The Monuments Men


I’m always enticed by movies that are “true” stories.  When I saw the previews for “The Monuments Men” starring George Clooney and Matt Damon – I knew I wanted to see the movie not for the big name actors, but for a story I knew nothing about.  I’m not a history buff, so I was really surprised to learn about The Monuments Men and to know why they risked their lives for art.  The movie told the story of a group of men, who believed in saving the masterpieces from the countries which Hitler had ravaged, for the generations to come and for the people that had lived and died.  These men, portrayed by Clooney, Damon, Bill Murray, John Goodman, Jean Dujardin, Bob Balaban, and Hugh Bonneville are curators and historians of art who have been tasked with the unfathomable job of finding missing pieces that Hitler has stolen to use in a museum he was to create after the war.  To be honest, there were parts of the movie that dragged on, that weren’t needed, and sometimes the action was rushed, but, the story itself of the self-sacrificing commitment these men had was what really moved the movie along.  The end of the movie was very interesting as they told how many pieces of artwork were stolen and the incredible places they hid most of it. The more I read about this story, the more I appreciate what they did and how they saved historical pieces that are still in museums today.  (The more in-depth story can be found in the book with the same title as the movie by Robert Edsel).

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