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The income gap in the United States is the highest since 1928.
And not all paintings sold at auction glorify wealth. 
(above image: digital photograph [uncorrected colour] of glass framed Pieter Breughel the Younger print [found street object] with affixed analogue photo c.1990-Andrew Lucre, 2011-both photos)

Will The Monuments Men (George Clooney doing his über  writing/directing/producing/acting thing) enlist a whole new army to attend art galleries? We’d all like to think so and in so many ways this is a very ‘likable’ movie – based on retired Texas businessman Robert M. Edsel’s books of copious research. In fact if it weren’t for Edsel’s tenacity the photo albums (collated for Hitler) of looted WW2 Nazi art would probably have become dust in the German attic of the GI’s heirs who purloined them at war’s end. Clooney’s adaption (with Grant Heslov) pushes all the right buttons and clicks the right biros but just is never in the same league as the great heist/war buddy movies of either France or America (or indeed Britain). 
 

As the film is inevitably plot driven it’s difficult to drive such a film into being commandeered by its characters to the extent that they become master portraits of ordinary people. 
Clooney is admirably aware of this it seems (hence the release delay from late last year). And if it was so easy then everyone would be making great movies of this genre. It’s all in the right direction then just peters out. Unlike many a recent movie there is indeed a sense emerging of each of these men and a skillful sketch at that. The relationship between Matt Damon’s Lt. Granger and Cate Blanchett’s Claire -Jeu de Paume Paris gallery resistance fighter- is a case in point. But in dances the scene with the hand holding dinner in Claire’s atelier after they finally trust each other. Alas, as with the rest of the magnificent cast they just can’t rise the soufflé. A frustrating shame because Clooney’s obviously put his heart into this. Here’s hoping mainstream audiences aren’t too picky because it is truly a great great story.  The rest of us will want to read all of Edsel’s books. Just goes to show how much of history simply continues untold.