I watched this film a couple of months ago and I wanted post it immediately but I waited and researched more about the story behind it. The story says that a group of men came across with a treasure while on expedition in New Mexico, and they buried it in Virginia. One of them, named Thomas Beale, left three cipher texts with a friend, who forgets about it for more than 20 years. One day realizing that Thomas is not coming back, he opens the box and tries to solve the ciphers. Being unable to, he passes along the texts to a friend, James Beverly Ward, who cracks one of the three ciphers, but not the one that actually gives the precise location of the treasure. More than a hundred years go by, and no one had been able to solve the remaining two ciphers texts, if it exists, may still be out there, buried in Virginia. Everything now known about the Beale Cipher is based on a single text, published by Ward and submitted to the Library of Congress in 1885. The first cipher text allegedly describes the location of the treasure. The second text, the only one deciphered, explains what the treasure is, and the third supposedly details the names of the people that should get the treasure. Some people say that it´s all a hoax perpetrated by Ward, but the tale of the Beale ciphers, as I found on the web, continues to intrigue codebreakers and treasure hunters. Also, there is a Cheyenne legend dating from around 1820 which tells of gold and silver being taken from the West and buried in Eastern Mountains.
About Andrew S. Allen and the film aesthetics, he has embedded ciphers of his own in the film, there are 16 hidden messages, that´s kind of a interesting thing to do if you are already immerse in this story of mystery and riddles. He used a combination of old school hand drawn design and rotoscoping with fabric and paper textures. The look is simple and elegant, perfect for the story, it won numerous film festival awards. Check out the website here.
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