Monuments Men

Film The Monuments Men Based on a true story of what was a “treasure hunt” In Its most basic deflation, The Monuments Men portrays a hand selected World War II platoon on a mission that sends them to all edges of Western Europe in order to retrieve artistic masterpieces stolen by the Nazis and return them to their original owners. This special force of American and British museum curators, directors, art historians, and others scoured Europe for these stolen pieces of art while often unarmed and behind enemy lines.

All the while, attempting to prevent the destruction of over 1 000 years of global culture. Before I watched the film, I vaguely knew about World War II, but a fair amount regarding Hitler and the Nazis. However, I did not know why they did It; why Hitler gave such orders or why so many people cooperated with their “movement”. After watching the movie, I still cannot say why he gave such orders militarily, but I can say why he ordered the kidnapping and eventual destruction of priceless art; leading to creation of “The Monuments Men”. Hitler was expelled from the Vienna

Academy of Art, which may seem unimportant but was probably his main motivation that the movie hints at. In the time I watched the film, I learned not only about specific pieces of art, but also about an underrated part during the climax of the Second World War led by none other than Doll Hitler. A culture is defined as “the arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively’ (Merriam-Webster). The movie places emphasis on a loss of culture and identity throughout the world yet specifically on mankind’s greatest artistic achievements (masterpieces).

Hitler turned what was originally a civilian war, Into a beefing culture war. The movie describes Hitler as a man who wants to be thought of for his artistic expertise along as a ‘man of the people’. He wanted to culturally revive Germany and that would not happen until all of the people the Nazis considered enemies were destroyed. His way to take away the culture in this world was to take away our art – past and present. The Monuments Men were sent to retrieve nationalism for people who lost it when they lost priceless heirlooms and artwork within their homes and museums.

That is what the movie wanted to portray, something bigger than retrieving art; retrieving a sense of pride for all of the entries affected by the war and returning it. This film is based loosely on the book The Monuments Men. Arguably many movies are adaptations to a book or original story, however, as we are moving further and further away from World War II, less movies, books, plays, etc. Are being produced regarding this time. Monuments Men filmmakers moved away from traditional and classical portrayal of history to a more modern version.

In a traditional sense, dally life of key figures and populations would have more significance because the film basically documents a period of time or an entire war, for example. However, this film focuses on one specific event in great particular interactions and social attitudes, only using time as a reference point. The key points outlined in this film can be applied to other events, like artistic looting in current times, which showed the film was created from a more modern and innovation standpoint.

They chose this event to traumatized because of the potential they saw in the original novel to bring new ideas into the historical film industry, all while portraying something interesting. This movie doesn’t have the nature of a typical Hollywood feature film but still serves its purpose as historical evidence. The filmmakers did not overly change the original storyline in the book but still left things out, as many movies do. For example, there were 345 real life ‘monuments men’ but the film executives chose to portray only 6.

As mentioned above, filmmakers chose not to portray the daily lives of soldiers or villagers during wartime and those people could feel “left out”. However, they were not vital to the film and its storyline as “The Monuments Men” never saw real combat, therefore they had little interaction with real soldiers. Also, unless they were retrieving art from a home, they had no allegations with any commoners or villagers across Western Europe. Milk Klan wrote The Monuments Men Are Still at It for The Wall Street Journal in February. He writes in support of the U. S. Laity’s efforts in World War II and in current wars. In this article specifically, Klan raises the point that the looting (of important works) is still very much so happening. He discusses how the U. S. Was criticized for intervening in the retrieval of the works during World War II but blamed for essentially overlooking the looting of the Iraq Museum. This film subtly shows this controversy extinguishing right and wrong with its depiction of how hard it was to gain approval for the specific platoon at the beginning and then notifying the public about their findings/theories at the end.

Skylark’s main point is that monuments men still exist and are fighting for the same thing as their World War II ancestors; heritage conservation, yet more under the radar this time. When used to understand the film, I can see how much of a tough situation the U. S. Was in during the war and how difficult it was to find people genuinely interested in saving someone’s culture, people who would later become “The Monuments Men”.