Ep 82 – The Monuments Men – Art Preservation During WWII

In this episode of Rosie the Reviewer, we talk The Monuments Men (2014), George Clooney’s glossy take on the true story of Allied soldiers racing to rescue Europe’s art from the Nazis. Joined by Merc, we unpack the film’s stacked cast, its mix of humour and drama, and why it never quite decides if it wants to be a comedy, a war drama, or an art heist. From Rose Valland’s secret lists to the missing Ghent Altarpiece, we explore what’s fact, what’s fiction, and why the real story deserves better.

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Episode Transcript

(00:01):
Welcome to Rosie the Reviewer. We're your host.
I'm Sam. And I'm.
And we like World War 2 media, and we want to talk about it.
Welcome back to Rosie the reviewer.
This week we're talking about a film called The Monuments Men,
which came out in 2014. It was directed by George

(00:22):
Clooney and written by George Clooney and Grant Heslov.
It's based on the book The Monuments Men, Allied Heroes,
Nazi Thieves and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History by
Robert M Edsel and Brett Witter,which came out in 2007.
The film is about the Monuments Fine Arts and Archives program
devised by the Allies to track down and save Europe's cultural
heritage from theft and destruction during World War 2.

(00:44):
It's supposedly available on Disney Plus.
I watched it on Crave in Canada and we have a guest today.
Merck is back with us who is here for our second Pacific
episode, which you should check out.
Welcome back, Merck. Thank you so much for having me
back. What did you guys think of the
movie Mark? What was your impression I.
Had seen this movie before a number of years ago, and I
remember not liking it very much.

(01:05):
Good. When I watched it again I liked
it better, so at least it's goneup slightly.
In my estimation, it's not not great.
I think it's a historical movie.It's all right, enjoy that, but
it's not one of those masterpieces you kind of hope
for because it's just an interesting topic.
But I don't think they pulled everything out of it that they

(01:27):
could have done. So it's all right for me.
How about you, Mark? I have also seen this movie
before. I actually watched it on DVD
because I own it and I'm with Mart on this one.
This is a movie that maybe growsa little bit with time, but I
came back to it after rereading a portion of the book and
remember just how great the bookis and then how kind of

(01:47):
lackluster the movie is. For me, it's kind of complicated
because I'm someone who really loves looking at history from a
slightly different lens, and this is certainly a sort of very
different sort of war story. And I think that's one of the
things that it kind of struggleswith as a movie is it's trying
to be this rah rah war piece andalso trying to be a comedy at
the same time. And then it doesn't quite do

(02:09):
either of those things very wellwell, but still very fun to
watch. And obviously all of the very
talented actors who are in this are having a great time hamming
it up. I think lackluster is a good
word. I have also seen this movie
before and I had no memory of itwhich to me means it was
unremarkable the first time I saw it and then when I watched
it again I was like Yep just about what I remember.

(02:29):
I also read the book, and I findthat the stakes are so high,
right? It's like we're fighting this
war between good and evil at itscore for the soul of our
civilization. And a huge part of that is the
articulation of that soul. It's the artwork, It's the
cultural landmarks. It's the historic buildings that
have been, you know, created over the last 2000 years or

(02:53):
whatever. You know, we're fighting this
war against this culture that wants to dominate all other
cultures and is actively trying to destroy cultures that they
don't consider to be as important.
And so the preservation of artwork and culture is so
important. Like, the stakes are so high.
And reading the book, I feel like you really get that
impression. And you know how important it

(03:13):
was to all of these guys. And there are even parts that I
found a little bit emotional because this is just such
important work. And I feel like a lot of people
don't necessarily think of it first and foremost when you
think about fighting and winninga war.
And then I just didn't get that from the movie.
I just wanted more out of it I guess is what I'm saying.
I will say I think George Clooney is better in this than

(03:35):
he was. That's 22.
I enjoyed him in this a little bit more like he's a bit of a
hit of this for me. And he was, I think as an actor,
quite good in this. So I enjoyed him and most of the
other actors like it's like starch galore in this movie, So
and they're all fun. Looking at this cast list, you
really sort of do get the impression that George Clooney
kind of opened his phone book and was like, hey, who's free to

(03:57):
make something with me? We're going to have a lot of
fun. And a bunch of very talented
people are like, yeah, sure, let's go for it, let's do it.
Yeah, the cast is stacked and they're all pretty good.
I just think George Clooney is abetter actor than a writer, I
guess. Yes, I would agree with that
statement because George Clooneyhas directed a couple of movies.
Leather Heads comes to mind, which is a movie he made, I
don't remember what year about football.

(04:19):
And then he also more recently directed The Boys in the Boat.
The Boys in the Boat is actuallyquite good.
Leather Heads, was this like historical comedy and very much
leaning into the comedy. And this movie in Monuments Men
is in the middle of that where it's trying to be a serious
history movie and trying to be acomedy and not really
accomplishing either one at the same time, which I think for me

(04:40):
is part of why it's like it was just OK.
Yeah. All right, let's get into the
movie. Opening card that simply says
based on a true story mixed mixed reviews on that one, I
think, but we'll get into it. And we open on an attempt to

(05:04):
save the Ghent Altarpiece from the Nazis.
So this is a very famous piece of art.
It's also known as the Adorationof the Mystic Lamb.
It was painted in the 15th century by Dutch painters who
were brothers Hubert and Jan vonIke.
It's possibly the first major oil painting and it's off huge.
It's like 12 by 16 feet assembled.
It's a whole bunch of it's like 18 different panels.

(05:25):
It's been stolen 7 times. So the Nazis were not the only
ones to try and steal it. And one of the 18 panels
actually remains missing to thisday.
So we get to see it's this huge important piece of art and it's
going to be a priority for the Monuments Men throughout the
movie trying to track down this thing and find out what happened
to. It I did like that we got to see
actual Belgian actors in the speaking Dutch.

(05:48):
I thought, yeah, I know this language.
That is always a nice little element is when the background
action actually matches what thebackground action is supposed to
be. I think sometimes as Americans
we get a little lazy with thingslike that or, you know,
transcribing. To be honest, I don't say a
whole lot, but at least I do saya little in the actual language.

(06:08):
I thought this was a good opening, too, because I feel
like it gives us the context of,like, if this is something that
has never occurred to you before, now, you know that there
were people in Europe who knew that the Nazis were coming, who
knew that that would mean that their artwork and their cultural
heritage was in danger, and theywere endeavoring to hide it or

(06:30):
keep it safe, or at least put itsomewhere where it wouldn't be
be destroyed. And so this is kind of happening
all over Europe as the Nazis arecoming.
Yeah, I think the movie does a great job, and I think we'll get
into it later as well, to kind of show you that saving art or
saving buildings and saving architecture wasn't everyone's

(06:52):
first priority. And you get numerous scenes
where that becomes apparent. And I think it's good to share
that side because it kind of reflects on who we are as
humans, really. And if it gets lost, what does
it mean for us as a civilization?
And that's the question they do ask in the movie, but I don't
think they really answer it thatmuch.

(07:13):
Yeah. One of the things that I think
is really nice is that there's no one unified opinion about
this art is the movie does allowus a lot of space to see people
who think this work is really important, people who could not
care less, people who don't quite know what to do with
what's in front of them, who change their minds over time.

(07:34):
I think that's really important too.
Yeah. And there was that push pull in
real life. They touch on it briefly in the
movie, But there was a monastery, a Monte casino in
Italy. And there were folks on the
Allied side who were like, well,let's just blow up the monastery
because the Germans are in there.
And there were other people who were like, no, that's a cultural
landmark. And we also don't really think

(07:55):
the Germans are in there. We think they're on the
hillside, and that's where they're shelling us from.
But the folks who wanted to blowup the monastery on the day, you
know, that's a a cultural landmark that's gone.
And then they discovered that the people who thought the
Germans weren't even in there were correct.
And that was sort of a major catalyst for why the Monuments
Men expanded. It became more of a priority

(08:15):
was, you know, they knew that this was be going to become more
and more of an issue as they moved through Europe.
In this next scene we get introduced to him and Going
played by Udo Crossroads and Victor Style played by Just as
fun. Even I don't know how to
pronounce his name. Just as fun, don't I?
I'm guessing as Going inspects the spoils of war.

(08:37):
So he looks at loads of art pieces and we also get into
produced to a woman named Kirstenan, played by Ted
Bunchat. And she's a friend, museum
employee, and she's very angry that the Germans and the Nazis
are stealing all the art. So nobody in this movie has a
real name, but Stahl is based onKurt von Baer, who is the head

(08:59):
of the Paris arm of the Nazi organization that had been
created to quote UN quote appropriate art.
It was called the Einsettstab Reichslider Rosenberg or the
ERR. And a major component of this
operation was to steal the property of French Jews.
And so there were a lot of French Jewish art collectors.
And the goal here was let's justtake their shit and appropriate
it for the Reich. Yeah.

(09:20):
And Simone is based on Rose Valon.
She was an overseer of the Je dePaul Museum, which was sort of
like a warehouse where the Naziswould store all of their stolen
artwork before shipping it to Germany.
And she collaborated with the French Resistance, and she
painstakingly recorded details of the more than 20,000 pieces
of art that passed through. This was at no small risk to

(09:41):
herself, right? Because the first day she's
starting to write down details about this artwork, and she
immediately gets caught. And the Nazis are like, don't do
that shit. So she continues to do it
anyway, knowing how important this work is.
And she's ferreting out where these shipments are headed.
She's talking to these truck drivers.
She speaks German, and she hasn't told the Nazis.
So she's eavesdropping on their conversations.

(10:02):
And she's writing all this stuffdown.
And, you know, if this stuff were found, she would be in deep
shit. And without her work, many
priceless pieces of art would not have been returned to the
rightful owners or even lost forever.
And as the Germans retreated in 1944, she actually passed
information about a train shipment heading to Germany on
to the French Resistance. And they were able to delay the
train until the Allies arrived, thereby saving all that artwork.

(10:23):
And she actually writes A memoirafter the war.
The that memoir gets turned intoa different movie that came out
in the 60s, I believe. And the foundation that the
Monuments Men and Women set up after the war actually just
published that memoir in Englisha couple of years.
Ago. Amazing.
Do you know what it's called? I do the art front.

(10:44):
The Defense of French Collections, 1939 to 1945.
Neat. Thanks.
The beginning of the movie, as we meet Claire Simon, you kind
of get a second to wonder, like a brief, brief, brief second to
wonder if she's actively collaborating with the Germans.
And then at that moment completely immediately gets

(11:05):
overturned when you see her and another employee of the museum
spit in the champagne glass she's supposed to death for
Victor style and she spits in it.
That to me is just a great sceneis this is how much I think of
this man is I think nothing of him.
And he's he's showing this art to Herman Goering, who

(11:26):
considered himself to be a big art collector and art
aficionado. He's going into a lot of these
museums and saying, hey, what can I, what can I take for the
fewer, but also what can I take for myself?
And so Claire is also kind of saying, not only do I not think
much of this man as a as a humanbeing, but I also kind of think
he has shit taste in art. And I I will give George Clooney

(11:47):
some minor props in that he doesn't write terrible female
characters. True, there's only one, but at
least she's good. Yeah, at least she seems like a
real person, right? So August 1943 in Milan, Italy,
we get a brief little scene of Italian civilians frantically
shoring up a building, which turns out to be the refectory of

(12:08):
the convent of Santa Maria dellaGrazie, where the Last Supper
is, and it's been put at risk byAllied bombing.
And I personally thought there'snot enough of the actual
monuments men doing this stuff in the movie because they did
quite a lot of preservation workas they pass through in the week
of the Allied advance. They would go into all these
towns and they might see like, OK, so the Germans would do this

(12:28):
thing where they would put snipers or spotters up in the
church tower, and the spotters would call down artillery
strikes. And so the Allies would be able
to pretty systematically destroythe church Spire, but not the
church itself. And so the monuments men would
go into all these villages and they would, you know, go to
these old buildings and they would say, OK, let's find the

(12:50):
local civil engineer, the local civil architect.
Let's get them out here. Let's make a team, Civilian
soldiers, whoever. Let's shore up this wall.
We're not going to let people shelter in there because the
ceiling could collapse. We're going to put up all these
official signs saying that looting is not allowed.
And so they were doing all this work.
You know, they would go into a building and they would see
precious artwork and they'd be like, well, this building is not
safe. So let's get a bunch of people.

(13:10):
We'll move it over to a buildingthat is safe and is less of a
target. So they were doing a lot of this
stuff. And I feel like you don't see
that much of that in the movie. It's more kind of focused on
them and tracking down artwork. I think there's a huge impact to
the built environment in World War 2 that I think sometimes
gets missed because if you're watching a war movie, you're
like, so they have to blow this up and you're like, actually,

(13:30):
that's a historically significant building or bridge
or monument of some description.Let's maybe, let's maybe not
blow it up. It's it's the Monte casino
story. Just earlier this year, I was in
Italy and was in Florence. Florence has several historic
bridges, including the Ponte Vecchio.
And that's the only bridge that the Allies did not bomb because

(13:50):
someone in the the Man structuresaid you can blow up all the
other bridges, but you can't blow up that one.
It's historically significant. And so it's still exists in
Florence today. Yeah, it's wild.
One of the monuments, man, JamesWormer, he was in Normandy, I
believe. And he comes upon this building
that he knows to be historicallysignificant.
It's like a convent or somethinglike that, or maybe a castle.

(14:10):
And he sees that there's a couple walls that are still
standing around this super old Chapel, and the Allies are about
to bulldoze the walls over. And so he's like, wait, wait,
wait, wait, wait. You can't knock these walls
over. They're, you know, they're very
historically significant. And so he kind of gets into it
with the CEO of the company. And the CEO is like, well, stop
me. Like, you don't have any

(14:32):
authority here. I don't think this is a
priority. I'm going to knock these walls
down. And so Rora Moore pulls out his
copy of the directive straight from Eisenhower, saying that
historic landmarks are not to bedestroyed without justification.
And he says, I took pictures of this building.
The way it is. If you knock it down, you will
spend time in front of a tribunal justifying why I had to
come down. And so the CEO is like, fuck,

(14:54):
fine, I won't knock the walls down.
But it was like, it's quite a lot of that happening, right?
It's like people were not prioritizing this kind of thing.
One of the things that comes up in the book is that that
directive from Eisenhower was released about 11 days before
D-Day. And they tried really hard to
actually get that information into the hands of the soldiers
who were going into Normandy because they had not done it in

(15:16):
Sicily, they had not done it in North Africa.
And that had blown back a littlebit on the British super early
in the war. And so because the British were
sort of driving over some of these monuments, the Italians
were able to put forward some propaganda saying, Oh my gosh,
look, look at what the destruction the the British have
wrought. And it turns out that some of

(15:38):
the destruction in quotes had actually been there for
thousands of years. But because they didn't have
directives or photographs of what it looked like before that
they weren't able to kind of have a counter narrative.
The directive is actually reallyinteresting to read.
Like everybody knows Eisenhower's D-Day message and
I, I think this directive is kind of fun.
Shortly, we will be fighting ourway across the continent of

(16:00):
Europe in battles designed to preserve our civilization.
Inevitably, in the path of our advance will be found historical
monuments and cultural centers which symbolize to the world all
that we are fighting to preserve.
It is the responsibility of every commander to protect and
respect these symbols whenever possible.
In some circumstances, the success of the military

(16:20):
operation may be prejudice in our reluctance to destroy these
revered objects. And it goes on for another page.
But he's trying. Yeah, I mean, well said.
So stateside, Kirkton and Frank Stokes, played by George
Clooney, assembles an Army unit of art experts to find and
protect artwork that is at risk in Europe, as we've just talked

(16:43):
about. And these men include James
Granger played by Matt Damon, Richard Campbell played by Bill
Murray, Walter Garfield, played by John Goodman, who's very
funny in this, John, Claude Clemont, played by John
Dujardin, Donald Jeffries, played by you Bunville, and
Preston Jefford, played by Bob Balaban.

(17:04):
What a test guys. And for some reason, none of
these characters have their realnames, even though they are very
obviously based on the real people.
So Stokes is based on George Stout, Grainger is based on
James Rohrmer, Campbell is an amalgam of Ralph Warner Hammett
and Robert K Posey, Garfield is based on Walker Hancock, Savitz
is based on Lincoln Kerstein, and Jeffries is based on Ronald

(17:26):
Balfour. And it's kind of wild to me
because I've seen movies much less historically accurate than
this one, not bother to change the names of the real historical
figures. And then, Mark, I think you had
found an article where Ronald Balfour's family was upset and
the studio was basically like, well, Ronald Balfour's not in
this movie. It's a fictional character named
Donald Jeffries. But it's like, so clearly meant

(17:48):
to be Ronald Balfour that it's almost, it's kind of offensive.
Like, it doesn't give Ronald Balfour the credit that he
deserves, but it's clearly basedon him.
And some of these people are independently famous.
I think it's Walter Hancock or another Monuments Men, who, you
know, has gotten the Commission for the Air Force's medal.
Many of these guys were very renowned in their fields of

(18:11):
study. They were academics and
historians and art conservators.So, like, they're real names.
So if you are changing them, like what?
What's the point in that? I read an interview with, I
think George Clooney got at least some of the makers of this
movie where they said, well, we're change their names because
we wanted to give them flowers. We don't want to offend the

(18:32):
families of the real people. I'm like, well, if you're going
to do that, then at least changethem significantly more than you
have, because like Sam said, it's very obvious who's meant to
preserve. Yeah, yeah, for sure.
I have some notes about Stout here because he's kind of, he
was, you know, sort of their leader.
And he's an interesting guy. He had been the head of the

(18:53):
Department of Conservation and Technical Research at Harvard's
Fog Art Museum, and he was one of the first to engage in
scientific methods and art conservation.
So people have been trying to conserve art for thousands of
years, for as long as there's been art probably.
But he was the first one to be like, oh, what if I try using
this and this to preserve this? And he would, like, make notes
and, like, write down his findings and that kind of stuff.

(19:14):
And the concept of the monumentsmen was his idea, but it had
several false starts, and he gottired of waiting.
So he enlisted in the Navy because he was convinced his
idea was dead. And he was serving in the Navy
in late 1943 when he was asked to join the newly minted
Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives Subcommission, which
was a joint operation between the United States and Britain.
The book mentions that he was evaluating camouflage paint for

(19:36):
the Navy when they sort of send up the Hey, we actually do need
you for your real technical expertise.
I do wonder, I don't know if youguys know this, but how old were
these guys in real life? Do we know a lot of them were in
their late 30s forties? There was, I think one or two
who were younger, but most of them were older guys who were
pretty established in their fields.

(19:57):
Right. Because they make it a point in
the movie to say, like all the like, younger engineers and art
experts and all that. They're all fighting in the war
and we need you guys because youguys are old.
In the book, as they talk about sort of George, about approach
to conservation and conservationresearch, there's a line either
that Edsel found from him or made-up for him.

(20:19):
He does that a little bit in hisbook that we were able to get
things done because people forgot about us.
And so that approach kind of comes through with the nobody's
going to miss the middle-aged guy with a little bit of Gray
hair who actually is a huge subject matter expert on this
because the armies maybe not going to miss that guy as much
as they'll miss a young guy who's fighting fit and able to

(20:41):
be on the frontline. A lot of these monuments men
were actually pulled from insideexisting military apparatus.
These were guys that had alreadyvolunteered or had been part of
the reserves, and then they wereable to say, hey, we'd like to
reassign you to this particular mission.
I think Rorimer for a little while, or Granger as he is in
the movie, was working in Air Force intelligence.

(21:04):
So in the movie we see very big miniature, I want to say, of
Hitler's plan for his Flora Museum, which is going to be his
Art Museum. And I wanted to mention this
building because it's ridiculous.
He intended for it to be over a kilometer in length, which if
you know how long that is, that's long.

(21:26):
And he was going to house 16,000,000 pieces of art in this
one building. And the city that he was going
to build it in was going to be Lynch, which is near his
hometown. And he wanted Lynch to become
the cultural capital of Europe and now to play better than
Vienna because he had some kind of crunch against Vienna because
they would talk to them for art.School.

(21:46):
I find this concept of the biggest, baddest museum in the
world absolutely hilarious. As a professional museum person.
In the museum world, there is something known as gallery
fatigue, which is after a while you stop paying attention to
things because you are just tired of walking around a really
big gallery. And so not only is Hitler a

(22:07):
terrible human being, he also does not know anything about
museums or how you should experience art.
Get them. I just maybe this will come up
in a future episode, but if you look into just in general
Hitler's architectural plans, everything is based on something
that exists except the only differences that it's.

(22:28):
I also am amused that he wanted it to be in lens because it's
literally like, imagine if I were like guys, I'm going to
build a huge museum and flin Flon Manitoba.
So you're like, really? I'm sure everyone will go there,
see all my art. And I guess what, what many
people don't realise is that he's not just going to build

(22:49):
this museum like he's going to change the entire town, like
he's going to move a station andhe's going to move houses and
he's going to displace people from the houses, as he does more
often to create labours around. He's trying to make cultural
fetch happen in Lens, but it's never going to happen.
OK, so I mentioned that earlier trip to Italy this year

(23:10):
Mussolini did the exact same thing in Rome.
So Rome, great city, stretches back thousands of years, lots of
history, lots of really cool oldstuff there.
Mussolini decides that he wants a really big Rd. in between his
new stadium and his, I think it was his new House of Parliament.
And the stretch of land that is right in between them is the

(23:30):
Palatine Hill, which is one of the oldest, like most deepest
historical parts of Rome. And he decides that he is just
going to build a road through itbecause he wants this, you know,
new cool version of the past to overtake the actual old version
of the past. It was just fascinating as, you

(23:50):
know, someone who knows fascism to be political movement that
relies on saying, oh, the past was better than the present and
we need to, you know, bring it back to this imagined history.
The fact that they're all going in and destroying actual history
is kind of funny. Yeah, for sure.
Just for for a vanity project effectively.
And sadly, the stadium is no longer there.

(24:12):
The government building is no longer there.
The road, however, still is. Boo.
As it was useful. Well, the Allies stormed the
beaches 1944 and the Germans withdraw ahead of the Allied
advance and they're pulling out of Paris.
Simone has seen them taking stolen art with them.

(24:33):
She kind of confronts Stahl and growing about it, but to no
avail. They leave with the art and she
meets Granger, the Matt Damon character who would like to work
together, but she's reluctant totrust him, and they have a
little exchange where he says ifit weren't for us, you'd be
speaking German, and she says no, if it weren't for you, I'd
be dead, but I'd still be speaking French.
I love her, truly a great line. It's wonderful.

(24:56):
I actually, I looked it up because I'm like George Clooney
didn't didn't write that right and I couldn't find it anywhere
else. I'm like, it just comes from
this movie, I guess. Granger, AKA Rohrmer, in real
life, he was kind of a wunderkind.
He was like 37 and he'd become curator of the Cloisters, which
is the medieval collection at the Met.
And he applied the same focus togetting himself assigned to the
MFAA. Like he was super interested in

(25:18):
doing this work. And he actually became director
of the Met after the war in 1955.
I think this is one of the characters that really gets more
of a short shift than some of the others in terms of that one
to one translation between people.
If you read about Rorimer in thebook, he really is a wunderkind.
He speaks multiple languages. The fact that they put him in
charge of a collection as important as one at the

(25:40):
Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City is just absolutely
amazing. And the guy that we meet in the
movie is a little bit funny and a little bit bumbling and speaks
absolutely terrible French, which is there I guess, for
comic effect. But the real guy is actually
really cool. Yeah, for sure.
And Romer and Alan's relationship in real life was
crucial to her sharing the information that she had.

(26:02):
She was accustomed to dealing with the Nazis and their
collaborators, and she had passed on information in the
past to people with authority that she thought would help, and
they didn't help. And the result of that was that
art was stolen or destroyed despite her best efforts.
And so she was reluctant to trust anyone, including her own
government or the Allies. And so it really took Roermer a

(26:22):
while to build that trust with her, to get, you know, all of
this documentation from her and all of her knowledge from her.
Not depicted in this movie is Jacques.
Jacques. He was the director of the
French National Museums. And he was the one who kind of
placed Rose in the position where she could make this
inventory of all the stolen artwork.
And he was instrumental in working alongside her to protect

(26:42):
the French art collection duringWorld War Two.
He was the one who knew that Rose had all this information
and suggested to Roermer that hetry and get her to part with it.
And Joe Jacques was a pretty cool guy as well.
He gets quite a few mentions in the Monuments Meant book.
He actually slept at the Louvre during the war because he was
worried that the Germans would come in the night and take the
artwork. As they would probably in many

(27:02):
other places. For sure.
And he was doing a lot of Wheeling and dealing, I guess.
And so he would work with Germans that were sort of
friendly to the art conservationcause to find reasons why the
art had to stay in France or to delay art being shipped out so
that they could maybe try and hide it somewhere else or

(27:23):
whatever. He was pretty good at diplomacy
and like, my man was, uh, talking for his life basically.
Like he was just, uh, you know, using all of his skills to try
and conserve the French art collection.
The newly minted monuments men spread out across northwestern
Europe to try and cover more ground.
And they kind of encounter lots of obstacles, run away from

(27:46):
uncle operative Allied officers and showing up somewhere only to
discover that the Germans have already moved over this thing.
And at this point, a character named Sam Epstein, played by
Dmitri Leonidas, joins him. And he's a young German tourist
recruit, and he's fun. I really enjoy this guy.
He might be my favorite character in the entire movie
only because he has kind of thisdifferent perspective.

(28:08):
Here's all these old guys who'vebeen doing what they've been
doing for a really long time. And here's a kid and he says
he's from Newark and he's a stand in for Harry Edlinger, who
is a young German Jew who in real life joined the Group A lot
later. The book actually starts with a
story about Harry. He he grew up in Germany, was
forced to leave in the late 30s,and when he left, his

(28:32):
grandfather had a very sizable collection of prints.
So not necessarily original artworks, but still extremely
valuable. One of which was a self-portrait
of Rembrandt that shows up laterin the movie as the actual
Rembrandt itself. Yeah, I feel.
Like his story is done more emotional one, I guess, along
with your Bonville's character. You get to feel a little bit

(28:55):
more for them than you do for the others.
But it's just also really fun because there's a scene where
there are German Pows that know where the artist, but they're
not talking. And he's kind of standing there
just eavesdropping on them because he obviously knows
German. And it's a funny, like some of
the funny bits really are funny.Like some of them work and some

(29:16):
of them work less well. This one works I think.
I think it's a really cool way to sort of meet him as a
character. He's just a kid who happens to
be driving them around at this point.
But then when he reveals this information, you can tell that
he has been paying attention, that this does matter to him,
and it starts to matter even more as the story goes on.
Yeah. And next in the movie, we get a

(29:38):
little bit of a sense that even though they're behind all the
attacks, like they show up a little later, it's not
necessarily without danger because we get a scene where
Savage almost gets shot by a stray young German soldier who's
very nervous, by the way. But he and Campbell just end up
having a smack with him. And he does the thing where the

(30:00):
German suddenly names the one American thing he knows.
And this guy says John Wren. And in an accident, Garfield and
Claremont almost gets shot, but it turns out to be just a kid
shooting at them. So it's dangerous, but not quite
as dangerous as. Yeah.
And I think they're trying to set us up for like, here are

(30:20):
these instances of violence thatend up a close brush, I guess.
But everyone survives and you end up with this sense of relief
because I ended up being kind offunny in the end.
And then they're setting you up for the the real violence that's
to come, I guess. Yeah.
So Jeffrey's he tries to get assistance from some British
troops to save Michelangelo's Madonna of Bruges before the

(30:42):
Germans can clear out with it. Because one of the things the
Germans are doing is when they leave a place, they'll take all
the artwork with them, or they will destroy landmarks, or
they're not leaving things behind for the Allies, right?
And so he decides he's going to go into the town and try and
save the Madonna of Rouge himself, and he dies trying to
prevent it from being taken. I'm sad, I feel like he could

(31:05):
have just shot the officer but Iguess the real man that also
died just not in Rouge. Yeah, so Jeffrey's, AKA Balfour,
was a British medieval historianwho was the monuments man for
the First Canadian Army, actually Canada mansion.
And he died on March 10th, 1945,of a shrapnel wound to the spine

(31:25):
while moving a medieval altarpiece to safety in the
Germantown of Cleaves. So it's true that he had been on
the hunt for the Madonna for some time, like he was looking
for it, but at the time of his death, that's not what caused
him to die. He was in Cleaves trying to
rescue their archives and their artwork.
I do like to set up with the Madonna because becomes this
kind of central piece for their hunt and the emotional core is

(31:48):
kind of Jeffrey's style and I'm trying to do right by him.
I do see what they're trying to do there, but at the same time,
it's like they changed things ina way that they don't
necessarily need to be changed. I do like that the show
Jeffrey's not getting the assistance that he's asked for

(32:09):
because it's, once again, you get the sense that they care
about the art, but the rest of the force kind of doesn't as
much. And there's a lovely scene
before he dies where you can kind of tell that that he's
gonna die because he writes thisletter to his father.
And it's very moving and emotional.
So you're like, wait, is this a goodbye letter?

(32:29):
Well, and we've been set up, as Jeffrey says, this man who has
made a lot of mistakes in his life is perhaps a little bit
estranged from his family because he hasn't necessarily
done them proud. And maybe that's why they
decided they needed to change itfrom actually being Roland
Balfour. So, yeah, definitely that.
Well, this guy's going to die. He's writing a moving letter on
to his staff. His daddy hates him and it will

(32:50):
never be articulated why. Also, we made that up.
I pulled the speech that the real Balfour Right wrote and
just to give his man, just because I felt like it, really
articulated how strongly these guys believed in what they were
doing. And he said no.
Age lives entirely alone. Every civilization is formed not
merely by its own achievements, but by what it has inherited

(33:12):
from the past. If these things are destroyed,
we have lost a part of our past and we shall be the poorer for
it. Amen.
I think that's really significant in this particular
art preservation story because one of the things the Nazis are
doing as they move, move throughand collect all this art is
their self selecting what it is they think is important.
There are things that they are burning as degenerate art,

(33:33):
things that are modern, things that they just don't agree with.
They're performing acts of censorship as they take some of
the stuff away. And we are the poorer for it.
We no longer have those pieces of art.
And I, I think there's somethingtoo about, I mean, we'll get to
this, but the character upon which Sam is based, when he was
growing up in Germany, he was not allowed to see any of the

(33:57):
artwork in the museums because he was Jewish.
So the Germans were gatekeepers of culture as well.
It was like, culture should onlybe seen by the people that we
deem valuable enough to, to lookat it.
And so not only are the Nazis taking the artwork, but they're
placing it out of reach for, youknow, the people that it was
made for. Come on.
So let's confront Victor Starr, Efar House, where he's

(34:20):
pretending to be this farmer, and Soph, it kind of looks
around the room. It's like, what are all these
paintings? And why do they have the actual,
like, autographs on it and the names on it of the real people
that these artworks belong to and all that sort of stuff?
So they managed to apprehend him.
It's a fun scene. In real life, Rorimer had

(34:43):
tracked Von Beer in an area thathad recently come under American
control. And he had sent a telegram ahead
to be like, hey, can you please apprehend this guy because I
need to speak to him. He knows where all this stolen
artwork is. He has all this information that
I need. But the telegram got delayed and
by the time the Americans got there, Von Beer had died by
suicide. I think him and his wife put
poison in like a glass of champagne in their Chateau or

(35:04):
something. So, you know, let's just tell
you what kind of guy this was. But files found in his home
where the basis of the legal case against the head of the
ERR, Alfred Rosenberg at Nuremberg so.
Well, at least something came ofthat man.
Yes, right. I kind of would have like if
they'd allowed Claire to kind ofconfess the face with Victor
style again, because in the other she's like, I see you in

(35:28):
German at him and then he's trash the shooter for some
reason and. Well, there's a moment in the
book where when the Germans are pulling out of Paris and they're
taking all the artwork with them.
She makes eye contact with Von Bear and his eyes kind of
narrow. And this thought passes through
her mind of like, he's going to want to get rid of the

(35:49):
witnesses. Like, I am a loose end.
And something gets his attention.
And she takes that opportunity to like, put her head down and
like, get the fuck out of there.And like so that there was a
very, very tense moment between them in real life.
Yeah, I do really like her character in this.
I think they do quite a good jobof making her equally important,
if not more important than the guys in the movie.

(36:12):
So often the roles women in these movies are diminished to
being a smaller part than they had in real life, so I'm glad
that they at least gave her a very important piece of
information that she had in reallife and kept that in.
And the fact that that Grainger very much has to build a
relationship with her, that it'snot just, oh, you showed up, let

(36:34):
me give you what it is you want.He has to demonstrate in a lot
of ways that this matters to himand that he is not also just
here to take the art and run is that he's he's demonstrating his
intent to get it where it's supposed to go.
I agree but also I kind of dislike the way they made it

(36:54):
into an enemies into lovers kindof thing for her where she's
falling out from him. I'm like, wow, doesn't need it.
I would also agree with that statement.
Good news. That's what I wanted to talk
about. My quibble with her character is
that in real life, Roseville andwas like a very mousy,
diminutive middle-aged lady. And part of the reason why she

(37:16):
was able to eavesdrop on the Nazis and get away with all this
stuff that she was doing for so long was because she was the
kind of person that you wouldn'tlook twice at the Nazis just
thought she was not important. And so, you know, it was pretty
crucial to the kind of work thatshe was able to do.
And even rumor, the first time he met her, he was like, oh,
here's some museum lady boring next.

(37:36):
And it wasn't until later that he realized how important she
was. And then in the movie, they made
her like, super foxy Kate Blanchett, who is, you know,
wants to smash Matt Damon. Yeah, so points for cool female
character, less points for the random love story that didn't
really need to be there. Yeah, Garfield and Claremont get

(37:56):
caught in a crossfire while crossing the countryside.
Claremont is killed and there's this quote by I think the George
Clooney character about how the deaths of these monuments men,
quote, UN quote, earns them the right to wear the uniform, which
I thought was an interesting thing to say.
To me it seems like this movie is kind of struggling with the
idea of saving the art for the sake of the art isn't

(38:18):
necessarily enough. Like, we had to add in this
Death of the Jeffries character in order to, like, care more
about the Madonna of Bruges. The Madonna Bruges is the first
piece of art that Michelangelo created that left Italy in his
lifetime. It is hugely culturally
significant on its own, but somehow maybe we're not going to
care about that unless someone dies for it.

(38:39):
I think that's also kind of the idea that's at play here.
Yeah, and I agree, actually. I like that you articulated that
because I wasn't quite sure how to say it.
But yeah, I I think that if George Clooney, who wrote the
movie, doesn't believe that the art was enough on its own, how
are we as the audience going to come to believe that?
And why make the movie? And why keep asking that

(39:00):
question then? Because they do ask question and
they don't really answer it. Is art valuable enough to save
in a world? Is it worth risking your life
for? If people don't have to die,
then it shouldn't have to be that, right?
Yeah, the the deaths aren't whatmake it matter, no, right.
Doesn't make them any less heroic or more heroic if they

(39:23):
die versus if they don't die. Yeah, Claremont is not a real
person, but another Monuments man did die in similar
circumstances. His name was Walter Hutchausen.
They called him Hutch. He was American architect.
He was lost on the road east of Aachen, which is kind of like
the first major city on the way into Germany, and he and his
colleague Sheldon Keck tried to ask for directions from some

(39:46):
Americans they saw peering over an embankment, not realizing
that the Germans were nearby. And Hutch was unfortunately
killed in the subsequent firefight.
I was very sad about this that though, I thought he was going
to make it. I know.
It's like, he was like, I'm bleeding like a pig and I'm
like, all right, he's still talking, so he'll be fine.

(40:06):
And then he died in John Goodman's arms, and I felt sad
about it. Something about John Goodman
cradling his body and just looking so devastated.
I was like okay, well I am feeling sad about this actually.
Well, and I think this one, thisdeath, because we're presented
with a couple of them, this death is almost more sad because
it's kind of pointless. At least we see Jeffrey's sort

(40:29):
of springing to the defense of this piece of art.
Last one is just oh we took a wrong turn, ended up in the
wrong field and accidentally gotshot.
Stepped out to fed a horse for asecond and then we died.
Simone learns to learns of the German Nero decree ordering the
destruction of the Germans withdraw, which funds her to

(40:50):
share her information with Grunger.
The monuments men realized that that many of the German artwork
caches are buried in mines across the right.
So suddenly it's very adamant that she shared this information
with Grincher and she invites him over for a dinner, which she
dresses up really fancy for in areally sexy dress.

(41:12):
And he shows up in a shirt and she gifts him like a scarf.
And that's when she's like, look, this is Paris.
You can sleep in the it's fine. And he's like, no, but my wife.
If it sounds like we're having trouble summarizing this movie,
it's because it jumps around a lot.
It's an extremely episodic movie.

(41:33):
I think that's one of the thingsthat sort of makes it hard to
follow and hard to summarize because it really is just little
snippets, one right after the other.
And I think that's what just, itmakes it challenging to
summarize, challenging to remember, but that's also kind
of how it happened. And in the book it also jumps
around the map quite a bit, but is interspersed with different

(41:55):
documents from the monuments Menthemselves, from the German high
command, explaining these littlebits of policy that they're
enacting. So as a book, it works really
well. As a movie, it works less well.
Yeah, I do. I do love the interspersion of
primary source documents in the book found.
That was really illuminating. So the Monuments men are in a

(42:15):
race now against both the retreating Germans who are
trying to destroy or steal everything in their way, and the
advancing Russians who are taking artwork as what they're
calling reparations. They uncover over 16,000 pieces
of artwork in these mines that they've discovered, as well as
Germany's gold reserve. And young Sam gets to see a

(42:37):
Rembrandt that he had not been allowed to view in Germany.
As a young Jewish person, that is.
I think one of my favorite scenes in the movie, I think
it's really cute the way that Stokes is able to say Mr.
Rembrandt meet Sam, and Sam is able to say hello to this
painting. It's a really neat moment that
kind of underscores sort of the journey that Sam has been on

(43:00):
that at the beginning maybe thisdidn't matter a whole lot to
him, but at the end now it does,and he's able to greet this
painting that he's never seen before as like a friend.
Yeah, and this is based on true events and I'm glad that it got
included in the movie. And I agree that it was very
cute and well written. Was a nice little.
We're slowly nearing the end of the movie, but they still

(43:21):
haven't found the Madonna or thedental turbies.
So Granger lease parents to helpwith the work in Germany and
several managers do not smash Simone on the without which like
I just said, it's like, well it doesn't need this.
Why are we including? This it kind of depreciates her
as a person again. Why can't you just care for the

(43:42):
art for the art's sake, as opposed to, Oh, well, I care
about this person that I've developed a connection with?
Yeah, I agree. So while they're rocketing
around the country trying to find art, we get to see them in
some salt mines, and then we also get to see them in this
rather large castle. The castle itself is actually
historically significant. This is Neuschwanstein Castle,
which was built by Ludwig of Bavaria.

(44:03):
The Mad King Ludwig DAP Castle is what the Sleeping Beauty
Castle in Disney is based on. So they walk up to this castle.
It's filled with sculptures, andthere's one standing in the
courtyard. We are presented with so many
real life pieces of art in this movie.
This one is the Burgers of Calais, which is by Rodin.

(44:24):
It's I think, one of his most well known sculptures and really
interesting piece to just find in the courtyard.
The subject of this sculpture isthis group of businessmen in the
14th century who are being askedto surrender their city.
And so it's a very symbolic piece of art to find in a castle
that's been abandoned by people that are fleeing and being

(44:48):
forced to surrender. Their country.
In one of the art caches, they discover that some quote UN
quote modern artwork like Picasso has been burned.
As we touched on a little bit already, Grainger also manages
to step on a landmine, but all ends well.
That is another moment where thepacing of this movie doesn't

(45:09):
hold up very well. They were kind of moving along,
moving along, and they said, wait, we need a moment of, you
know, danger. Let's have someone step on a
landmine. Right.
And they do kind of also take itas an opportunity to show you
the craft of these men because they don't have to maneuver him
off the landmine using engineering and architecture and

(45:32):
all their knowledge. So it's a nice addition to
shortlist their characters, but it's a weird placement in a
movie as well. It comes out of nowhere.
One thing I wanted to comment onwas that Stokes says something
about how the Germans took better care of artwork than they
did of people, and the Germans did not take good care of
artwork. In real life, the Germans store
the artwork super poorly. Where it had not been punctured,

(45:54):
torn, or otherwise damaged during transit.
It had been rolled inappropriately or stacked in
damp basements or mines, and much of it became corroded,
yellowed or moldy. Like you can't roll an oil
painting for an extended period of time because the paint will
crack and start to peel. And they were storing it in
mines which are not temperature controlled.
And so, yeah, so a lot of this artwork became irreparably

(46:14):
damaged. And again, we're coming back to
that idea of, hey, we want the best of what's old and valuable,
but we don't actually know what is older valuable about it.
We just know that we want it. It's not an aesthetic
appreciation. It's more just a we own this
stuff now, therefore we're better than you.

(46:34):
Yeah, we want it because everyone else wants it, not
because we actually have any appreciation for art or culture,
which is, you know, could anything be more Nazi than that?
And also say Austria, the monuments been find a mind that
has been blown. And I think it's the Germans
that blown up the mind to keep them from taking the art.
But they soon learn that the local miners actually blew up

(46:55):
the entrance to protect the ark that's in there.
So you for the local miners. So we don't get to see.
And shortly after, folks has an interview with Colonel Wagner,
played by Hogan Hunka. And this is a scene in what
looks to be a washroom or a toilet or something that they're
in. Wagner is also the one earlier

(47:17):
in the movie who killed the Balfour character.
I don't remember his name is in the movie, but I guess they had
to put a face on the Nazi so they chose this guy.
I don't know how much bearing this interview scene has in the
actual movie because at the timewhen Stokes is interviewing him,
he's like, why did you blow the mine?

(47:38):
Like what is in there, etcetera.And then we find out that like
he didn't even blow the mine. And this is based on a true
story. The villagers, truly, they knew
that the Nazis had rigged the mine to blow and we're going to
bury all this artwork forever. And so in order to prevent them
from doing that, the locals blewthe entrance to the mind so that
the Nazis couldn't get in. So these people were real life
heroes? Wagner Wagner is also the one

(48:00):
who burns the other artwork, right?
We see him kind of very, I don'tknow what the word is that I'm
looking for, but it's almost comedic.
It's almost like a comic book villain as he decides that he's
going to and he's such a almost,he's almost a caricature of a
Nazi then. Yeah, and they truly cast the

(48:22):
most. I mean no offense to this actor,
but he is a Nazi looking motherfucker.
I was. Going to say I feel like I've
seen him in something else whereagain, very similar role.
You're like, I'm so sorry Sir, that this seems to be your
niche. Sorry that you have resting Nazi
face. I feel like many German actors
actually suffer from this unfortunate thing where if

(48:43):
there's a well for two movie they're going to have to be
Nazis. Yeah, so they found this big old
mindful of art in Austria. They have to quickly remove the
artwork because in the immediately post war separation
of authority, this area is goingto be administered by the
Russians who are on the way. And the Russians spot the

(49:05):
explosion that the Monuments menuse to open the mine from far
away. And they're like, what's going
on down there? Let's let's hurry towards it and
check it out. And so the Monuments men are
able to rescue the Ghent Altarpiece.
Yay. And at the last moment, they
discover the Madonna of Bruges inside, and they're able to get
her out. And what I thought was
interesting was this. The whole movie's leading up to

(49:26):
this, you know, the, the one character died trying to protect
the Madonna. They find her at the last
minute, and then you don't actually see them smuggle her
out of the mine. It just flips forward to like,
yay, we got her out. The Russians didn't get her.
I do feel that was a a missed opportunity.
And then she's magically on the back of a Bantam Jeep trailer

(49:47):
going away from the Russians. If we were going to make a
comedy, I wanted the comedy scene of them trying to move
this priceless Michelangelo out of the minecart into the Jeep.
Well, that's the thing too, because they're talking about it
in the book where when the real one was stolen by the Germans,
they came in the night and they basically put a mattress down

(50:08):
and it took like 6 or 8 guys to maneuver this priceless statue
onto the mattress. Meanwhile, of course the monks
or whoever like works at this place are just like, oh fuck.
Like these guys who don't give ashit about are, are trying to
topple this statue onto a mattress and move it.
And it's, it's quite big and heavy.
So I'm just like, OK, well, I guess.
I guess we don't need to know how all these old dudes moved an

(50:29):
extremely heavy, priceless statue onto a truck without
damaging while the Russians are coming.
Lazy filmmaking. Again, if we were making a
comedy, that was a comedy moment.
Yeah, stateside supports on the success of the non even spent to
President Truman, who asked him if he believes that the life
lost were worth it for the artwork.
And to answer that question, we get a flash forward to Stokes as

(50:53):
an older man taking his grandsonto see the Madonna and he says
he bets or something. And fun fact about this final
scene is that the old man is actually George Clooney's dad,
which I think is funny. Indeed, I also just.
I found that a bit cringe. Like Truman, like Truman's,
like, was it worth it? The lives that were lost?
And then why is old man George Clooney standing in front of the

(51:15):
statue just saying yeah for no reason.
Like it makes no sense. Yeah, again, they could have.
I don't know how they would havedone it, but they could have
made it a more serious conversation instead of just
leaving it sort of up in the air.
And then this very simple. Yeah, it doesn't mean anything.
It could have meant something. Also, that's a question that you

(51:37):
could have answered with the movie you just made us watch
George Clooney, and I don't really feel like he answered the
question, no. It doesn't.
It's almost like we need a scenewhere there is a huge group of
people, someone who's not the characters that we've seen
running around for the whole movie.
We know that they're invested. We need someone else to be
saying that this matters or means something to them.

(52:00):
Yeah, or maybe even a character like Sam would have been more
significant if they'd made him do that as another man because
he knows what it is to be deniedseeing Eric like that and not
having access to it. So they could have even done it
that way. I.
Think I'm just realizing that this is a direct parallel to the

(52:21):
end of Saving Private Ryan, yes?But no very like meme worthy age
up of the main character. True, for which we're very
grateful We. Are they learned some lessons?
Matt Damon was like, don't do it, man.

(52:48):
So like, as we're talking about this, do we feel like this movie
works? As I've mentioned multiple
times, I feel like he was tryingto make a comedy with bits of
war film in it. And I'm trying to decide if
there's a different format wherethis would have worked better.
I kind of feel like it would have worked more if it were like
a straight heist film. Like this is a crime we're

(53:09):
trying to solve. And it was a little bit more
serious. And you know, we treated it as
more of a treasure hunt or a puzzle rather than the buddy
comedy trip across. I think it works, but not as
well as it could have worked if they made a choice between
genres. It's never going to be a
masterpiece if it doesn't know what it wants to be.

(53:30):
It suffers a little bit from that, I think, but I don't hate
it. I wouldn't say it was
necessarily a terrible movie, but it's also not a very good
movie. You're making this movie about
the great works of art. Like, I just want to feel
something, George Clooney make me feel anything.
I feel like we've just underdonedebate.
I feel like it didn't work because Sam didn't feel

(53:51):
anything. I'm just, I sent Mark this
passage from the book the other day and it's sort of at the
beginning of the war before the,well, I guess when the Americans
are just initially getting involved and it's when they're
trying to get the monuments men off the ground.
And so they've created this presentation that they're
showing to all the great museum directors.
So it says the directors of America's great museums were

(54:14):
subjected to a series of horrible reminders of the
artistic toll of the Nazi advance.
England's National Gallery in London deserted, its great works
buried at Menard. The Tate Gallery filled with
shattered glass. The nave of Canterbury Cathedral
filled with dirt to absorb the shock of explosions.
Slides of the Reich's Museum in Amsterdam, the most famous
National Museum of the Netherlands, showing the
paintings of the great Dutch masters stacked like folding

(54:36):
chairs against empty walls. Perhaps its most famous holding,
Rembrandt's monumental painting entitled The Night Watch, was
rolled like a carpet and sealed in a box that appeared
unnervingly like a coffin in Paris.
The grand gallery of the Louvre,reminiscent in its size and
majesty of a Gilded Age train station, contain nothing but
empty frames. The images conjured other
thoughts of the stolen masterworks of Poland, which had

(54:56):
not been seen in years. Of the obliteration of the
historic center of Rotterdam, destroyed by the Luftwaffe
because the pace of peace negotiations with the Dutch had
been too slow for Nazi tastes. Of the great patriots of Vienna,
imprisoned until they agreed to sign over to germinate their
personal art. Holdings of Michelangelo's
David, entombed in brick by worried Italian officials even
though it stood inside a world famous museum in the heart of

(55:17):
Florence. Then there was Russia state
museum, the Hermitage. The curators had managed to
evacuate 1.2 million of its estimated 2,000,000 plus works
of art to Siberia before the Vermont cut the rail lines out
of Leningrad. It was rumored that the curators
were living in the basement withthe remaining masterpieces,
eating animal based glue and even candles to keep from
starving. To me, that just articulates the

(55:39):
gravity of the situation. It really gets me in my feelings
that there were all these massive articulations of the
human experience that were beinghurriedly hidden and
transported, and there was this such great concern about its
destruction. And then George Clooney made a
movie where I just didn't get any of that emotion out of it.
I just it it didn't make me feelthat in the way the book did.

(56:00):
I agree actually, I feel like what you've just read, they
could have done this a little bit more.
They'll just be such a narrow window on the art.
I appreciate that they try to tell the story, but because
they've made it so specifically about these couple of artists,
it makes it hard to realize the big impact that it has.

(56:21):
Because if you read just that one page from the book, you
realize, shit, this is everywhere and loads of people
are affected by this and are trying to save it.
And because they've made it so narrow in the movie, you get
less of that, I think. And I think one of the things
the movie does is kind of tie itmaybe more than it should be to

(56:41):
this very small group of people.So it's not that we care about
the pieces of art themselves, but that we care about the
characters. And I agree, I think it does a
great disservice to just the absolute huge scope of what was
going on here in terms of the destruction of artwork, in terms
of the built environment, in terms of just people's lives.

(57:02):
All right, we have some other notes that we could talk about
if we run. Yeah, doubt the George Clooney
character. He was the last of the Monuments
Men on active combat duty. He left Europe in the summer of
1945, and he served in Japan until mid 1946.
He went on to become the director of several museums, and
he's credited with ushering in the modern era of art
conservation. So super interesting dude.

(57:24):
There were also 27 Monuments women who served in the
Monuments Fine Arts and Archivessections, Mission and Preserving
Men's works of art and other cultural object during and after
World War 2. So it's not just them guys.
And actually, one of those womendied not that long ago.
It was one of the members that had served in Japan.

(57:48):
I want to make sure I get her name correct.
Motoko Hothwaite. She had served in Japan as a
secretary. So she was actually helping men
like a George Stout transcribe his notes.
And then the last remaining member of the original Monuments
Men was gentleman named Richard Baransic.
He died in 2023, so not all thatlong ago.

(58:11):
He had originally trained as an engineer.
He joined the 263rd Infantry andthen he applied for monuments
duty in late 1945. And then was in Europe for a
little while and then also movedto Japan to continue that.
So this is still a very recent story, still very much within
modern memory and still very much an issue within the museum

(58:32):
community today. Obviously, this was a huge
volume of art that had been removed either from state
museums or from private collections.
And so the Monuments Men Foundation still maintains a
database of art that they're looking for.
If you go online to their website, they actually have a
card deck with the 52 most sought after pieces that are

(58:55):
still being looked for. And actually, if you follow the
news, one of these pieces of artwas discovered recently in
Argentina, of all places. Yeah.
But that's a nice brooch. Thank you very much.
It was actually a portrait of a lady, but she was that big as
Landy, a Dutch journalist, actually saw it on a like a what

(59:17):
do you call it when there's realestate for sale?
It was in the pictures of the real estate listing.
These people were trying to sellthis apartment.
Yeah, so you saw it hanging above the sofa and you went to
do some research. This was near Buenos Aires where
he was best. And at first you couldn't get
into into contact with this ladythat owned this house.

(59:41):
His name is Peter Scharter, by the way.
She probably named him. But this portrait, portrait of a
lady was among the collection ofAmsterdam art dealer Jacques
Hardsticker. And he was Jewish, and much of
the collection was sold by the Nazis after his death.
So they hadn't known where this painting had ended up because it

(01:00:02):
was missile, but they found it kind of by accident.
And during his investigations, Carter also discovered some
wartime documents that suggestedthe painting was in possession
of a Nazi called Friede Katzen, who was an assessor officer and
senior financial aid to Hammer Gray.
So it's not that far removed from this movie, actually, or

(01:00:25):
the story. And he fled in 19. 45 before
eventually moving to Argentina where he became a very
successful businessman. When they were confronted with
this discovery, they removed thebanting and kept it hidden for a
while. But they did finally surrender
it on September 3rd of this year.

(01:00:47):
So it starts back, which is good.
Nice. And they said we don't know
anything about the history. We don't know.
It was a fun little story for the museum art world for a
little while because how often are you going to say, Oh yes, I
was browsing listings on my realestate listing site of choice
and I found a piece of stolen artwork on the wall of one of
these homes. And then as I understand it,

(01:01:10):
they went and removed the picture from the listing because
surely that's going to throw everybody off the scent that I
no longer have this stolen painting.
They removed they removed it from the picture, but they also
removed it from the house. What they hang a rug where the
pencil is to me. Yeah, which cracks me up because
then they were like, we actuallyhave no idea that painting was

(01:01:31):
stolen. And it's like, well, you put a
lot of legwork into making sure no one could find it.
So that kind of makes me think you didn't know it was stolen.
Kind of crush to show how how relevant this story still is to
the. For sure.
I mean, there's no quote UN quote monuments men in the sense
that there was during World War 2 anymore.

(01:01:52):
Many people will remember how the National Museum in Iraq and
Baghdad was looted in 2003 by the Americans this time.
And so a lot of that artwork is still missing and people are
still trying to track it down. So it remains relevant for sure.
We should rate this movie. Yeah.
Who wants to go first? When I go first, you always tell
me that I said what you wanted to say, so I think you should go

(01:02:12):
first all. Right.
So it's however many stellar artworks out of 10 that we're
rating Yeah, I will rate this movie maybe 6.7 double artworks
out of 10. I guess a couple panels instead
of the whole thing with the .7. I didn't hate it.

(01:02:33):
I quite enjoyed the story of it as a movie.
I think it leave something to bedesired in terms of pacing
intention, as a historical retelling.
It includes some important things.
But I think as we've already mentioned, none of us are really
a fan of changing the names but not the characters.

(01:02:54):
So I think they could have just gone with the actual names of
the characters and have been a little bit more truthful to
these characters instead. Yeah, I didn't hate it.
I didn't love it particularly much, but I still enjoyed my SO.
That's my written. I'm giving it a five stolen
artworks out of 10, so just half, just half of them.

(01:03:15):
Like you Mart, I think this movie suffers a lot from its
pacing. I'm not a fan of changing the
names, and I think this is a really cool story that deserves
something slightly better. What that is, I'm not sure I
know, but something that gives alittle bit more gravitas to the
enormous task of recovering a large chunk of Western culture.

(01:03:35):
Yeah, I'm also going to give it a five stolen artworks out of
10. I remembered it being
unremarkable, and it was on my second watch.
It was definitely finding myselflooking at my phone a bunch in
the back half of the movie. The little moments of Matt Damon
stepping on a landmine, you know, where they try and throw
in some drama. I was just like, I don't care
about this. Yeah, I know that you guys just
made this up to try and make this part of the movie feel

(01:03:56):
dangerous. And I'm like, I don't think it
needs that to be significant. I just don't believe that George
Clooney believes in the importance of the work the
Monuments Men were doing. So he's trying to, like, judge
it up and throw all this extra shit in to be like, see, it did
matter. And they did face danger and
that's relevant. And it's like, OK, well, and
because of that, because the movie doesn't really know what

(01:04:17):
it wants to be or what the message is that it wants to
impart upon us, I just I don't feel like it super works.
But I did really like seeing Roseville and in the part of
Cave Blanchett there. I like seeing her contribution
get recognized and noted. And I didn't think she was
terribly written as a female character, which is, you know, a
better than we get in some more movies.

(01:04:38):
So there is that. Is anybody reading anything they
want to talk about today? I have two book recommendations
for people who might want to learn more on this topic.
So one of the books that a friend from England gave me is

(01:05:00):
called National Treasures Savingthe Nation's Art in World War 2
by Caroline Shenton. This is specifically about that
very large move of art out of the British sort of National
Gallery that Sam alluded to earlier, and trying to figure
out where they were going to stick all of this priceless art

(01:05:21):
where they didn't think it was going to be subject to bombing
rates. Super, super interesting book.
You learn a little bit about howto not store art in stately
homes, how to not store art in adifferent kind of mind.
Good read, highly recommend. And then Robert Edsel, the guy
who wrote Monuments Men, has another book called Saving
Italy, The race to rescue a nation's Treasures from the

(01:05:41):
Nazis. This one is still on my TDRI.
Haven't read it yet, but it is specifically about Italy and
Italian art, the Vatican collection, things like that.
So it's on my list. Sweet.
I'm not reading a World War Two book.
I'm reading a book called Who Cooked Adam Smith's Dinner by
Katrine Kilos. The tagline is a story about
women in economics, and the title comes from Adam Smith,

(01:06:05):
known as the father of modern economics, writing about, you
know, the free market and demandand, and all this kind of stuff.
And, you know, meanwhile, he lived in a situation where his
mother cooked all of his meals and cleaned his home for him.
And so he created this model of economics where the labor of
women is completely invisible because it's not paid labor in a

(01:06:26):
lot of instances. And so this book is sort of AI
guess, a takedown of the way that, you know, we understand
economics in the modern world based on, you know, what Adam
Smith had to say. Sam, I think it's so funny that
that's the book you're reading, because the other book that's in
my TBR pile right now is called The Secret History of Home
Economics. How Trailblazing Women Harnessed
the Power of Home and Changed the Way We Live.

(01:06:48):
Oh cool. Amazing.
First of all, Merck, thank you for being on the podcast with us
once again. Thanks so much for having me.
We might have you back in the future if you find another thing

(01:07:08):
we are both obsessed by. Absolutely.
And thank you everybody else forlistening again this week.
You can find us wherever you getyour podcast.
You can rate US five stars. I forgot to say this at the
beginning of the episode. You can send this this episode
to a friend who needs to know more about importance of art in
the state of warfare. And you can follow us on

(01:07:29):
Instagram at Rosito Reviewer podcast.
And if you want more informationabout the books that Merc just
mentioned, you can visit our website, rositoreviewer.com
because I will put some more information on there and we'll
see you next week. Bye.