Tracy Flick = Hillary Clinton? | Reese Witherspoon is a persnickety candidate for class president in 1999's Election.
Why aren’t there any good Canadian movies about elections? Does our fractured political system — with five major parties — simply too difficult to dramatize clearly? Is it that Canadian politics don’t arouse the passions that American elections routinely stir up? Or do we simply lack the writers and directors who could turn the Canadian political protest into entertaining drama — sadly, we don’t have a Canadian Aaron Sorkin or a Canadian Rod Lurie. We have Ken Finkleman, I guess, but that guy has apparently been cloistered in his home for the last three years watching Federico Fellini DVDs.
All this is by way of apology for the American-centric nature of this list of election movies, designed to get you in the mood for the Oct. 14 showdown on Parliament Hill. But while there may be a lot of red-white-and-blue bunting in the background of a lot of the scenes, remember that politicians are an equally serpentine species on both sides of the border.
Election (1999)
Let’s get the obvious one out of the way first: Alexander Payne’s comedy about an ethics teacher (Matthew Broderick) who sets out to sabotage the school-president campaign of an annoying, grade-grubbing student (Reese Witherspoon) is an absolutely devilish piece of political satire — and the low-stakes setting only makes its jabs hit harder. With her characterization of Tracy Flick — the girl who wants to be president so nakedly that you almost want her to lose just to spite her — Witherspoon anticipated Hillary Clinton’s failed run for the Democratic presidential nomination by nine years.
The Candidate (1972)
Michael Ritchie’s film about an idealistic lawyer (Robert Redford) who gets recruited by the Democrats as a sacrificial-lamb candidate in the California Senate election — and who, to everyone’s surprise, develops into a legitimate challenger — is still one of the touchstone films about modern politics. Redford never experiences a single, clear-cut “sellout” moment, just a long string of gradual compromises. Let’s hope that if Barack Obama wins, he doesn’t wind up like Redford in the film’s famous final scene, sitting in the back of a limo, victorious, and asking blankly, “What do we do know?”
The Best Man (1964)
Gore Vidal’s drama about the behind-the-scenes manoeuvring at the Democratic National Convention has lost none of its pulpy zing, nor has its provocative message become any less relevant. There are two candidates jockeying for the party’s nomination: Henry Fonda’s honourable, conscience-stricken liberal, and Cliff Robertson’s ruthless demagogue. In an ordinary movie, Fonda would be the clear-cut hero, but Vidal’s take is more complex: he argues that Fonda’s reluctance to play dirty is actually a sign he’s not cut out for the Oval Office.
Tanner ’88 (1988)
Robert Altman and Garry Trudeau’s 11-episode HBO miniseries about a dark horse candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination (played by the Bruce Babbitt-like Michael Murphy), filmed on location, guerrilla-style, during the actual campaign, pioneered the technique of incorporating real events into a fictional context that has become almost commonplace in pop culture. The final two episodes, in which Tanner’s team find their delegates slipping through their fingers, are as vivid a depiction of smoke-filled-room politicking as you’ll find anywhere.
O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)
The foundering gubernatorial campaign of Charles Durning’s Pappy O’Daniel is only a minor subplot in Joel and Ethan Coen’s comic odyssey, but the scene where Pappy irately ponders his plunge in the polls never fails to make us laugh. (When the rival “reform” candidate tells voters he’s a “friend of the little man” who’s going to clean up government he backs up his claim by bringing a broom-wielding midget onstage with him.) “Well, it’s a well-run campaign,” solemnly drawls one of O’Daniel’s aides. “Midget, broom, and whatnot.”
Recount (2008)
Neither George W. Bush nor Al Gore is a character in this Emmy-winning HBO movie about the aftermath of the 2000 presidential election — but that’s kind of the point. Recount is a film about the scary new era of American politics, a world where candidates don’t even matter, and where even the outcome of the entire election can be spun in one party’s favour. Laura Dern’s performance as former Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris is a masterpiece of live-action political caricature.
