“Ethics are clean-cut... but morals are slippery and emotional, and our own prejudices, grudges, and personal beliefs often bump heads with what ethics are all about.”
Election (1999), written and directed by Alexander Payne and co-written by Jim Taylor, stars Matthew Broderick as Jim McAllister alongside Reese Witherspoon as Tracy Flick, Chris Klein as Paul Metzler, and Jessica Campbell as Tammy Metzler. A high school teacher meets his match in an over-arching student politician.
It’s basically about this insanely annoying, overachieving high school girl who runs for student council president, and her social studies teacher hates her so much that he goes out of his way to ruin her chances. He does this by convincing a well-liked, totally clueless jock... and eventually the jock’s sister... to jump into the race, which completely spirals out of control and wrecks his own life in the process.
I chose this film to be the next part of my 52-Week Movie Challenge under the prompt for Week 12: A Comedy About a Teacher.
There are a few comedies out there centered around teachers, but I think a lot of people put Election as top dog. It’s the gold standard, the benchmark for what you inspire a film like this to be. I’d never seen it, so I went ahead and checked it out... and it’s easy enough to see why people consider this the best of the best in terms of teacher comedies.
It’s not your typical slapstick, silly comedy; rather, it’s deeply satirical. We’re talking pitch-black comedy. There are, for sure, people who are going to watch the movie and miss the point entirely.
On the surface, it just seems kind of random. You have a list of characters, all of whom seem to be important. None of them are classic main characters or heroes of the story. They’re all just... people... going about life, and they are all kind of tragic, miserable, unsatisfied people in their own right. All, of course, other than Chris Klein’s character, who is just happy-go-lucky. Nothing gets him down. He’s kinda like Patrick in SpongeBob. A little bit dimwitted, but you like him anyway because he’s so nice. Everyone else, though? Miserable, out for themselves... but at the same time, they all think they’re doing the right thing.
There’s a big theme in this movie about ethics versus morality, and the difference between them. Right from the first scene of the movie, you are introduced to this teacher, played by Broderick, who is teaching his class that very difference. This single scene is incredibly important to the rest of the movie. Ethics are clear-cut. They come from textbooks and dictionaries. You can recite them, and even believe in them, but morals are something that come from inside. It’s not so clean-cut. Morality is slippery and emotional, and our own prejudices, grudges, and personal beliefs often bump heads with what ethics are all about. We do terribly and obviously horrible things to other people, and then we retroactively try to redefine or translate ethics to fit our morals instead of the other way around... which is a perfect representation of actual elections and the government.
This film uses something small and trivial like a high school election to communicate a message about what the world is really like, and how the system is often rigged against the people. It shows how the nice guys always finish last, and how those who are heartless and emotionally distant often come out on top. It abandons the notion that if you work hard, have a ton of ambition, and act nice, you will be rewarded... because that’s not how life always works. There are rules created by flawed individuals at the top of the food chain, people with grudges and prejudices, who try their best to make sure you don’t succeed if your success puts them in a bad spot. The movie is brilliantly stitched together in a way that will 100% go over people’s heads if they aren’t paying attention, so I can understand someone watching it and not fully appreciating everything it has going for it.
From a technical standpoint, right from the first shot, I knew the movie was going to be put together really well. Our writer-director here, Alexander Payne, had a unique vision behind how he wanted this film to look and operate. It looks and feels classic... right away. The way it is edited specifically, bouncing from character to character and freeze-framing certain shots... it works much more than it had any right to, and it stands out in a big way.
Now, I’m a little bit annoyed that I picked a movie that isn’t a huge laugh-out-loud comedy from beginning to end... as that was more or less what I thought the prompt was calling for. But it’s definitely a movie I’m glad to have watched anyway because it is just so smart. It’s not just a black satirical comedy. It’s a pitch-black satirical comedy. I use that term because it hides that edge of comedy so incredibly well, and it’s definitely more high-brow than you might realize at first glance.
Unbiased/Technical Score: 39/50 (78%)
Biased/Entertainment Score: 42/50 (84%)
Total Combined Score: 81/100 (81%) — 4/5 on Letterboxd