening to a record while in the shower is a great moment in theater, in acting, in verisimilitude, the art of making the gesture, the moment, seem so real that the audience forgets it is only a movie.
The entire cast behaved as if they truly were the architects, curators, sculptors, and connoisseurs they were portraying, and I felt that the movie got stronger and stronger after the going got really tough in their mission.
Kate Blanchett plays a tough French woman smoldering with an inner burning anger, and she is convincing in every scene she was in. I thought that she inspired and uplifted Matt Damon's performance.
I think the quality of the writing is uneven, but that is true not only of art, but of life. Sometimes, ordinary people utter mundane statements; sometimes, we are inspired to be eloquent, elegant. I think that "The Monuments Men" captured that reality, too.
I would love to see it again, and I urge anyone who is interested in the idea of saving precious works of art from military and other predators, to read the book by Robert M. Edsel.