Film

FILM Election films for an odd election year

JIM KEOGH

Welcome to presidential campaigns, 2020 style. Virtual conventions. Unvisited state fairs. Unshook hands. Unkissed babies.

If you’re aching for some traditional election maneuvering during the pandemic, you may have to turn to the movies. Try these for a start.

• “Weiner” (2016) – This is one of the best films ever made about political failure. In 2013, fallen congressman Anthony Weiner, he of the not-so-surreptitious engorgement pix, attempted to resurrect his career by staging a ballsy, if ultimately disastrous, campaign for mayor of New York City. Weiner gave filmmakers Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg remarkable access into his fraught personal and public life and then let his ego take over. It’s fascinating to watch someone gifted with such intelligence and loquacity self-destruct before your eyes. And pity his longsuffering wife, Huma Abedin, who looks like she wants to duck behind the sofa every time Weiner invites the camera inside to record one of

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It’s about here that Blaze shifts the lens a bit, particularly with “Brandi/Brandie,” where she talks openly about the difference between herself on and off stage. “They love Blaze ‘cause she a savage,” she raps, “Off stage it’s Brandi with baggage/Never measure up, I can only see where I’m slacking.” It’s jarring after the barrage of earlier punch-drunk songs. Moreover, it’s here she sets the listener up for the emotionally devastating “Fraud,” where she ruminates on being sexually assaulted, and why she didn’t disclose it. It’s a gripping, disarmingly honest song, beginning small with a discussion of impostor syndrome and empty sexual relations, then peeling away layers of defense quickly until the listener is faced with naked, violent truth: “I feel like a coward because I kept it on the low,” she raps with a calm understatement that burns at the end of each syllable. “I care more about my career than (expletive) exposing you/Lost my soul and spirit, can’t many tense familial moments.

•“Election” (1999) – What a strange, wonderful little movie this is. Screenwriter-director Alexander Payne adapted Tom Perrotta’s novel about super-ambitious high-schooler Tracy Flick’s (Reese Witherspoon) crusade for student body presidency, and the scheme concocted by Tracy-loathing teacher Jim McCallister (Matthew Broderick) to stymie her. “Election” represents some of Witherspoon’s best work, and I also admire the performance of Broderick as the put-upon educator who simply can’t abide watching her flourish while his own life falters. Lessons learned: 1. Never underestimate a third-party candidate who gives zero damns. 2. Never run against a quarterback without a solid game plan. 3. Never diss the custodian who empties your trash, especially if you don’t have a paper shredder.

•“Napoleon Dynamite” (2004)

– I’m sorry if I’m having trouble leaving high school behind in this column, but I can’t overlook my boy Napoleon, the awkward liger-loving teen who orchestrates the presidential campaign for his buddy Pedro Sanchez. Most of Napoleon’s efforts involve plastering the school with leaflets (even in the urinals) promising Pedro will make his classmates’ dreams come true. But it’s not until speech day that he really shines. Campaign managers throughout history have done extraordinary things for their candidates. It’s fair to say none, except young Mr. Dynamite, has executed a flawless dance number to the song “Canned Heat” by Jamiroqui.

•“The Candidate” (1972) – How does a politician move from ideologue to cynic? Robert Redford plays longshot California senatorial candidate Bill McKay, who gains unexpected traction with his nothingto-lose honesty, and, of course his Redford-in-his-prime looks. His purity gets assailed pretty quickly by special-interest requests and a team of handlers who introduce him to the uglier sides of the political-election complex — which is to say all of them are ugly. It would be tempting to place “The Candidate” in a time capsule (a campaign without social media battles!?) except its themes

Reese Witherspoon stars in “Election.”

PARAMOUNT PICTURES

about the allure of charisma, the absence of integrity, and the corrupting potential of power are ever relevant. The film brandishes one of the most famous closing lines of any political film when the improbably victorious McKay fixes eyes with his campaign manager and asks, “What do we do now?”

•“The War Room” (1993) – D.A. Pennebaker brought us into the guts of the machine with this insider’s a relief when the album slides into more mundane examinations of bad relationships, such as with “Like You, Pt. 2,” where she raps, “I never liked the circus/I don’t (expletive) around with clowns.” What’s great about these songs is how the persona maintains her dignity amid mistreatment, but even here, she finds layers: As the album moves on to the R&B-fueled “Real Deep,” she begins to confess a shallowness to a sexual relationship. “I’m a hazard this is bio,” she raps, “Try to connect like this is Fios.” There’s a push and pull to her ambivalence which slingshots the listener into the next song, the sexually assertive “Drown.”

Sex is a predominate theme on the album, and as the album winds down, Blaze’s persona explores the contradictions in her own desire: Lust gives way to a sort of ambivalence, and eventually, on “Two,” she pushes those contradictions further, talking about two simultaneous relationships where her lovers are unaware of each other. “Sorry if you thought it was me and you/ but it’s me and two,” she raps, and look at two of Bill Clinton’s most avid soldiers, George Stephanopoulos and James Carville, who choreographed Clinton’s ascent to the national stage and gave faces to the term “spin doctor.” Pennebaker died last year, but hopefully he saw the 2016 “Documentary Now!” parody of his film, “The Bunker,” that had Bill Hader and Fred Armisen playing hilarious stand-ins for Carville and Stephanopoulos during a vicious

1992 presidential campaign. somehow she manages to explore a sort of culpability for her behavior without apologizing. There’s an honesty about the song that, like most of the album, robs these sorts of things of their taboo, and perhaps that’s the point: Holding these immensely human moments up to examine, without judgment.

The album returns to fighting form on the final track, “Count It,” where she’s joined again by Red Shaydez and Boston rapper Oompa. The trio close out the album with a wildfire flow that scorches everything in its path, blowing off the album’s emotional journey, each verse escalating the song to a fever pitch, the manic chorus of “You can count it, I’mma get it” intensifying with each repetition. It’s a powerful statement, and for the sense of alienation and emotional distance both the song and the album display, it’s hard not to note that Blaze doesn’t end the album on her own. Perhaps that, too, was also the point. Either way, it’s an incendiary end to a captivating album.