Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Luke Gilford
Starring: Charlie Plummer, Eve Lindley, Mason Alexander Park, Rene Rosado, Robyn
Lively
In Andrew Haigh's Lean on Pete, Charlie Plummer played a young man with an alcoholic
parent who finds a new lease of life when he takes a job on a ranch.
In Luke Gilford's National Anthem, Plummer plays a young man with an alcoholic parent who finds a new
lease of life when he takes a job on a ranch. You haven't seen a ranch
like this one on screen before though. It's staffed exclusively by members
of the queer community, who take part in America's queer rodeo
circuit.
Plummer is Dylan, a shy and sensitive 21-year-old who works as a day
laborer on various New Mexico construction sites. Each morning he lines
up, a lone white face among latin immigrants, and waits to be picked up by
whoever needs some manual labour performed. One morning he finds himself
in the back of a pickup truck and is dropped off at a ranch in the desert.
The rainbow flag hanging from the gatepost is the first sign that Dylan is
in unfamiliar surrounds. As the various gay and trans residents flirt and
tease this shy young man, Dylan doesn't feel uncomfortable, but rather at
home. It seems he may have found his people.
Dylan's eye is caught by Sky (Eve Lindley), a young trans woman.
The feeling is mutual. Sky comes on strong, trying to crack open Dylan's
defensive shell, but he's apprehensive and confused regarding Sky's
relationship with his boss, Pepe (Rene Rosado). He also fears his
alcoholic mother, Fiona (Robyn Lively), discovering his secret life
with these rodeo queens. When Fiona picks up her son from the ranch she
makes a dismissively derogatory comment about the presence of that rainbow
flag. Dylan's ally at home is his kid brother Cassidy, whom Dylan seems to
suspect may be queer himself.
National Anthem's narrative is stencilled with the same template as something like
Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous, with an innocent young man having his eyes opened and his mind blown by
exposure to a subculture he never knew existed but to which he instantly
feels like he belongs. And of course there's a worldly young woman to
guide his hand and capture his heart. An affable drag queen, Carrie (Mason Alexander Park), provides Dylan with advice on how to deal with this new world, much
like Philip Seymour Hoffman's Lester Bangs did for the young protagonist
of Crowe's film.
Gilford's directorial debut is very much a coming-of-age drama, but its
thinly drawn characters feel like they belong in a genre movie. Sky
behaves so much like a thriller femme fatale, and the musclebound Pepe is
such a stock threatening boyfriend figure, that you'll be forgiven for
waiting for the moment Sky ropes Dylan into killing Pepe. Dylan is such a
dull figure that when he asks Sky why she's interested in him we're not so
convinced when she reassures him that she doesn't find him boring. Dylan's
sexuality is kept ambiguous, leaving us to wonder if he's actually
embracing his queerness or just going through an experimental phase. The
implications of the latter reduce the film's actual queer characters to a
role adjacent to the that of the "magic negro," existing solely to help
the straight protagonist find his feet.
National Anthem comes alive when it moves away from its one-dimensional characters
and allows us to soak up its wider world. The montages of queer rodeos and
drag karaoke nights, which feature performers from the real life circuit,
only serve to make us wish Gilford had chosen one of these people as his
focus rather than the monotone mumbling Dylan. Gilford's photography
background is evident in the gorgeous shots of fabulous people set against
an even more fabulous SouthWest landscape, but you might come away wishing
he had opted for a documentary exploration of this unique world.
