Patriotism is, sadly, out of fashion in elite circles. On the left, critics of America argue that the injustices and hypocrisies of the Founding invalidate the republic’s highest ideals. On the right, increasing numbers seem to believe that the country has entered a period of moral decline—which some even attribute to the Founders themselves. 

A serious study of the American Revolution would do much to restore the national faith, but so too could rewatching an important film from the recent past: National Treasure. Premiering twenty years ago this week, the movie may seem on the surface like a somewhat silly adventure flick. The plot is absurd and the acting is cheesy. But digging a little deeper, a careful viewer will find it contains important lessons about what it means to be a patriot in an age of doubt. 

Without question, National Treasure ranks with the Indiana Jones series as one of the great treasure hunt movies of all time. It opens with a young Benjamin Franklin Gates (played as an adult by Nicholas Cage) learning from his grandfather (played by Christopher Plummer) about the “Templar Treasure,” a hoard of gold and artifacts accumulated from the greatest civilizations of the West. Athens, Jerusalem, and Rome all contributed something to this trove, which eventually makes its way to colonial America and comes under the protection of the Founding Fathers. 

This is an admittedly ridiculous premise. In real life, there was no Masonic conspiracy to hide a literal treasure from tyrannical Redcoats. But from this opening scene, the philosophic connection between the United States and the broader Western tradition ought to be clear. America was not founded on some rejection of our civilizational forebears, but rather as the culmination of that inheritance. The real treasure the Founders sought to protect was a certain view of the dignified human person, born free and equal and deserving protection from arbitrary power—what Edmund Burke called “the spirit of an exalted freedom.”

Nonetheless, the ridiculousness of the film is actually part of its appeal. Only Nicholas Cage could have played Ben Gates. His performance teeters between a suave history professor and a half-crazed conspiracy theorist—but it works. Cage is entirely believable as a man driven by his absolute confidence in what he believes, even when the respectable historical community mocks him and dismisses the serious work he’s done hunting for the Templar Treasure. The movie’s exciting action scenes add to the sense of both adventure and curiosity, set as they are from an aircraft carrier to catacombs under New York City to the National Archives in Washington, DC. It is not exactly globe-trotting, but the film does give an enjoyable tour of some of America’s most important historical landmarks.

After being initiated into the mystery of the treasure, Gates devotes his life to searching for it and protecting it from those who are unworthy of its riches. He comes to learn that the Founders left behind clues to the treasure’s location—including a map on the back of the Declaration of Independence itself. While Gates is a trained historian who respects the past, he has to race against another team of treasure hunters who only care about wealth and will destroy any history that stands in the way of their greed. 

The Declaration’s hidden map, revealed fully at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, is a symbol of an important truth. In Persecution and the Art of Writing, Leo Strauss argued that the greatest thinkers of history buried their meaning between the lines of their books because they “were very far from being exponents of society or of parties.” Instead, he says, “They defended the interests of philosophy and of nothing else.” The fact that the greatest treasure of the West is concealed within this key political document points to what is in fact the fundamental object of Gates’s pursuit: enlightenment.

In many respects, Gates’s quest for the treasure constitutes a kind of faith. In the film’s best scene, his love interest, Dr. Abigail Chase (played by Diane Kruger), asks him why he is so certain that the treasure is real even though he is dismissed as a conspiracy theorist for believing it is. He replies, “No, but I hope it’s real. I’ve dreamt it’s real since my grandfather told me about it.” Gates goes on to explain that he wants to find the treasure because he needs “to know that it isn’t just something in my head or in my heart.” 

Over the course of the film, Gates’s attitude embodies what the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard called the “knight of faith.” In Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard paints a picture of a knight who is desperately in love with a woman even though circumstances mean they can never be together. One option, what Kierkegaard calls the “ethical,” is to infinitely resign oneself to those circumstances. But the “knight of faith” approaches the situation differently—he says, “I believe nevertheless that I shall get her, in virtue, that is, of the absurd, in virtue of the fact that with God all things are possible.” This is the famous Kierkegaardian “leap of faith,” what he considers to be the highest way of life. 

Gates’s relentless pursuit of the treasure is precisely this kind of leap. During that opening conversation, the young Gates even asks, “Grandpa, are we knights?” and kneels to take a chivalric oath to defend the treasure and his family’s honor. He takes that vow seriously as an adult. In a callback to an earlier scene in the movie, Chase goes on to remark, “People don’t really talk that way, you know?” Gates replies, “I know, but they think that way.” He believes so strongly in the treasure, and in the ideals of the Founding it represents, that he is willing to risk everything—his “life, fortune, and sacred honor”—to find it. 

At one point in the film, Gates and his team follow all the clues to an empty room. It seems that its guardians had moved the treasure away years before. But just before he slips into despair, his father (played by Jon Voight) points out that the mere existence of the room is a sign that Gates’s faith is true. “We’re in the company of some of the most brilliant minds in history because you found what they left behind for us to find,” he says, “and understood the meaning of it.” Then and there, at what could have been their darkest moment, the team resolves to carry on the search. 

This really is the task set before all patriots. Yes, the country’s history is full of dark moments and reasons to doubt the ideals symbolized by the Declaration. In so many ways the United States fails to live up to the American dream and the Western heritage. But patriotism necessitates a kind of faith-seeking understanding, a hunt for the deepest principles and truest meaning of the republic. Gates can be a model for the way that we ourselves engage with American history.

Of course, shortly after this moment of crisis, our intrepid treasure hunters find the object of their quest behind yet another puzzle. Instead of keeping the treasure for themselves, though, they decide it is too great for any one man to possess. Like the Founders believed about government, they choose instead to divide it up and “give it to the people.” In other words, the quest led our heroes to a deeper understanding of the Founding’s principles. 

While National Treasure may not be the most chic or stylish film ever made, it is a fun adventure with a real depth. It is a movie about what it means to love our country, even when that love is a hard thing to do. Studios may not make movies like that anymore. But ultimately, National Treasure still gives audiences an image of an American faith we must renew.

This essay is adapted from remarks delivered at an event hosted by Hudson Institute Political Studies, of which the author is a 2017 alumnus.