Alexander Payne’s ‘Election’ Is Coming To Criterion

Filmmaker Alexander Payne’s explored and satirized many facets of the human condition and almost exclusively through their comedic defects and deficiencies. But his masterwork is still arguably 1999’s “Election,” a biting satire of hubris and rivalry set in the world of high school politics. Centering on an insufferable overachiever (Reese Witherspoon) who runs for high school president and the envious, bitter teacher (Matthew Broderick) who tries to undermine her election campaign, its dirty, underhanded tricks, scheming and vengeful backchanneling is more politically relevant than ever.

Which is probably why the Criterion Collection is releasing the film on Blu-Ray/DVD in December. It’s perfectly timed and at this point has become a seminal piece of work (we listed in our top films of 1999 feature) Here’s its official synopsis:

Perky, overachieving Tracy Flick (Reese Witherspoon) gets on the nerves of history teacher Jim McAllister (Matthew Broderick) to begin with, but after she launches her campaign for high-school president and his personal life starts to fall apart, things spiral out of control. In Alexander Payne’s satire Election, the teacher becomes unhealthily obsessed with cutting his student down to size, covertly backing a spoiler candidate to stop her from steamrolling to victory, and putting in motion a series of dirty tricks and reckless promises with uncanny real-world political parallels. Adapting a then-unpublished novel by Tom Perrotta, Payne grounds the absurdity of his central dynamic in the recognizable – the setting is his hometown of Omaha, and the accomplished cast is rounded out with nonprofessionals – and distills his closely observed take on deeply flawed humanity to its bitter but stealthily sympathetic essence.

While 1996’s “Citizen Ruth” launched Payne’s career in the Sundance-y indie scene, “Election” helped the director turn an important corner—the film received an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay, earned Reese Witherspoon a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress category, and won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Film in 1999.

Also in December, the Criterion Collection will be graduating a pair of restored films to Blu-Ray include Barbet Schroeder’sGeneral Idi Amin Dada: A Self-Portrait,” an unsettling encounter with the murderous, charismatic Ugandan dictator and D. A. Pennebaker‘s “The Complete Monterey Pop Festival” collection which includes the classic concert films “Monterey Pop,” “Jimi Plays Monterey,” and “Shake! Otis at Monterey.”

As previously announced, Criterion will also release “100 Years of Olympic Films: 1912-2012,” a landmark collector’s set featuring fifty-three films from a century of Olympic Games presented together for the first time. Start your savings plan now.