# Election (1999)

### reviewed by
Mr. Bryan Frankenseuss Theiss

    ELECTION

Upon the release of virtually every high school related movie of the past few years (Can't Hardly Wait, She's All That, Varsity Blues, Jawbreaker, etc.) one sound could be heard: me, whining about high school movies that seem to be made by people who were home schooled. Sometimes it's amusing to see how filmmakers view today's teenagers - the writers of Never Been Kissed, for example, seem to think that high school kids idolize Tiger Woods - but it gets old fast, and you start yearning for a movie that captures the daily rituals and heightened emotional traumas of high school in a semi-accurate fashion. Election does that and more. It's really not a teen movie, as it takes on the point of view of Mr. McAllister (Mathew Broderick, playing his first neurotic teacher role to perfection) and follows him into his home life, outside of the world of lockers and notebooks. But it is perhaps one of the most accurate film depictions ever of a suburban public high school. Let's compare Election to She's All That, the Freddie Prinze, Jr. movie about giving a makeover to a good looking unpopular girl to make her into a good looking popular girl. In She's All That, the class president is the most popular guy in school. The office is one of great power - in one scene, he asks two bullies to eat pizza covered in their own pubic hairs, and they have no choice but to do it. Election is different, because it takes into account things like reality and common sense. In this school, few really care about class elections. Initially, the sweater wearing, hyper-ambitious Tracy Flick (Reese Witherspoon) runs unopposed. Because really, who cares about student government besides Tracy Flick, who likes to collect good lines to put on her resume? Another late entering candidate points out in her speech the obvious fact that student government is really a pointless exercise with no power of any kind. Even Mr. M, who at least cares enough about the election to manipulate its outcome, snaps at one point, "We're not electing the fucking Pope." This is a movie that remembers that student government is not a popularity contest. Because how many popular kids want to be in student government? When Mr. M tries to recruit the popular, injured football player Paul Metzler to run against Tracy, he points out that it's more Tracy Flick's kind of thing. There are no bully cliches, intense prom queen races or Clueless rip offs. At long last, a high school movie that treats the audience like people who may have once experienced the real thing. Who would have thought that Miramax would bring us She's All That, while MTV brought us Election? The director is Alexander Payne, who also helmed Citizen Ruth, the funniest movie ever made about abortion. In that film, Laura Dern plays a glue sniffing pregnant woman caught in a tug of war between anti-abortion and pro-choice activists. The film ruthlessly satirizes both sides, not letting anyone off easy - kind of like Dead Man Walking with laffs. Election has a similar sensibility, setting you up to side with Mr. M only to later realize that he's much, much more flawed than his arch-nemesis. There's a lot of grey area, very little black and white, and the movie asks you to make up your own mind about the characters and what they're doing. It hardly even nudges you. Payne doesn't pretend that the election or its outcome are important. To Mr. M, Tracy losing the election would be a symbolic victory over people who trample over others to get to the top. But it is clear that his quest is more fueled by sexual fear - his old best friend lost his job and marriage after becoming sexually obsessed (and involved) with Tracy. Tracy mentions to Mr. M that if she wins they'll be spending a lot of time together, and he starts to see some of his buddy's desire in himself. It is in this aspect, and in a subplot about an extramarital affair, that the film is most daring. The camera seems to scrutinize Mr. M, magnifying his flaws, both humanizing and humiliating him. It never comes across as forced shock value, but it's still uncomfortable subject matter. Here we have one of the school's best loved teachers, in many ways an admirable man, watching a porn video about cheerleaders, and later picturing Tracy's face on the back of his wife's head as he has doggystyle sex. I like it when a movie can make me cringe intentionally, like when Mr. M mistakes a woman's friendship for sexual advances and playfully suggests getting a room as they drive past a hotel. And I can think of few moments in movies that are as embarrassingly human as the one where he squats down in a hotel bathroom, still wearing a shirt and tie, cleaning his crotch before a planned sexual liaison. Another thing that makes it work is that while Tracy is ostensibly the villain, and her characterization is a humorous semi-exaggeration of annoying personality traits that we all recognize, she is never demonized. In fact, the worst thing Tracy ever does is tear down her opponent's campaign posters in a fit of rage, and then lie about it. When it comes down to it, poster desecration is fairly small potatoes in the annals of movie villainy. In any other movie, Tracy would be an outwardly wholesome person with a secret dark side, like Serial Mom, or Nicole Kidman in To Die For, or Patricia Arquette in the more forgettable Goodbye Lover. But outside of poster-tearing, Tracy has no dark side. She's not a femme fatale or a seductress, and in fact is portrayed as a victim during her relationship with Mr. M's colleague. Later, you can't help but feel for her when she lays on her bed crying, having lost the election, and her mom tries to console her by gently intoning, "Maybe if you had tried some of my suggestions." Paul is a similarly moldbreaking character. In my experience, high school athletes often were cruel and misogynistic brutes, more extreme even than how they are portrayed in movies, but not all of them were. Paul (who bears a striking resemblance to Keanu Reeves) is hilariously dim-witted, but he's the most genuinely nice person in the movie. He reminds me of people from my high school, and doesn't remind me of characters from other movies. His hilariously bad campaign speech made my eyes water. I felt like I should stifle my laughter, as if I was sitting in those bleachers and he might see me making fun of him. Election is the type of movie where you keep seeing little details that make you think, "That happens all the time in real life - how come I've never seen it in a movie?" I like the corny painted-on-butcher-paper campaign posters ("Paul Metzler - You betzler!"), and Tracy's obsession with taping them up neatly. I like that while Tracy makes her speech, one student in the bleachers yells out an unrelated obscenity, causing everyone to laugh, which in turn causes the principal to commandeer the microphone and scold the school for not "acting like adults." I like that the lesbian characters look like regular people - they're not exaggeratedly sexy or butch. In fact, all of the casting is amazingly true to life, from Mr. M's not-particularly-attractive mistress to the two kids who, for some reason, pride themselves on accurate ballot counting. The cars are realistic, the houses are realistic, the hair is realistic. You feel like you're spying on one of your teachers from high school more than you feel like you're watching a movie. I read somewhere that Payne hadn't seen very many teen movies before, and I believe it. He seems unaware of the low standards that are considered acceptable in the genre. In the epilogue, there is a brief scene where Tracy finds out that college life isn't quite what her mom and her teachers and the brochures made it out to be. While she tries to sleep, four perfectly cast, frizzy haired dorm neighbors sit on the floor outside of her door, talking. Tracy probably realizes that these guys were able to get into college without super-charged resumes, and it pisses her off. Moments of dead-on accuracy like this are rare in movies about young people (especially those brought to us by MTV, which include Dead Man On Campus and Varsity Blues), but Election is absolutely loaded with them. There are a few similarities with Rushmore, one of my other favorite movies I've seen this year, but in a way they're opposites. Max Fischer and Tracy Flick are almost the same character type, dominating virtually every school activity, masterfully manipulating every school resource available to them - they even both take on unhealthy relationships with teachers. But Max is portrayed as the hero, while Tracy acts as a quasi-villain, and Election has an overwhelmingly pessimistic view while Rushmore ends optimistically. Election makes a good companion piece to both Rushmore and Citizen Ruth, and acts as a powerful antidote to the many brainless teen movies where the last act takes place at a big dance, game or party. This is the high school movie I've been waiting for, the one with no makeovers or in-school radio stations, that doesn't feel like the son of the son of the son of whichever John Hughes movie. This is the one that could have happened in my school, the one that hacks off a piece of real life and puts it in a magnifying jar so we can all watch it wiggle around.

    --Bryan Frankenseuss Theiss

"I write rhymes so fresh I try to bite my own verses." --Tash

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