National Treasure (PG), a Walt Disney Pictures/Jerry Bruckeimer Films production, Starring Nicolas Cage, Jon Voigt, Sean Bean, Harvey Keitel.
There is a quasi-strange occurrence for me at the end of most semesters. I find myself sucked into this time vortex or warp jigger and next thing I know it’s like over a month since I wrote a film column. It’s not as if I sit around and say, “Let’s do the time warp again.” It is not like that at all.
For class, I had to watch “The Deep End”, an overwrought, pretentious piece of faux art house crapola starring Goran Visjnic (ER). Instead of relishing the chance to eviscerate the film’s failed artifice with like-minded peers, I chose to view it in the intimacy of my own quarters. Without my cynicism flank being guarded, a moment of sincerity pierced my armor. For a transient moment, Goran Visjnic’s big ethnic eyes locked into those of the onscreen heroine, and mine as well, and our souls did a type of cosmic dance. Then, with the metronomic tone of the pragmatically profound, he assured me that “things happen.” He may have literally been talking about heart attacks to old people, but I felt as if he meant the Critical Ass column as well. The fact that it hasn’t happened in a month happens.
(Start with some neurotic whining, then a tangentially relevant anecdote, and now a meta comment on my column’s structure before a clumsy foray into discussing the film. Back in the comfort zone!) For the last three weeks, “National Treasure” has topped the box office. The film’s conceit is that a legendary, ancient treasure from the Middle East was protected through the ages by the Knights Templar and the Masons, including our Founding Fathers, who concealed secrets to the treasures’ whereabouts on the back of the Declaration of Independence (in invisible ink!), 100 dollar bills, and at America’s national monuments. “The DaVinci Code” gone Americana. Passed down through generations, the Gates family holds the purported first clue. As a result of the fantastical nature of their claims, the family holds little esteem in the academic community. Cage plays Benjamin Franklin Gates, the young’un of the family, who is obsessed and embarks on a lone wolf (actually he has sidekicks… but doesn’t Cage look like a wolf?) quest to find the treasure and validate his family’s claim even as his father (Voigt) begs him to let it go. Along the way he has to steal the Declaration of Independence, avoid the police and the foreign baddy with his equally foreign cronies in tow, and also decipher clues that are the cryptic equivalents of an AP US history exam. The arcane and circuitous nature of the clues may mean they were merely red herrings meant to divert British attention during the Revolutionary War.
The film is as American as a contrived heap of conventions. The clumsy, generic pastiche includes: an “Impossible” high tech heist “Mission” (sneak into party as waiter, hacker geek guy saying “and we are in” and “lost it” into a headset) meshes with the hunted “Fugitive” (diversions, car chases, lots of running), and ends with “Indiana Jones”-style copious amounts of torches, rickety wooden steps, skeletons, and thick cobwebs. Of course there are dramatic crane shots to convey the grandeur of the Mall, supersonic pans and rapid editing for tense foot chases through the streets of everywhere, awkward symbolic compositions (of Gates trapped by gates) i.e. blockbuster paint-by-numbers. We also get Nick Cage in action film persona mode minus the loopy fun we have come to intermittently expect. Ben Gates has had extensive military training, but is loath to use violence and rubs his hand after punching a bad guy. He is the supremely intelligent doofus who will only engage in morally questionable actions if he has no other choice; he makes a comparison to the Founding Fathers decision to do what was wrong, commit high treason, in order to do what is right no matter the consequences (one of the film’s many awkward attempts at rhetorical allegory).
Now I did not expect much. The writers are the same bunch of people who brought us “Snow Dogs” and “The Sixth Day.” But the director Jon Turteltaub is a Wes grad! He did “Cool Runnings,” “While You Were Sleeping,” and the seminal pre-adolescent ninja romp “Three Ninjas.” Beyond my previous complaints, this movie was not funny, cute, charming, or quirky. I think I will blame producer Jerry Bruckheimer, action hack extraordinaire and the man who runs Disney’s propaganda department. Since his partner Don Simpson passed away, Bruckheimer has made garbage (“Gone in Sixty Seconds,” “Armageddon,” “Kangaroo Jack”…). Without Johnny Depp, “Pirates” would have been a shipwreck. In the wake of Pearl Harbor day, let us invoke the Bruckheimer/Bay debacle “Pearl Harbor;” a song from “Team America: World Police” says it best (“I love you almost as much as Michael Bay missed the mark with ‘Pearl Harbor.’”). Many of the lines from “Team America” came verbatim from Bruckheimer films, and it’s a shame that “National Treasure” was not out in time because there are some doozies (referring to the curvaceous National Archivist: “Gates you are held down by the man, but a cute one.”).
Regarding the content of “National Treasure,” any Wesleyan student worth hir weight in liberal arts tuition knows better. Though it is Bruckheimer who learned an important lesson in Hollywood historical memory: it is a major bonus if you can infuse a vapid thriller with meaning, bring authenticity to inanity, but it should not attempt to be out and out historical; always opt for Americana when possible. “National Treasure” contains America’s “most” univocal sites (related to the Founding Fathers). Those clever devils in Hollywood always know exactly how to package these “harmless” PG blockbusters for optimal mainstream consumption. Bruckheimer aptly recognizes the power of toying with mythic consciousness (The Founding Fathers hid treasure?! That’s a sweet high concept!) to get people into theaters, and that contested meanings are to be avoided. No clues were hidden at the Vietnam memorial, aboard the USS Arizona, or Rosa Parks’ seat in the back of the bus. The implications of turning hegemonic America’s most ideologically laden signifiers into clues to locating the riches of another culture (yay capitalism!) appeals to the majority of this country (see recent election). The hidden narrative beneath the popular narrative of “America” is a ludicrous treasure hunt, not the systematic oppression of marginalized individuals; the egalitarian ideology of the Founding Fathers was not actually meant for everybody, silly.
So until the ride(s) comes out at Disney (you are the pen that signs the Declaration, you are Sally Heming’s DNA, etc.), one can take solace in the educational merit of a piss poor film (now I know the Liberty Bell has a crack in it!) and one can parse John Adam’s pubes to figure out why we live in a society where films like this continue to get made.
Funny Aside: The new Ray Charles movie is not called “Saw.” Its title is “Ray.” I’m an insensitive prick.
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