Libertarian Movies: Ten MORE Movies with Libertarian Themes!

Last week for Movie Monday, I published a list of Ten Libertarian Movies. On that post, on (which you should “like” if you haven’t!), and on other blogs where I promoted the original post, I got multiple comments with suggestions for other movies that should have been on the list. To include some of your suggestions while dispelling the notion that last week’s list was some how a “Top Ten” list (it was not! –I wrote “Here are the first ten that came to my mind…”), here are ten more movies with libertarian themes:

 

1. Braveheart

Questions of the film’s historical accuracy notwithstanding, Braveheart is an exemplary libertarian movie. What makes it decidedly so is that this is a movie which depicts war and the occasional necessity of a truly defensive war without glorifying war itself. It takes great pains to do the opposite, as Mel Gibson does with several of his other movies. Braveheart follows a plot Gibson also employs in The Patriot and Apocalypto: the protagonist begins by opposing the war and wanting to stay out of it, preferring to live a quiet life of productivity with his family, but when the protagonist finds the war on his doorstep threatening the ones he loves, he has no other choice but to reluctantly become a hero and fight to defend the lives and liberty of the people he loves.

 

2. Atlas Shrugged: Part I

Atlas Shrugged: Part I was this year’s film adaptation of the classic American novel, Atlas Shrugged, a robust commentary on philosophy, ethics, politics, economics, culture, and sexuality from the vantage point of Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism, which emphasizes the heroic nature of humanity as individuals struggling by the power of their own creative minds to live and thrive in this world. Contrary to its critics’ claims, the story is about the brotherhood of humankind, which should live in a state of peaceful coexistence and mutual cooperation, not the constant state of war that Ayn Rand argues is the essential nature of a state-run society, which sacrifices the interests of all to all and institutionalizes the ethic of “cannibals.” The film disappointed critics, but it deserves a mention for drawing our attention to this most cherished of American novels.

 

3. Serenity

I haven’t seen this film myself, but it was suggested in comments on multiple pages as a libertarian movie (and after reading about it, I’m likely to check it out whenever I can spare the time). In the DVD commentary, writer and director Joss Whedon discusses the libertarian nature of the film:

‘While the film depicts the Alliance as an all-powerful, authoritarian-style regime, Whedon is careful to point out that it is not so simple as that. “The Alliance isn’t some evil empire,” he explains, but rather a largely benevolent bureaucratic force. The Alliance’s main problem is that it seeks to govern everyone, regardless of whether they desire to belong to the central government or not. What the crew of Serenity, and specifically Mal and his lifestyle, represent is the idea that people should have the right to make their own decisions, even if those decisions are bad.’

 

4. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

Banned in socialist Germany, Italy, and Russia, this film also hit quite a nerve at home, where U.S. Senators actually complained that it portrayed the Senate as corrupt! Lol:

‘Alben W. Barkley, a Democrat & the Senate Majority Leader, called the film “silly and stupid,” and said it “makes the Senate look like a bunch of crooks.”He also remarked that the film was “a grotesque distortion” of the Senate, “as grotesque as anything ever seen! Imagine the Vice President of the United States winking at a pretty girl in the gallery in order to encourage a filibuster!” Barkley thought the film “…showed the Senate as the biggest aggregation of nincompoops on record!”‘

Yup. That sounds about right.

 

5. Thank You for Smoking

According to Rotten Tomatoes: “Delightfully unscrupulous characters and searing cynicism prick all sides of the anti-smoking issue with hilarity and intelligence.” And that’s just what so many libertarians enjoyed about this movie. It took shots at all sides of the issue, making the lobbyists look as bad as they are (at one point, they sit around arguing over whose client industry kills more people, almost as a point of pride) while remarking on the hypocrisy and futility of nanny statism.

 

6. The Matrix

Blue pill or red pill? A colleague of mine left this comment on my Facebook wall: ‘Wes, a humble suggestion to your top libertarian films: The Matrix. I’m not a big fan of Keanu Reeves but is there a better allegory for the struggle against the State? Isn’t the goal of libertarianism/voluntaryism to get people to “take the red pill”? Just a thought.’ Anyone who’s seen the film can hardly wonder why it would appeal so strongly to libertarians everywhere.

 

7. 300 (film)

Someone also suggested this film, and it’s one I have mixed feelings about. 300 unabashedly glorifies war and warrior culture, and even as I nurtured the first inkling of a truly libertarian mindset during my college years, I was a little suspicious about the political subtext of a movie whose narrative centers on a fight between East and West, especially when the release date coincided so perfectly with Washington’s troop surge in Iraq. That said, I did love the film, which aside from being well-written and visually arresting, does have a libertarian message: the heroes are fighting an imperialistic narcissist bent on world domination and determined to see everyone bow to his image. When offered wealth, power, and privilege in the villain’s growing empire for the price of bowing at his feet, the hero chooses individualism, self-determination, and liberty over wealth and security. Whatever its possible political motives (and I should emphasize that these do remain unclear), the film can and does serve as a good parable for the libertarian heart.

 

8. South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut

The creators of South Park, Matt Stone and Trey Parker are well-known for their libertarian leanings (with Trey Parker a registered member of the Libertarian Party), and there has even been some talk of a prototypical “South Park Republican,” who is “conservative” on economic issues, but socially “liberal” enough to drop the F-bomb in casual conversation and thoughtfully skeptical of organized religion and other typical hallmarks of conservatism as we know it in America today. The South Park movie certainly includes libertarian ideas, most especially, in its humorous attacks on censorship in America media and art.

 

9. Shenandoah

Another suggestion I read. David Boaz writes of this film:

‘Shenandoah, a 1965 film starring Jimmy Stewart, is often regarded as the best libertarian film Hollywood ever made. Stewart is a Virginia farmer who wants to stay out of the Civil War. Not our fight, he tells his sons. He refuses to let the state take his sons, or his horses, for war. Inevitably, though, his family is drawn into the war raging around them, and the movie becomes very sad. I cried when I was 11 years old, and I teared up again when I saw it recently. This is a powerful movie about independence, self-reliance, individualism, and the horrors of war.’

I haven’t seen it, but with such a glowing review from the Cato Institute’s David Boaz, I’m going to have to put this on my list.

 

10. Nineteen Eighty-Four

Based off of George Orwell’s dystopian novel of the same name, this libertarian movie predicts all of the horrors of modern fascism: a surveillance state, a systematic assault on our language as a means of narrowing our range of thought, a concerted propaganda campaign, a psychological climate of fear and insecurity, an unchecked police state, a single party government, and perpetual global warfare, with the sides always changing and no one ever seeming to notice or remember.

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