00:00In this film released in 2004, we follow Benjamin Gates, played by Nicolas Cage,
00:04who will go in search of the inestimable treasure of the Templars,
00:08hidden by the Freemasons during the American Revolutionary War.
00:11We will follow the character and his acolytes, trying to uncover the different secrets that will lead him to the treasure,
00:16while trying to escape mercenaries who also want their share of the loot.
00:19So, I'll be honest, when I was a kid, I was totally crazy about this movie.
00:23He was my Indiana Jones.
00:25I find that this way of mixing reality with a purely fictional story gives real life to the film.
00:29It gives it a very playful and galvanizing side,
00:32so much so that when I was little, I wanted to go and check myself if all these clues were really present
00:36in these objects and other American historical monuments.
00:39Yes, we are very naive when we are children.
00:40Of course, we have this excessive patriotism which is quite too much,
00:44but it remains a very generous film.
00:46It's action-packed, humorous, and very intuitive,
00:48since we will discover with the characters each clue whose meaning is given to us at the same time as the heroes,
00:54or even by them at certain times.
00:55This means that we never get lost in the story and we are invested in this treasure hunt.
00:59Like the whole thing about the Resolver's Office and the way Gates tells it, it's brilliant.
01:04It totally feeds our imagination,
01:06and it especially makes you want to have Nicolas Cage as a history teacher.
01:09Well, even if the second opus is still less successful,
01:11since it only inflates its budget and simply takes the codes of the first without offering anything new.
01:16Even the antagonist is fueled by the same motivations as the one in the first film.
01:20It was the good old days, when Disney productions were still up to scratch.
01:23and offered an intelligent and generous spectacle.
01:25In any case, in Benjamin Gates, Freemasonry is openly cited.
01:29The film even makes heroes of its founders,
01:31since they are the ones responsible for protecting the treasure.
01:33But then, what is Freemasonry?
01:36From what we know, it is an organization that has several dedicated locations around the world,
01:39which are called lodges.
01:40And in these lodges, members will meet to debate on different subjects.
01:45The idea is that each member can rise intellectually and morally,
01:48in order to perfect one's inner care,
01:51and have a clear vision of the world around him.
01:53Freemasonry is such a huge community,
02:02which evolves across the world and different cultures,
02:04that we find within it different kinds of individuals,
02:06of different social classes, of different religions.
02:09Members generally enter through sponsorship,
02:11and must pass rites of passage in order to be accepted for good.
02:14In cinema, Freemasonry has been represented quite often,
02:17in Benjamin Gates therefore, in a rather flattering way,
02:20but also in Murder by Decree in 1979,
02:23where, on the contrary, she will be part of a sordid plot
02:25that Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson will have to elucidate.
02:28In both films, Freemasonry is used only as a backdrop,
02:31while some films will totally use the organization
02:33as the basis for their story.
02:35And there I think of Forces Occultes, released in 1943,
02:38and The Man Who Would Be King in 1975.
02:41Subtitling Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
02:46Subtitling Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
Commentaires
24