Hollywood takes a lot of flak for its liberal leanings. I
myself have wondered why Hollywood got so few movies out of
75 years of communist totalitarianism, especially compared with the
far greater number of movies about 12 years of National Socialism
(Nazism).

Still, over the years Hollywood studios and some independent and
foreign producers have made plenty of movies with libertarian
themes. They’re not movies with John Galt speeches, and most
of them aren’t really ideological at all. But the messages or
the values are there.

America is basically a
libertarian country, after all, so Americans are going to put
libertarian themes into the art they create. Plenty of movies
depict individualism, enterprise, anti-totalitarianism, freedom,
and social tolerance.

The challenge is picking a Top 10 out of all the
choices. At least I didn’t have trouble finding 10 worthy
candidates, unlike the Oscars the past few years.

They’re not movies with
John Galt speeches, and most of them aren’t really ideological at
all. But the messages or the values are there.

So here are my choices, in alphabetical
order…

1776 (1972)

What could be more libertarian than a movie about the writing of
the most eloquent argument for liberty in history, the document
that declared “all men are created equal, that they are
endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that
among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”?
A rousing Broadway musical effectively transferred to the screen,
showing the real men who debated, argued, nitpicked, and stormed
out during the spring and summer of 1776.

John Adams: A second flood, a simple famine,
plagues of locusts everywhere, or a cataclysmic earthquake,
I’d accept with some despair. But no, You sent us Congress!
Good God, Sir, was that fair?

Amazing Grace (2007)

John Newton was a slave trader who was converted to
Christianity. He renounced his previous life and became an
evangelical minister in the Church of England, an abolitionist, and
the author of a beautiful hymn. “Was blind but now I
see,” indeed. Among the people who heard his preaching was a
young member of parliament, William Wilberforce, who was inspired
to lead a long campaign for the abolition of slavery—from his
maiden speech in 1789 to the final passage of the Abolition Act a
month after his death in 1833. This movie reminds us that humanity
has made great progress toward freedom, that each battle for
freedom can be long and seemingly futile, but that the goal is
worth time and money and effort.

Charles James Fox: When people speak of great
men, they think of men like Napoleon—men of violence. Rarely
do they think of peaceful men. But contrast the reception they will
receive when they return home from their battles. Napoleon will
arrive in pomp and in power, a man who’s achieved the very
summit of earthly ambition. And yet his dreams will be haunted by
the oppressions of war. William Wilberforce, however, will return
to his family, lay his head on his pillow and remember: the slave
trade is no more.

Amistad (1997)

This movie tells a fascinating story about a ship full
of Africans who turned up in New England in 1839. The question:
Under American law, are they slaves? A long legal battle ensues,
going up to the Supreme Court. People often quote the Shakespeare
line, “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the
lawyers”—not realizing that that line was said by a
killer who understood that the law stands in the way of would-be
tyrants. Amistad gives us a picture of a society governed
by law; even the vile institution of slavery could run up against
the rule of law. And when the former president, John Quincy Adams,
makes his argument before the Supreme Court, it should inspire us
all to appreciate the law that protects our freedom.

John Quincy Adams: If the South is right, what are we to do with
that embarrassing, annoying document, The Declaration of
Independence? What of its conceits? ‘All men created
equal,’ ‘inalienable rights,’ ‘life,
liberty,’ and so on and so forth?

Dallas Buyers Club (2013)

This movie has a strong libertarian message about self-help,
entrepreneurship, overbearing and even lethal regulation, and
social tolerance. A homophobic working-class Texan learns in 1985
that he has AIDS and is given only 30 days to live. Unwilling to
accept that prognosis, he goes looking for drugs, finds them in
Mexico, and starts selling them in Texas, mostly to gay men. The
FDA is not happy that people with terminal illnesses are making
their own decisions. You’ll be surprised to see how many
armed FDA agents it takes to raid a storefront clinic operated by
two dying men.

Dr. Eve Saks: None of those drugs have been
approved by the FDA.

Ron Woodroof: Screw the FDA. I’m going to
be DOA.

East-West (1999)

Films about the devastation of communism are all too rare. This
French film (Est–Ouest) about Soviet emigres who
returned to Russia after World War II is a lush and moving
depiction of, as the New York Times put it, “the grim reality
of life and death in a police state”: poverty, executions,
and constant fear. The movie shows the desperation of one returning
family, and their hope that a family friend played by Catherine
Deneuve can help them get out again.

The Man in the White Suit (1951)

A shy scientist played by Alec Guinness invents a cloth that
will never wear out and won’t get dirty. What an amazing
contribution to human wellbeing! A British textile mill sets out to
produce it. But then the other mill owners, and the unions, realize
that its production would mean that people won’t need to buy
many clothes. When the unions confront the owners, one assures them
there’s no conflict: “Capital and labor are hand in
hand in this.” They join forces to protect their positions
and block progress. A metaphor for so much of political activity
aimed at stopping innovation, creative destruction, and improved
living conditions.

Daphne: Don’t you realize what this
means? Millions of people all over the world are living lives of
drudgery, fighting an endless losing battle against shabbiness and
dirt. You’ve won that battle for them. You’ve set them
free. The whole world’s going to bless you.

My Beautiful Laundrette (1985)

This is something of a ringer on a libertarian list. The
novelist/screenwriter Hanif Kureishi thought he was making a savage
indictment of Thatcherite capitalism. But to me, the good
characters in the movie—white and Pakistani, gay and
straight—are the ones who work for a living, and the bad
characters are clearly the layabout socialist immigrant
intellectual, who doesn’t like his son opening a small
business, and the British thugs who try to intimidate the young
Pakistani businessman. My favorite line: The enterprising brother
of the whining intellectual takes a young working-class Briton with
him to evict some deadbeat tenants. The young Brit suggests that
it’s surprising the Pakistani businessman would be evicting
people of color. And the businessman says, “I’m a
professional businessman, not a professional Pakistani. There is no
question of race in the new enterprise culture.” I think
Kureishi thinks that’s a bad attitude. The joke’s on
him.

Pacific Heights (1990)

This one is a thriller that is almost a documentary on the
horrors of landlord-tenant law. A young couple buys a big house in
San Francisco and rents an apartment to a young man. He never pays
them, and they can’t get him out, and then things get really
scary. The lawyer lectures the couple—and the
audience—on how “of course you’re right, but
you’ll never win.” I just knew this happened to
someone—maybe the screenwriter or someone he knew. Sure
enough, when Cato published William Tucker’s book Rent
Control, Zoning, and Affordable Housing, and I asked
Pacific Heights director John Schlesinger for a jacket
blurb, he readily agreed to say “If you thought Pacific
Heights was fiction, you need to read this book”; and he
told me that indeed the screenwriter had gone through a tenant
nightmare.

The Palermo Connection (1990)

Here is an odd Italian-made movie (but in English) cowritten by
Gore Vidal. New York city councilman Jim Belushi runs for mayor on
a platform to legalize drugs and take the profits out of the drug
trade. The Mafia isn’t happy. His life is threatened. So he
decides to go on a honeymoon, in the middle of his
campaign—to Sicily—where he encounters more men
prepared to stop him by any means necessary. How did the New York
Times not review this movie?

Shenandoah (1965)

Some have called it the best libertarian film Hollywood ever
made. James 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, with
tragic results. I cried when I was 11 years old, and I teared up
again when I heard the Stewart character sing the antiwar ballad
“I’ve Heard It All Before” in a musical version.
This is a powerful movie about independence, self-reliance,
individualism, and the horrors of war.

Boy: What’s confiscate mean, Pa?

Charlie Anderson: Steal.

No two libertarians are going to have the same
list.

Miss Liberty’s Film and Documentary
World offers a somewhat different Top 25 here. Libertarians might also find helpful this
warning from the Guardian: “The Giver, Divergent and the
Hunger Games trilogy are, whether intentionally or not, substantial
attacks on many of the foundational projects and aims of the left:
big government, the welfare state, progress, social planning and
equality.”

Leaving aside the tenuous claim that big government, the welfare
state, and social planning lead to progress and equality—see,
for instance, East-West—it sounds like those just might
belong on a libertarian list.