'National Anthem' is a star-spangled ode to joy and inclusivity

Luke Gilford's debut film celebrates America's queer rodeo community

It’s a shame that Ingrid Andress’ performance at the Home Run Derby this week will likely skew the algorithm for folks Googling “National Anthem.” Because Luke Gilford’s sensitive debut feature film of the same name, opening in theaters this week, has perfect pitch in its depiction of joy and diversity.

“National Anthem” is the second movie this summer (after Jeff Nichols’ “The Bikeriders”) inspired by a book of photography. Gilford’s 2020 book of the same name was an exploration of queer rodeo culture in America, featuring stirring portraits of LGBTQ Americans against the stunning iconography of the American West. We belong here, too, the subjects seem to say to the camera.

Gilford and screenwriters Kevin Best and David Largman Murray have crafted a simple but effective narrative to bring that representation to the big screen. Dylan (Charlie Plummer) is a young New Mexico man who seems to be little more than the sum of his responsibilities, working construction jobs to support his flighty alcoholic mother (Robyn Lively) and doting younger brother Cassidy (Joey DeLeon). 

In the bleak opening scene, Dylan and the other workers scrabble like ants across a seemingly endless gravel pit. When other men his age are partying and enjoying relationships, Dylan just shuffles from one job to the next, exhausted and broken. It’s only when caring for Cassidy that we see glimpses of the kind, gentle man he is at heart.

Then Dylan gets a job moving hay bales at a ranch named the “House of Splendor.” He sees a beautiful transgender woman in a dress riding on a horse, and the soundtrack by Perfume Genius swells with romantic possibility. 

The ranch is home to a group of queer rodeo performers who bring acceptance and softness to Dylan’s unyielding life. He’s initially attracted to the woman, Sky (Eve Lindley), but he’s also drawn in by the welcoming, accepting atmosphere of the ranch. “You might have thought it would be bigger or better than it is,” says the ranch’s matriarch, Cassidy (Mason Alexander Park in a wonderful performance), “But this is me telling you that you belong here.”

(Photos courtesy of LD Entertainment)

Gilford takes time to present this community at work and at play, going from bull riding competitions to drag shows, from threesomes to line dancing. All the while, we see tight closeups of Dylan’s face, as the hardness we saw there at the start of the film melts away, replaced by new joy at finding his people. To quote the Tim McGraw song they line-dance to – he likes it, he loves it, he wants some more of it.

Plummer’s unguarded performance reminded me a lot of his role in Andrew Haigh’s underseen 2017 movie “Lean On Pete,” where he also played a young cowboy looking for his place in the world. When Dylan looks at Sky, Gilford includes some impressionistic touches, bathing his face in golden light, or making the rest of the people in a bar disappear when she performs onstage.

“National Anthem” spends no time showing the homophobia that surrounds this idyllic place. We know it’s there. Gilford prefers to spend his time depicting the beauty of this community. Like all utopias, it can’t last – Dylan’s love for Sky isn’t reciprocated in the way he wants it to be – but he leaves the House of Splendor transformed and hopeful. 

As “National Anthem” ends with a beautiful rendition of its “title track,” Gilford’s confident debut film shows that the American Dream – for independence, for community, for self-knowledge – is one shared by all of us, even if our versions of that dream are very different.

“National Anthem” opens Friday in movie theaters. In Madison, it will play at AMC Fitchburg 18.