Title: Lean on Pete Year: 2017 Genre: Adventure, Drama, Sport Country: UK Language: English, Spanish Director/Screenwriter: Andrew Haigh based on the novel by Willy Vlautin Music: James Edward Barker Cinematography: Magnus Nordenhof J?nck Editor: Jonathan Alberts Cast: Charlie Plummer Steve Buscemi Chlo? Sevigny Travis Fimmel Steve Zahn Alison Elliott Amy Seimetz Lewis Pullman Justin Rain Bob Olin Teyah Hartley Rachael Perrell Fosket Kurt Conroyd Rating: 7.8/10

Title: National Anthem Year: 2023 Genre: Drama, Romance Country: USA Language: English Director: Luke Gilford Screenwriters: Kevin Best, Luke Gilford, David Largman Murray Music: Nick Urata Cinematography: Katelin Arizmendi Editors: Amber Bansak, Josh Schaeffer Cast: Charlie Plummer Eve Lindley Rene Rosado Mason Alexander Park Robyn Lively Joey DeLeon D'Angelo Lacy Rating: 7.3/10

A star has been born. Two films headlined by up-and-rising New York-born actor Charlie Plummer and they can practically be viewed as a diptych. A 17-year-old Plummer plays Charley Thompson, a 15-year-old, Portland-dwelling teenager in Andrew Haigh’s 4th feature LEAN ON PETE, and 6 years later, he plays Dylan, a 21-year-old construction worker in New Mexico, in Luke Gilford’s feature debut NATIONAL ANTHEM. While the Beaver State and the Land of Enchantment are not geographically contiguous, Charley and Dylan share quite a lot commonalities. Both are raised by a single parent in a rural surrounding, have an affinity with animals - spoilers alert! Both film feature a heartrending death scene of a horse which alters the course of its narrative -“Lean on Pete”is actually the name of the sorrel Charley gets emotionally attached to, whereas Dylan chances upon a self-contained community of queer ranchers and rodeo performers, and begins to come to terms with his sexuality, performing his first rodeo, doing his first drag performance and falling in love for the first time with the free-spirited trans woman Sky (Lindley, a bombshell unfortunately shoehorned in a manic pixie dream girl role). A thoroughly warts-and-all Bildungsroman, LEAN ON PETE circumspectly curates the vagaries of Charley’s woeful life. His naff father (Fimmel, completely shedding off his model physique and comfily settling into the daddy bod with a beer gut) isn’t going to be his role model and will peg out soon rather stupidly. That is the prospect for the small-town folks like him, and Charley isn’t like him. Still not completely contaminated by the countrified uncouthness and callousness, Charley retains his innate goodness and sensitivity, finding contentment as a minder of racehorses, hired by trainer Del (Buscemi, effortlessly inhabiting his character’s neither-good-nor-bad grey zone without much fuss). Charley is particularly taken by Lean on Pete, who is not a prize-winner, but an also-ran, just like him, marginalized and neglected. When Del decides to sell Lean on Pete, Charley takes the plunge to embark on a one-man-one-horse odyssey, the destination is Wyoming, where lives Charley’s maternal aunt Margy (Elliott). But the journey turns out to be far more treacherous than he imagines, both kind-hearted and awful people (When Steve Zahn goes maniac, he becomes quite a terror) are transient down the road. Sometimes, using violence to recuperate what is legitimately his is a must-learn lesson in the school of hard knocks, along with finding out an apposite outlet for his buried grief and bereavement. Under Haigh’s quintessentially conscientious supervision, LEAN ON PETE is an echt heart-string puller without resorting to sensationalism. It is in default of any pretension or schmaltz often associated with the“poverty porn” designation. The interactions among its characters are built upon realistic situations rather than dramatic interpretations. Sevigny’s sympathetic jockey Bonnie is never going to be the magic conduit whom viewers might fantasize to save Charley from his plights, although her spontaneous, demonstrative aspect might suggest that. An encounter with a diner worker who magnanimously lets him off the hook for pilfering isn’t a beggar-belief construct, but a universal moment of commiseration and a precious occurrence to act on it. A sojourn with two young army veterans expertly imparts the jarring discrepancy through a communicative disjunction, Charley doesn’t share their parlance or mindset. But all is well that ends well, LEAN ON PETE sticks to its landing firmly as Charley is ready to resumes his life anew after graduating from the rite of passage, and with a new hairdo. Charley’s story can smoothly segue into Dylan’s in NATIONAL ANTHEM. 6 years elapse and he assumes a man-of-the-house responsibility to support his family together with his single mother Fiona (Lively), a hairdresser who often leaves him to attend to his younger brother Cassidy (DeLeon). In the meantime he also saves his earnings to purchase a RV, so one day he will have a means to explore the world out of his usual peripheries. Gilford’s film is a zeitgeist booster in a sense that it creates an Elysium where queer people can live and love freely, make merry freely, enjoy horse-riding and lip-syncing without being subjected to any kind of prejudice, malice or struggling. It certainly and blatantly bucks the tired trend of tragic queer stories awash with rejections, homophobia and deaths. Ergo, the stake isn’t really high, even Fiona is conspicuously avoided to be a blinkered killjoy when confrontations are expected, and NATIONAL ANTHEM unbridledly nails its colors to the mast of its be-your-self, love-conquering-everything fanfare. Dylan is hopelessly infatuated with Sky, who conducts an open relationship with her boyfriend Pepe (Rosado). Their love triangle is calibrated with much deliberation and tenderness, although not without discomfiture. Their threesome experiment is shot during the night under dim, deep purple light, thus it is not discernible whether Dylan truly further explores his sexuality with a rather masculine Pepe. One might expect Gilford to be bolder or at least clearer on that front, along with Sky’s transsexual presentation. Cocooned in its own utopian, pastoral landscape, NATIONAL ANTHEM - which is celestially rendered near the end by a cross-dressing cowboy (Lacy), symbolizing that Dylan is on the cusp of striking out on his own - is a competent debut work comprised of stunning color (warm, varicolored shots of candid otherness), swooning mood (greatly enhanced by Nick Urata’s ethereal soundtrack and Perfume Genius’s gossamer chants) and sincere benignancy (a non-binary Mason Alexander Park provides a cordial emotional anchor for Dylan). From LEAN ON PETE to NATIONAL ANTHEM, from leaving behind a dead-end future behind to finding one’s own place and people, Plummer excellently ripens from a precocious teen to a bankable young man who blesses audience with an obliging openness that bares all the gamut of emotions. His Charley exudes a touching, dewy-eyed vulnerability often juxtaposed with a steely resolute and the accrued world-savviness learnt from life itself. Yet he also dives deeply and swimmingly into Dylan’s self-discovery and self-emancipation with such distinction that his warmth and exuberance is almost infectious. As I see it, Plummer has it in him to go all the way ahead to attain an illustrious tracking record as a serious thespian, and he has already had two coruscating gems under his belt. referential entries: Haigh’s ALL OF US STRANGERS (2023, 8.0/10); Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping’s FEMME (2023, 7.5/10); Saim Sadiq’s JOYLAND (2022, 8.1/10); Lukas Dhont’s GIRL (2018, 7.4/10); Chloé Zhao’s THE RIDER (2017, 8.1/10).