last night i watched “national treasure”. why, i don’t know. i have nothing to say about this film except that it may be time to put nicholas cage out of his misery.
last week: “blade: trinity”. entertaining enough i suppose, but really worth seeing only to see parker posey play the role she was born for: an anorexic vampire with a bad attitude. there’s a super vampire in this movie who is apparently unbeatable in battle but who runs away from blade at their first meeting, even though he’s supposed to kill him. it isn’t clear either why super vampire, the first vampire even, does what anorexic vampire with a bad attitude wants him to do. there is, however, an amusing scene in which said super vampire goes into a store replete with vampire kitsch, including a vampire dildo. i really hope they lay this franchise to rest with this film–the second and third ones have made the original seem like a masterpiece. or perhaps there will eventually be a crossover between the “blade” and “underworld” universe. maybe even in space.
michael, i’m guessing you’re the only other person here likely to have seen either of these–am i missing anything of note?
I saw National Treasure when it was in theaters. I never would have seen it on my own, but my little brother demanded that I take him. We drove 10 miles through a snowstorm to see it. It was actually fun watching it with him. He was 14 at the time (the film’s target age, I think), and I was suprised at how saavy a viewer he was. Apart from having anticipated with a great deal of accuracy some of the film’s “twists,” he often snickered at the film. I think he may have been picking up on the film’s half-serious efforts at combining gun-ho nationalism with monetary reward, while magnifying, to the point of absurdity, the moral obligations of “adventure.”
A lot of people say this film rips off from the Indian Jones cycle, but it’s fairer to say that, like the Indiana Jones films, National Treasure is simply using a classic Hollywood thematic paradigm: the hero, usually an outlaw, but at the very least on the fringes of society (unfettered, untangled, and motivated only by self-interest), acknowledges and accepts something larger than himself (his obligation to some particular community, or the greater good, etc.). Robert Ray makes a neat argument that films like this are really thinly camouflaged westerns. The idea is that such films allay anxieties that a choice must be made between radically opposing sets of values (e.g., individual v. community) by magically erasing the need for choice and, in doing so, reassuring audiences about the permanent avilablity of both sets of values. Usually these films have some kind of protective veneer: we aren’t aware of how the need for choice is erased or transcended.
But National Treasure has no veneer, no guises; it fetishizes rather than hides its own mythology. Objects (the dollar bill, the Declaration of Independence, the Liberty Bell) are endlessly multiplied and divided (this is literally the case with Benjamin Franklin’s magic bifocals), and all “point the way.” Everything is made visible, named, fondled, and exchanged.
I think this is what makes the film good hoaky fun, (and it certainly didn’t hurt to watch it with a 14 year old, who accepted it as hoaky fun). I’ve more to say, but I thought I’d stop and see if anyone else wants to add something.