What a beautiful and empathetic movie National Anthem is. The directorial debut of Luke Gilford, a photographer and music video director making his feature debut, the film tells the story of a chosen family of queer ranch hands and rodeo performers in New Mexico. The film’s adapted from the director’s 2020 photography book, which drew on his experiences with the International Gay Rodeo Association (IGRA). This is a director exploring a world he knows well—and knocking it out of the park.
National Anthem sounds from the plot like a movie trying to check social justice boxes or be intentionally provocative. But that’s not really what’s going on. This film’s strength lies in putting characters first. Also, the performers are universally strong, and the Western scenery is beautiful.
Charlie Plummer stars as Dylan, a young man in New Mexico who lives with his alcoholic mom (Robyn Lively) and younger brother Cassidy (Joey DeLeon). He starts off the film working construction jobs before finding his way to the House of Splendor, a ranch in which everyone around is some degree of queer. Later, he gets involved with the rodeo. Dylan soon finds himself smitten with Sky (Eve Lindley), a trans woman who works on the ranch. However, things get complicated with the ranch’s head, Pepe (Rene Rosado).
Dylan also wants to be a drag performer, and the other central character is the nonbinary drag queen Carrie (Mason Alexander Park). The film grants dignity to the act of drag, which rises far above the culture war conversation. But another outstanding thing about National Anthem is that it doesn’t have any stock of conservative red-state villains. Even the drunk mother character, who we’re expecting to emerge as a hateful and irredeemable homophobe, turns out to be anything but.
Plummer has been kicking around indie films for a few years, probably most prominently as the Getty kid kidnapped in All the Money in the World, in which Christopher Plummer (no relation) played his grandfather. He also co-starred in a little-seen indie movie I really liked called Spontaneous, but National Anthem is by far the best performance I’ve seen from him.
Lindley was on a pandemic-era show called Dispatches From Elsewhere that I loved, and I wondered when she might get a good movie role. The mother is well-played by Robyn Lively, the older half-sister of Blake Lively and an actress who had a bit part on Twin Peaks more than 30 years ago. This is a much more multi-faceted and fair depiction of rural America than Hillbilly Elegy.
