Much like the irrefutable facts that the sky is blue and Christmas is on December 25th, the 2004 movie National Treasure is a true masterpiece. Forget Pulp Fiction, The Godfather, Titanic, Gone With the Wind, Star Wars, and Citizen Kane because National Treasure takes the cake and blows all other competition out of the water.
Championed from the front by Oscar-deserving actor and icon Nicolas Cage, the rest of the cast is similarly star-studded, including Sean Bean (pre-Game of Thrones), Christopher Plummer (post-The Sound of Music), and Jon Voight (post-becoming Angelina Jolie’s dad). I know that this movie shaped my childhood the way that others’ were influenced by The Lion King or Aladdin.
But recently, National Treasure and I have gotten a little too familiar. It all started a couple weeks ago when I walked into the stacks of the Rock. BAM! Suddenly, I was holding a torch and wearing a beat-up leather jacket. I was Nicolas and he was me. No longer was I worried about my Chemistry midterm or the three loads of laundry waiting in my room, because I had a far greater concern. Where was the Declaration of Independence? It was somewhere down here and I was the man to find it (and to eventually uncover the treasure left by the Freemasons.)
I began to run down the aisles, pushing past Shakespeare’s first folios and books bound in human skin. Where could it be? Thankfully, I was armed with my torch, and with Diane Kruger to coddle my fragile male ego and help me find the Declaration so I could take 110% of the credit for it (and be kind of an a-hole to her the entire time). I knew Diane’s fingerprints would be key to this whole mystery; I just didn’t know how. The only idea rolling around in my head was the statement on the movie poster: “In order to break the code, one man will have to break all the rules.” Well, since I was now Nicolas, I would have to break all the rules too.
But what was the rule to break first? Inspiration struck and Diane and I found ourselves sprinting to the absolute quiet room. I immediately yelled at the top of my lungs, “WHERE ARE YOU, DECLARATION?” and felt the passive-aggressive eyes of twenty people upon me. The anger in their eyes illuminated a panel on the ceiling which read:
“Venture to the Lowest Possible Grade That Will Grant You an S”
For a minute, I stood there puzzled. But my Brown student knowledge kicked in. Eureka! A “C”! Basement Level C! We rushed to the stairs.
I convinced Diane to let me use her fingerprints on the secret hand panel in the stairwell (no, I can’t tell you where) to get us access to level C of the basement. But before we could open the door, things got confusing. I snapped back into consciousness, and my Nicolas Cage sixth-sense/second-personality/hallucination left, leaving me trying to explain to some very angry librarians why I was trying to force my way through a door. I chalked it up to a late night with too much caffeine and not enough sleep.
But the other day, it happened again! There I was, minding my own business, choosing a snack from the cafe, when Nicolas came back. This time, I stole a librarian’s ID card to get to the third level of the basement. But when the doors opened, Nicolas lost focus and Gemma came back. Before my nerd brain stood all the treasure anyone could ever ask for in the form of… books. The stacks before me held every piece of knowledge imaginable. I got distracted paging through French philosophy and Walt Whitman’s writings until I came back to my (non-Nicolas) senses. I just don’t think he’s ever going to find the Declaration with my nerd brain in charge. Good luck possessing the next human, Nicolas.