Weaving intricate fictions

Rating: 10/10 (14 May 2005)

With conspiracy theory being as widespread as it is in the real world, you'd expect there to be a film like National Treasure long before now. While this isn't the first film to utilize the ideas of our culture's members prone to constructing and propagating elaborate paranoid-delusional fantasies--Conspiracy Theory (1997) is an obvious past example, and another was the Skulls (2000) series--this is the first film to build conspiracy theory into this kind of tasty adventure/mystery/action/thriller mix that's part Indiana Jones, part Douglas Adams' marvelous Dirk Gently books (yes, it's _that_ literate), and part heist films like The Score (2001).
Benjamin "Ben" Franklin Gates (Nicolas Cage) is the latest member in a family long concerned with what others would call conspiracy theory, especially the portion of it about Freemasons (although in the real world, one portion tends to be so elaborately connected to other portions that it would be difficult to siphon just a section of it off). Because of something that Gates' great, great, great . . . . grandfather was told, it had been passed down through Gates' family lore that the Freemasons were responsible for sheltering some remarkable treasure--the only hard piece of "evidence" that the first Gates possessed was that the treasure had something to do with "Charlotte". Eventually, the Gates family, because of their interest in conspiracy theories, earned a reputation among scholars for being kooks.
National Treasure begins with a brief bit of historical/background exposition about the relevant bits of conspiracy theory (which of course are so enmeshed with almost mundane historical facts that it becomes difficult to separate the two--that's part of why conspiracy theory is so easily propagated), then moves to Gates as a boy, when he first learns the family legend. We then move to Gates as a 30-something year old explorer and fringe scholar, who of course is now deeply ensconced in a far-reaching search for clues leading to the treasure, despite the protests of his father, Patrick Henry Gates (Jon Voight). Ben has both majored in history and undergone specialized military training to give him a better background for his quest. We join Ben in the Arctic, searching for a long lost ship beneath the ice. He ends up with an enemy who is pursuing the same goals, and the film becomes a race for Gates to find clues and solve puzzles leading to the treasure--which just might turn out to be a myth, after all--before his enemy can, all while avoiding law enforcement for the various crimes he must commit to reach his goal.
On a script/story level, National Treasure succeeds as well as it does because of two reasons. One, the story and characters are intelligent. There is a wonderful parallel between National Treasure as a fiction and conspiracy theory in the real world. They both weave clever although sometimes verging-on-the-ridiculous fantasies that are well rooted in facts--often relatively obscure and arcane facts. Two, as a series of increasingly intricate clues and puzzles, all built upon previous clues and solutions to puzzles, the film is very intellectually stimulating in its resemblance to interactive fiction/role playing computer games. Just as a gamer can get easily wrapped up in those games as they vicariously become some fantastical, fictional character, a viewer can become enmeshed in National Treasure.
But on top of that, director John Turtletaub and his team of scriptwriters have layered well-executed action and thriller material as well as an Indiana Jones-ish location-hopping adventure story. National Treasure is frequently suspenseful, with the nail-biting threats coming from three angles--villains, authority figures, and the environment. Of course, there's also a bit of a romance subplot in the film, as well as some well-placed comic relief. National Treasure isn't about breaking new ground or bucking trends as much as excelling at proved ground and trends.
On that end, the technical aspects are superb, even if they're not groundbreaking. Superb technical elements--such as cinematography, lighting, editing, production design, score, and of course directing--are to be expected at this budgetary level ($100 million plus) of film-making. While I wouldn't give significant extra points at this level for just doing the job right, I certainly won't subtract any just for not doing something unprecedented, either. As if National Treasure needed bonus points, anyway.
The cast is also excellent, although if you hate Nicolas Cage, you may still dislike him here. He does his typical "schtick", which means, among other things, that he's a bit wry and occasionally spastic. I like his typical schtick a lot. Diane Kruger, in addition to playing her role well, is beautiful, of course, which doesn't hurt the visual attraction of the film. The big stars who take smaller parts--Voight, Harvey Keitel and Christopher Plummer--are well utilized. They're skilled enough to quickly establish depth for their characters, but Turtletaub doesn't put them in the film so much that it becomes unfocused.
A lot of people have said that National Treasure is a "popcorn" or "leave your brain at the door" film. That's not really true, but neither is it true that you have to be a conspiracy theorist or historian to enjoy the film. National Treasure is both intellectually and emotionally stimulating as well as suspenseful and vicariously fantastical for the better part of two hours. You can't ask much more of a film than that.