Rich Man’s Burn After Reading: when trying to make a movie with such low stakes, Alexander Payne kept me involved where the Coen brothers fell short
★★★★☆
Every now and then, a movie just sits at the bottom of your radar for way too long. I’ve known about Alexander Payne’s Election for many years now. I’ve had it permanently in like the number 8 or 9 slot of my Netflix queue. I actually purchased this movie in an attempt to force myself to watch it sooner. I don’t have a good excuse for why I slept on this movie for so long. It has a strong pedigree: a cast including Matthew Broderick and the criminally underrated, in my opinion, Reese Witherspoon and a script and direction coming from Hollywood darling Payne. It is a dark comedy, one of my favorite genres of movies. It even came highly recommended by my go-to source for film recommendations. And yet somehow, I’ve managed to miss this movie until David assigned it to me last week. Thank you, David.
Election is about the student body president at a small high school in Omaha, Nebraska. Witherspoon plays Tracy Flick, an obnoxious go-getter poised to be elected, unopposed, to the position. Broderick plays Jim McAllister, the school’s history teacher and the faculty advisor for the student body government. When we first meet him, Jim proclaims that he wants to spend his life preparing students for the difficult moral and ethical questions they will face as adults. We quickly learn, that he has a … complicated relationship with Flick. I won’t get into details here, because it is a surprising reveal (though it happens very soon into the movie). He convinces the school’s ex-QB, Paul Metzler (played by Chris Klein), to run against Flick in the election. This sets off a chain of events that also adds Paul’s step-sister Tammy to the pool of candidates. Events continue to spiral out of McAllister’s control as he tries to keep control of the election and a lid on the ambitious Tracy Flick.
The characters are really what make me enjoy this movie as much as I did. Flick, McAllister, and the Metzlers are all totally fascinating characters. At first, I was scared, that this was getting very Coen-y: and that while I found all these people amusing, I feared I wouldn’t want to spend the whole runtime with them and that these initial impressions were all that these characters had to offer. Instead, I got growth and finished story arcs for multiple characters. All delicately balanced by Payne’s direction and the tight script. This movie actually bounces between 4 narrators and manages to keep a cohesive feel and give each section a distinct personality based on who was narrating it. Narration can so easily weigh a movie down– looking at you, Blade Runner–that managing to pull it off with 4 different voices shows why Payne has been a regular at the Oscars for years.
I’m being pretty vague about this movie, because I think there is a lot here to be discovered by you, dear readers (excelsior!). This movie is so dense. Every frame is packed with little jokes. I am excited to rewatch this and look for moments that I might have missed. It’s a sign of good comedy when every opportunity to make a joke is taken. One small example: Tracy chooses the slogan “PICK FLICK” and writes that on hundreds of cupcakes on the day of the actual election. “PICK FLICK” when written in icing on a cupcake looks an awful lot like something else. (Hint: It looks like “PICK FUCK”). This is a well crafted, funny movie that I’m sad I waited this long to see.
Election is available for you to move straight to the top of your Netflix queue!
Next week, our podcast episode 2 drops. David and I take on some directors that we don’t see eye to eye on, The Coen Brothers and Kevin Smith. We talk Miller’s Crossing and Clerks and try to explain to each other what makes these directors great.
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