The Monuments Men / The Book Thief

Double review time again, this time for two extremely vapid depictions of the second World War. The Monuments Men and The Book Thief are joint American-German productions so it's hardly a surprise each take a safe approach in their portrayal of Nazi Germany. The problem is it means both films loose instant credibility. Starting with the George Clooney's latest stab at direction, The Monuments Men is loosely based on a group of soldiers who were tasked with saving pieces of art before they could be destroyed by Hitler. Clooney's directorial career has been going good film-bad film thus far and, considering last time out he gave us the worthy The Ides Of March, we're safely back in underwhelming territory this time round. Making a comedy set around WWII is a tricky and delicate task, with the result that the film itself was delayed in post as they tried to balance the comedic aspects with the dramatic. The re-editing hasn't worked and Clooney and Grant Heslov's script is all at sea throughout. The cosmopolitan cast (Damon, Murray, Goodman, Dujardin, Balaban, Bonneville) are completely unmemorable and the films structure in which its splits them all up into various groups just highlights what a problem having such a large number of characters can cause when it comes to the narrative. Clooney certainly loves to be involved in productions set around dubya dubya too, but people (especially Europeans) are just too wise to this kind of nostalgic nonsense these days. I mentioned Hugh Bonneville above and his Downton Abbey director is the man calling the shoots for the film adaptation of Markus Zusak's The Book Thief. However Brian Percival appears to be stuck in the mindset of making everything stiff upper lipped and pretty what with the protagonists of his film appearing to live in a snow covered version of Germany that appears to have come straight off of a Christmas card. Said protagonists are Liesel (Sophie Nelisse) a young girl living with her adoptive family (Geoffrey Rush and Emily Watson are the parents) who borrows / steals books from the mayor's house and shares them with a hidden Jewish refugee. Despite hints at the real darkness going on (and to be fair the film does pack a punch in the gut finale), this is just too whimsical for it to be tenable in any way. To wit: Whenever anyone expresses concern about terrors such as starvation or the punishment of harbouring a Jew, Rush's stock response is to wink! A voice over by "Death" which, though is the narrative device utilised in the novel, is completely unnecessary here and script wise things really don't work. At one point Watson puts their lives on the line and goes to Liesel's school to tell her some news about their stowaway - Why not just wait until she got home? As for the historical inaccuracies (apparently Germans play "soccer" and towards the end we're told that the US has occupied Germany, not the Allies).......Gott im Himmel......Rating: 4/10 (both).