Election
Rated R
Now showing
He's made only two films, but writer-director Alexander Payne
is quickly establishing himself as a master satirist. His
debut, the woefully underseen Citizen Ruth, turned
the abortion war into a blistering, witty parable about an
issue populated on both sides by self-absorbed fanatics more
concerned with their causes than with humanity. His sophomore
feature, Election, is even better. Based on Tom Perrotta's
novel of the same name, the movie is a savage black comedy
and an (a)morality tale that takes a high-school student-body-president
election and turns it into a full-blown microcosm of American
hypocrisy.
Jim McAllister (Matthew Broderick) is a beloved, nerdy
history teacher and student-government adviser at George
Washington Carver High (where all the students are white).
He loves giving kids lessons on ethics and morals and has
won "Teacher of the Year" three times. He's married and
is "working" on having his first child. The scourge of his
existence is militant go-getter Tracy Flick (Reese Witherspoon),
who's running unopposed in the race for student president.
Something about Tracy irks McAllister, and he decides that
she shouldn't be allowed to run unrivaled. He's got to uphold
the democratic process, you know. He recruits sweet, naive
dope Paul Metzler (Chris Klein), a popular ex-football star
who broke his leg in a skiing accident, to run against her.
But things get strange when Paul's lesbian sister, Tammy
(Jessica Campbell), joins the race after her girlfriend
dumps her for Paul.
On the surface, Election satirizes the American
electoral process, in which terms like "democracy," "morals"
and "ethics" are all smoke screens for selfish personal
agendas. However, Payne's acerbic feature is about more
than politics. It captures the mundane existence of both
high-school life and suburban America in disarming detail.
The opening image extends as a metaphor for the rest of
movie: A droning football-field sprinkler, stuck in one
spot, waters the same piece of land inefficiently, while
McAllister jogs in circles around the track. Payne's color
scheme blends cold dark blues and grays, lending the film
a washed-out, lifeless tone. Omaha (also the setting for
Citizen Ruth) looks like T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland--murky
skies hang above miles and miles of dirt landscapes, which
are populated occasionally with cookie-cutter homes. It's
the type of place where people sit in front of power stations
to daydream or collect their thoughts and soccer teams practice
on grassless fields. Even sex is boring in Payne's vision,
with numerous unglamorous scenes equating the act as either
an escape from boredom or a tool for conception. As for
the high school, it looks like an auto factory and is run
like a cattle farm. In perhaps the funniest scene, all three
candidates deliver vastly different speeches to an indifferent,
mocking assembly crowd. The gym, like the hallways and classrooms,
is bathed in repellent green fluorescent light. Except for
the teachers and the candidates themselves, no one wants
to listen. Tammy gets the loudest ovation when she tells
the crowd that, if elected, she'll dismantle the school
government and abolish these types of gatherings. Assembly
and democracy, like everything at George Washington Carver,
are mandatory.
Payne's self-reflexive casting, which sends the guy who
played Ferris Bueller back to high school 13 years later,
is a masterstroke. It's wonderful to see Broderick acting
behind an intelligent script and smart director again. Payne
brings Ferris full circle. Disheveled, humiliated to the
point of cracking up and sporting a grotesque, swollen eye
from a bee sting, Broderick actually becomes Ferris' bumbling
nemesis, principal Ed Rooney. And with her preppy sweaters,
gold heart necklace, glued-on haircut and perky smile, Flick
becomes McAllister's Ferris, giving him the same type of
misery, in much more subtle ways. It's a self-conscious
touch on Payne's part (call it Ferris Bueller's Meltdown),
and it adds a light playfulness to the otherwise malevolent,
ruthless proceedings.
Payne's greatest strength is his ability to work in gray
areas. All of these characters are flawed and few are likable,
but all feel genuine. The director's chaotic style gives
Election energy and life to spare. The story is told
in fractured flashback by four narrators. Payne complements
their stories with flourishes like Super 8 inserts, stock
footage, comic freeze frames, a subversive soundtrack and
shocking images that may leave you reaching to pick up your
jaw. The film threatens to spiral out of control at any
moment, but the danger feels exhilarating rather than frustrating.
Toward the last 30 minutes things begin to unravel, and
Election starts leaving a sour, nauseating feeling
in the pit of your stomach. It's the equivalent of looking
in the mirror after several days of binge drinking and finally
seeing that what you've been escaping is yourself. Here,
though, Payne holds the mirror up to all of us, showing
the underbelly of hypocrisy, lust and greed that fuels the
American Dream. No one learns anything by the conclusion.
There's no moral in this morality tale, and ultimately there
are no winners, only hopeless losers.
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Willamette Week | originally
published May 12, 1999 |
