Last night George Clooney was honored as the recipient of the latest AFI Life Achievement Award. Hosannah and salutations — we all know the drill. Speaking entirely for myself and my own sense of how things ought to be, George is my idea of a good and gracious fellow, smart and savvy and entirely decent in every way that could possibly apply. He has always been nice to me, always polite and obliging. So nice that it pained me when I had to pan Monuments Men. I wanted to give it a pass but I couldn’t, and it hurt.
I consequently laughed when I read a Jimmy Kimmel anecdote in Anne Thompson’s story about the show. “Kimmel snuck in a raw note of truth when he lambasted [Clooney’s] Leatherheads and The Monuments Men,” she writes. “‘[The latter] was so bad it had me rooting for Hitler,’ Kimmel said.”
For old time’s sake, here’s a reposting on my June 2013 visit to the set of Monuments Men, which only happened because good-guy Clooney okayed it:
A few weeks ago I paid a secret visit to the set of George Clooney‘s Monuments Men in Germany’s Harz mountains. It wasn’t on the level of Henry Kissinger‘s secret visit to China to arrange for Richard Nixon‘s 1972 state visit, but when Sony publicity told me to keep mum until after shooting wrapped on 6.26, I gave them my word.
Yes, I’d previously told HE readers I was doing it, but then I clammed up and pretended I’d never posted such a thing. My mother called from Connecticut to ask where I was. “I can’t say, mom,” I replied, “but I can tell you this much — I’m definitely not visiting a movie set.”
Based on Robert Edsel‘s “The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History,” it’s basically about a bunch of caring wiseacres in fatigues and helmets saving civilization from ruin. Literally. By doing what they can to rescue or salvage tens of thousands of art treasures — mostly paintings — that have been stolen and freighted away by the Nazis.
Enlightened warriors, if you will. Guys who know that after World War II ends the quality of life on the planet earth will be seriously diminished if the great European art treasures have been hidden or destroyed. And so they’re out to prevent that with whatever maneuvers they can think of.
Clooney plays Frank Stokes, the leader of a ragtag group of art commandos…hold on, I’m giving the wrong impression here. This is not Ocean’s 11 in olive-drab fatigues or an art-appreciating Dirty Dozen or Kelly’s Heroes. Or is it? I don’t really know because a script is only a starting point, but I also know it’s not Schindler’s List. It feels more to me like a “movie” than a “film”, but that in itself might be inaccurate. I really don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about.
George Clooney on the set of Monuments Men, snapped in early May of 2013.