By Kai Swanson
Each of the films on this list, produced and made in America by American filmmakers, explores a facet of patriotism in its own way. Some celebrate the country’s highest ideals, while others challenge its failures—yet all embody a belief in the power of storytelling to grapple with what America is and what it could be.
From the high-flying bravado of Top Gun to the quiet, realism of Wendy and Lucy, these films capture the spirit of a country that is constantly in conversation with itself. Whether through historical reflection, personal struggle, or institutional critique, they remind us that patriotism is not just about pride— it’s also about the American ideals of reckoning and the pursuit of something better.
#8 WENDY AND LUCY
Shot in the quiet corners of Portland, Oregon, Wendy and Lucy is a road movie in which the road simply runs out. Wendy (Michelle Williams) is on her way to Alaska, chasing the kind of fresh start that only exists in theory, when her car breaks down and her dog, Lucy, disappears. Stranded and nearly out of money, she becomes stuck in a cycle of small, compounding misfortunes—losing a pet, getting caught shoplifting for food, sleeping in her car, being treated as an inconvenience by a country that values productivity over people. The landscapes Reichardt captures are not the vast, romanticized America of classic cinema, but the America of gas stations, big-box stores, empty parking lots, and the vague hostility of anywhere you don’t belong.
Patriotism in the Act of Surviving
Wendy is nobody, which is exactly why Wendy and Lucy is so necessary. It’s a story of a person slipping through the cracks, of a life that doesn’t have the safety net we pretend exists. If patriotism is about valuing the people who make up a nation, then Wendy’s struggle is an indictment of what happens when that promise fails. Kelly Reichardt’s direction is stripped of sentimentality, but that makes it all the more devastating—this is not a tragedy; it is simply life. But in its small, heartbreaking way, Wendy and Lucy is also about resilience, about finding kindness in strangers, about the vastness of America not as a land of opportunity, but as a place where people keep moving, keep trying, because what else is there to do?
A Glass Eye Pix production starring Michelle Williams and featuring Fessenden
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