Heyo! After floating around the ether of the Internet for a while, I began to wonder where it all came from. Pondering on the history of the internet left me with a kind of homesickness for a place I’ve never been, so I decided to go there. What I’m saying is that I decided to take a pilgrimage to the place it all began… Al Gore’s Brain!
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Alright, not really. It’s hard to pin down a single “birthplace,” but with the help of a “tour guide” of sorts, I was able to see how it all began… I mean, Al Gore, like, talked to the people who invented the internet, but the monuments of digital history grounded my journey and showed the meaning of it all.
And that’s exactly what I’d like to talk about in my next movie reflection. The movie? Monuments Mendirected and co-written by George Clooney. I gotta say, I wasn’t expecting much, but pretty much the first scene fired off all kinds of digital neurons in my brain. While many reviewers were disappointed by untapped potential and a scattered style, there is nonetheless some real wisdom buried in this script. They’ve given you the cinematic analysis, but I’m here to talk about content, poorly portrayed or not.
Opening Scene: The camera opens onto an image of Jesus Christ in the center piece of the Ghent Altar. Consciously or not, this sends a strong message that the concern is not just art, but art that has a lasting meaning, the majority of which is explicitly religious and primarily Catholic. Throughout the movie, the two main pieces of art which are sought for are this same altar piece and a statue of Mary and Child. Clooney’s presentation to the president opens with a picture of the Last Supper, talks about Monte Cassino and then comes to the altar piece. And it’s at this point that he says something that struck me…
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| “It is the monument of the Catholic Church.” |
This comment then moves directly into this line “we must remember the huge price paid
if the foundations of modern society should be destroyed.” I don’t know if Clooney intended this, but this forms a kind of parallelism and the natural conclusion is that, in some ways at least, “monuments of the Catholic Church” = “foundations of modern society.” And, well, this is pretty much true. Western society owes much of its language, literature, and history to the preservation and creative efforts of Benedictine monasteries after the fall of Rome and then to the rise of Catholic Universities throughout the Medieval period. These elements, in turn, are the foundation upon which many of the Renaissance greats were able to build their own accomplishments, many of which were commissioned by Popes and Bishops. Whether a person agrees with the Church or not, whether they like the Church or not, an honest historical analysis reveals the massive contribution of the Church in the cultural sphere, not to mention the many humane values of the modern world which find their origin in Christian ethics, even if these values have deviated from their source since then.
About halfway into the film, we meet the Bruge Madonna, sculpted by Michelangelo. Donald Jeffries (Hugh Bonneville), who’s life is a bit of a wreck and who is a recovering alcoholic, is tasked with protecting this particular statue. Though he is no exemplar of moral behavior, this sense of mission, founded on the desire to protect what is beautiful, leads him to a kind of quasi-martyrdom. Don’t get me wrong, we shouldn’t canonize the guy or even recommend people to get killed over statues, but there is a real virtue being portrayed here. While the character was unable to lead a Catholic life up to this point, his sense that this statue is something more than a chunk of marble – that it is connected to a deeper meaning and a deeper reality – leads him say “I am tonight” when asked if he was Catholic. He then offers a beautiful reflection as he writes his last letter…
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| “I see her hand protecting a delicate baby from a fate she knew would come.” |
Jeffries then applies this same reality to himself. He obviously does not mean the statue is protecting him, but he is conscious of the spiritual ideal this statue is meant to convey. Instinctively, he is appealing to the intercession of a saint, Mary, as he faces death. Faced with religious beauty in the midst of evil, Jeffries indirectly voices his desire, albeit imperfect, to conform his own death to the death of Christ.
Some critics accuse this movie of lacking tension, but I suspect that is because they did not have emotional and spiritual awareness of a devotion to Mary and that they overlooked the tension caused by the group’s desire to ensure Jeffries’ death was not in vain. The moment they uncovered the statue at the end of the movie… that gave me chills. The arranging of the scenes in this way, with the highest resolution of tension tied to the discovery of a statue of Mary has the effect, in my estimation, of suggesting to the audience that reverence for a meaningful and beautiful object like this statue is not only acceptable, but even praiseworthy.
Briefly, I want to recall the the scene where James (Matt Damon) turns down the advances of Claire (Cate Blanchett) – this made me cheer a bit. The music and the small joke about it afterward seems to leave the audience with the impression that this action is a good one, and it is always good to see modern movies which uphold, even in small ways, the perennial value of marital fidelity.
There are more scenes which could be discussed, but I’d rather not go too long. The overall take of the movie is made pretty explicit: Art, inasmuch as it reflects good values, authentic culture, and historical awareness, is worth saving, even at great cost. It is not the objects themselves which are being reverenced (like some form of idolatry), but the intangibles which they make tangible for us. In today’s world where ISIS blows up anything they touch and Americans are in a panic to remove any artwork or monument which might offend someone, this message from 2014 seems almost prophetic. The movie wasted absolutely no time talking about the possible deviances of Da Vinci or the corrupt practices of some of the people who commissioned the timeless works they saved. It simply recognized beauty, history, and culture and took for granted that Man ought to remember the goods of the past if he is to know where is now and where he is going.
Thus, it saddens me that it was seen as full of untapped potential, given poor reviews, and not terribly popular because, theough David Edelstein wrongly wants more deviance, he cleverly points out that the movie is “a pipe dream of decency in a world that has lost its moral compass.” Well, perhaps we’d be better off with more dreams from that pipe…
Until next time
-The Ephesian