To the men who helped preserve our identity

Rating: 7/10 (15 March 2014)

This I thought was a pretty good movie about a little known story of a group of men who played, in my opinion, a very important roll during World War II, and that was to save as much stolen art as possible and return it to its rightful owners. When the Nazi's occupied Europe they began taking art back to Germany to build a large museum to house it (one of the first casualties in war does tend to be artwork, and that is why there is a lot of art scattered across Europe – take the British Museum for instance that has artwork from places as diverse as Greece and Egypt). However, this was during the closing stages of the war, and it was evident that the Russians were also procuring the art and returning it to the Soviet Union, so it ended up becoming a race to get as much art back to the original owners as possible.
The two major pieces that they were pursuing in this movie was Michealangelo's Madonna and Child and the altar fact from the Cathedral at Ghent. A lot more art was recovered, and a lot still remains missing. It is saddening to know that the Nazi's actually torched a lot of the art that they held when it became evident that they were losing the war, however the Monument's Men did manage to save an extraordinary amount of artwork when it became clear that it was being hidden in places such as abandoned mines.
The theme about this movie is how art, and architecture, works to define our identity, and the saying that they can burn down our homes and kill us but we will still return but if our art is destroyed then our identity is lost holds true. In fact that is why a lot of buildings are listed as heritage buildings because these buildings define who we are as a nation. As we see developers swarming in and leveling suburbs to build apartments we can see our identity changing, but by retaining the older buildings means that we have a connection with our past and our identity is preserved.