Not only did 1999 produce a higher proportion of game changing movies but did so with a blurring of the divide between mainstream and arthouse. Fight Club was made as a tough tale with a lavish budget and became a cult film. The Blair Witch Project was conceived as a zero budget straight to video title but ended up a worldwide hit that changed its genre. And a cheeky political satire by an independent director got the backing of youth media giant MTV. That's Election.Agressively overachieving student Tracey Flick looks like she will sail into the presidency of the student body unopposed. Jim McAlister, one of her teachers, channels everything he resents about his own life into his resentment of Tracey's ambitions and calls for a wider election field triggering something more like a real political campaign, complete with a "gate" scandal. Tracey's severe ambition is counterweighted by sport star Paul's goofy populism and, at least for the speeches, Tammy's hilariously angry outsider tirading. It's on.
Alexander Payne's tight satire has been poignantly proposed as a kind of inverted Ferris Bueller's Day Off, right down to the casting of Matthew Broderick in an authority figure role. If you, as I did, considered Ferris less a cute winner than a manipulative sociopath then here is the proof done with a simple perspective shift. Reese Witherspoon's Tracey Flick is not just drive and punch but the vulnerability those qualities mask. However, what the student body in general sees is about the same as what we get to see of our politicians at election time. The America that flocked to this was yet to find out about the Bush years, 911, the Patriot Act and the school massacres that seemed to become seasonal events. The thing is that none of that later perspective changes a note of this film. Like Network or Bob Roberts it keeps fresh best without refrigeration.
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