In Which it’s Time to Pick Flick

An ongoing debate through these articles and the responses to them has been, “how much do movies about awful people endorse their awful actions?” This question becomes even more important as we go over a slew of films that yearn for some form of authenticity for their characters and story. We look at entries such as Reality Bites with contempt because they celebrate actions that we now find so aggravating. The strive for authenticity frequently just replicating itself into spurious romantic and financial decisions all in the name of truth. American Beauty indulges the criminality of its lead character, all for the sake of honest feeling and living an authentic life. When a film indulges in these kinds of pretenses, that the angst of the time can be solved with some bad behavior and awkward trysts, it fails to scale fully into our modern era. However when a movie about awful people realizes that their awfulness is why they feel terrible it usually has a bit more insight. Being John Malkovich understood this, as it’s characters navigate their existential dilemmas in a manner that the audience is clued into the fact that those characters are the problem. 

Election, the sophomore feature from director Alexander Payne, realizes this conundrum and addresses it directly. These sad individuals only inflict further damage upon themselves by being terrible people. That the depressing life of lower middle class living in Omaha won’t suddenly be shaken into greatness with a marital affair and some meddling in the high school election. Election works so well because it’s poison PoV doesn’t let people off the hook, but act as they truly are, removing the veneer of “authenticity” to get at an uglier layer underneath. It may seem like Payne is punching down on his characters, but the bracing tone and fairly unrelenting commitment to unlikeability make Election funnier and more biting than many of its contemporaries.

 

So when disgruntled high school teacher Jim MaCalister’s (Matthew Broderick) plans to have an affair, and meddle in the class presidential race to prevent over-achiever Tracy Flick (Reese Witherspoon) from taking the top stop, his karmic retribution feels justifiably petty and cruel. For his efforts to cheat on his wife he’s rewarded with a bee sting and divorce papers, his election interference comes at the price of his job and community standing. After a multitude of film’s where the average white man’s suburban rebellion is rewarded either philosophically or morally it’s refreshing that Payne is able to turn that structure on its head. Jim is not enlightened after his escapades, nor is he sent to some tragic conclusion, instead his life continues to be a mundane bummer somewhere else.

This bitter tone might seem to make the whole cast of eccentrics in Election to be only worthy of pity or contempt, and while the timbre may always be aggressive, there’s a larger palette at work in the film. Tracy is equally a person of aggravation and understanding. Her ambition driven in a large part by a sense of class disparity and resentment, but she is still willing to be underhanded and a saboteur. She’s unwilling to admit mistakes or come clean to her campaign trickery (in this case pulling down opponent’s posters), but it feels hard to fully begrudge this sentiment. She actually wants to do something well, even if it puts her peers off.

Tracy’s main competitor, Paul Metzler (Chris Klein), is a perfect example of an archetype shaded in till depth is brought forward. Yes he’s the stereotypical dumb jock, but after Jim put him up to run against Tracy we see there’s more than meets the eye. One aspect is that he’s a genuinely nice person. Considerate of other people’s feelings at all times, even to his dense detriment. He has modest goals and modestly achieves them, and even he wouldn’t have been a terrific class president his heart is always positioned positively. Paul’s sister Tammy (Jessica Campbell) is treated similarly but with inverse traits. She’s a righteous bomb thrower who’s coming to terms with her sexuality. She may be mussy and anti-authoritarian, after all her big rallying cry during her presidential speech is “who cares,” but we can see why, strangled by conservative parents and people unwilling to accept her queer identity.

This stew of people are also elevated by Payne’s ability to keep the stakes of Election relentlessly low. In American Beauty Sam Mendes and Alan Ball tried to connect the mundane with profound, to somewhat silly effect. Here Payne keeps right in the lane of mundane and digs more emotional resonance out of it. The events of Election never rise above moderate, but the struggles against them feel more impactful because of that fact. These are people just schlumping their way through life, trying to find a way forward to a version of success some meet those goals and some do not.

These ideas are buoyed by some classy craft work from the filmmakers. Payne keeps things rigorous, but not flashy, carefully framing scenes to highlight a joke or punctuate an idea without ever pushing the image into full formalism. Editor Kevin Tent delights with a myriad of freeze frames, cut outs, and slow dissolves, spiking the image with a sudden cut to highlight the humor. And the shuffling score by Rolfe Kent keeps everything off-balanced yet propulsive.

All of this makes Election feel like some sort of refutation to the classic angst ridden drama of middle class doldrums, taking those expected beats and grinding them down to black hearted comedy. One can question how sharp Payne’s shiv needed to be in this situation, but it feels great to have it cut through the pretenses of so many other films from the time.

Odds and Ends

• For a brief moment it felt like MTV Films could have a been a production studio that turned out bracing work like Election. But alas they have just kind of turned into the Bad Grandpa studio.
• I didn’t really touch on the politics of the movie, but I do like the conclusion that the political process matters as much as you want it to. This can be either cynical or honest, but it takes whatever shape you bring to the table.
• The final scene where Jim notices Tracy with a Congressmen is one that is both obvious and ambiguous in its implications. Is it suggesting that Tracy slept her way there (as she did with a previous teacher) or got there on her own accord? And does it matter one way or the other.
• I don’t think Payne has ever done better work for the rest of his career.
• Tom Perrotta is one of those writers that had been sneakily all over the map in film and TV, providing interesting and exciting work to the medium without really becoming a big name.

As always, twitter, letterboxd, and I Chews You (the podcast about cooking and eating Pokemon).

Next Week: Can you believe it has been 20 years since Three Kings.