National Anthem
Cinestudio
Hartford
Aug. 7, 2024
National Anthem is a straightforward movie about a young man named Dylan (played by Charlie Plummer), a day laborer who gets invited to work at a queer rodeo where he meets an eccentric cast of characters.
Dylan lives with his mother Fiona (Robyn Lively) and younger brother Cassidy (Joey DeLeon), and spends his days working to support both of them and his nights watching his brother while his mother drinks and parties. Once he meets Pepe (Rene Rosado) and his lover Sky (Eve Lindley), Dylan gets involved in a love triangle with the two and finds himself caught up in the whimsy and hedonism of the rodeo they call home.
At 89 minutes, National Anthem barely has time for a plot, but that’s not detrimental to the overall film. It’s enjoyable to watch Dylan shed his reservations and open up to his love for Sky, his desire to engage in drag and the genuine friendships he develops with other residents of the ranch, like Carrie (Mason Alexander Park). Katelin Arizmendi’s cinematography makes New Mexico look like the dark side of the moon when Dylan is down, and like a gorgeous tapestry of sand and sky when the mood is more upbeat. As a simple slice of life look at the sexual maturation of its main character, National Anthem works as a quick peek at Dylan.
There are a few sour spots in the film. The largest is the way that the burdens and responsibilities of single parenthood — in particular single motherhood — are treated with a disturbing sense of arrested development. At no point does Dylan acknowledge the monumental task his mother faces of raising two children without any help from their father.
And look, I get that Dylan is 21. He’s still an idiot, and hasn’t yet matured enough to understand what his mother did for him and his brother, in spite of the drinking and the partying. That’s what she did to stay sane while providing for the entire lives of two people.
All three writers (Kevin Best, Luke Gilford and David Largman Murray) are grown men who at no point thought to give credence to the mother’s struggles through some other means than the immature Dylan. She could have had the opportunity for a monologue. Or maybe one of the men she brought home could tell the boys to mind their mother. Or damn, even Cassidy could’ve told Dylan to lay off. There is zero acknowledgement anywhere in the movie of Dylan’s mother’s hard work or sacrifice. She’s just a drunken moocher whose redemption comes from her apology to and acceptance of her son, though again, with no mention of her role in getting him to this point in his life.
This point frustrates me because part of the maturation process for any young man is reconciling his imagination of motherhood with the reality of parenting. The relationship between mothers and sons is mythologized in such a way that anything less than a storybook version of childrearing feels like a betrayal. At some point you have to accept that parents have the hardest job in the world, and that women often do it alone, with little support from fathers, society and government, with less money and with more restrictions on their personal choices and autonomy than men have. The script of a movie about a mother and son MUST acknowledge this. Men must be taught to love and respect their mothers. Movies are a huge part of how we accomplish this feat.
The other shortcoming of the film is that towards the end, it suddenly introduces conflict to move the otherwise nonexistent plot along. The death of a prized horse serves as the final straw that breaks up the Dylan/Sky/Pepe love triangle, but it feels forced. In one scene, Sky is describing why her horse is special, and in the very next scene, the horse is dead. Given the more naturalistic pacing of the movie up until that point, I feel there could have been a less dramatically telegraphed way to end the star-crossed romance.
National Anthem works because it doesn’t overstay its welcome. It drops the audience into Dylan’s exploration of himself without moralizing or explaining, which is a nice change of pace. Queerness is simply a given, not something to be justified, which is perhaps the film’s greatest strength. But the treatment of Dylan’s mom is the main message that I left the film with, and I’m afraid that young men who watch this film will walk away with the same messaging.
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