The film that boosted Reese Witherspoon and made Alexander Payne a name to follow
Making a satire or commentary on politics can lead to problems if you do it from a distance. We are seeing the case of Alex Garland with ‘Civil War’, where his study of the consequences of both polarity and equidistance has been confused with an absence of comment, or centrism that we could call brother-in-law.
Of course there are a series of systemic problems, even in a moderately functional democratic process, that can be pointed out apart from ideology, although this can later appear in another series of decisions. And go out something really essential that is even funas was the case with ‘Election’.
The wonderful democratic process
Alexander Payne’s parody of the electoral system, which also dabbles in the realm of high school comedy and middle-age drama, celebrates 25 years since its theatrical release and continues to be a success. one of the best works of his filmography. Starring Matthew Broderick and an emerging Reese Whiterspoon, the film can be streamed on SkyShowtime.
Whiterspoon plays ambitious young Tracy Flick, who is running for office as a student representative and has a promising future in politics. Everyone seems to be on her side, except Professor McCallister, who resents Tracy after causing the downfall of her classmate (who tried to maintain relations with her despite being her junior), so attempts to manipulate the process by favoring an unlikely candidate.
Payne, who initially took on the project as a commission, is quite astute in his endeavor to point to this inconsequential process as a good analogue of the entire democratic system. Taking risks by following four perspectives, he tries to not show any of them in the most favorable lightshowing their insecurities and even their pathos as recognizable examples of American (global?) politics and trying to draw humor not through jokes or gags, but from the bittersweet.
‘Election’: politics and middle-aged dissatisfaction
It is something that has become a hallmark of his cinema, with great and essential films such as the recent ‘Those who stay’. Here you can already see this way of portraying an anguished adult without knowing it, with his life as a suburban forty-something that makes him a purely Payne protagonist. She knows how to put the knife in his life, but also be considerate of him as a character, something that also applies to the affable fool who appears as his opponent or anti-establishment sister.
They are very classic ways, very seventies cinema. But his most modern outburst, which remains strong todayis the character of Tracy Flick, studied today as a prediction of figures like Hillary Clinton or as an example of female empowerment.
The director saves a rather bitter final note for her, although not obvious, presenting well her journey as a wolf in sheep’s clothing who ends up revealing her true colors (that is, the party of the senator with whom she is going to work). Payne knows how to distance himself from portraying the entire American democratic process, but he takes the license to point the finger in the most cunning way.
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