SXSW Movie Review: Frontrunners
Director: Caroline Suh
Documentary
out of 5 stars
Sometimes a documentary will leave you just as puzzled about its reason for being as a mediocre fiction film might. Caroline Suh’s neatly made but, ultimately, tepid high-school election documentary “Frontrunners,” which screened at the SXSW Film Festival, provoked just such indifference. Suh profiles four seniors at Brooklyn’s elite Stuyvesant High School, all running for Student Body President, and each of their experiences on the “campaign trail.” Suh means to make an analogy between high-school politics and national politics — complete with considerations of demographics and campaign strategy, with newspaper endorsements and debate performance — but, at the end of the day, there really is no comparison. High-school politics don’t amount to a hill of beans even if you’re the average high-school student, and, if they did, Suh doesn’t make the case to the effect. As civic-minded (God bless ‘em), smart, and adorable as “Frontrunners’” subjects are, Suh doesn’t do the hard work of exploring their strategies, getting into their family lives, their personal motivations for running, and sticks instead to playing up their individual eccentricities, and the tropes of school life.
It’s election year so the material has relevance, but there’s no heat here, nothing emotionally that sticks. On the plus side, Suh’s subjects are all appealing and hard-working in their various ways, especially the frontrunners — the spunky head-cheerleader/drama star going up against the slightly odd wiz kid with the endearingly shy, off-kilter personality. But everything feels tame and well-trodden — like a reality show for the honor-roll crowd, except this documentary format applied to teenagers is beginning to feel like overkill (this year’s Sundance winner “American Teen” was hardly more revealing). In the end, “Frontrunners” feels like the compressed version of a PBS reality-TV series about a high-school election. There’s an idea. I wouldn’t be too crazy about that either.
March 12th, 2008 at 12:57 am
Sir - I understand your befuddlement in missing the analogy between high school and national politics. However I believe your discontent could be relieved by a simple change in focus more atuned to the film’s true mission. We have here an examination of a microcosm of the phenomenon of democratic government which we so proudly flaunt as a nation, and moreso an examination of how that tradtion, in both theory and practice, has permeated into the deepest crevices of our society.
Of course high school politics pale in comparison to their national counterpart. This is a given. The more important issue here is how this tradition has been permanently fixed in the American psyche, and how it has been translated - not copied - to fit into different contexts all across society. High school politics will serve high school needs. Indeed the ultimate irrelevance of high school politics is to be emphasized as an example of how the film properly highlights the continuity and thus adaptability of the democratic system within various settings.
In regards to the suggestion of the film getting even more involved in their teenage lives, I certainly find it hard to believe that more teenage drama and confessions is what our country needs right now. I believe we have MTV for that. As you mention, even with a film as acclaimed as “American Teen”, this format is growing mundane and cliche. If one subscribes to Tolstoy’s line of thought that leaders are a product of their times, one would find it far more compelling to see this film’s observation of the structure and system within which the candidates operate, rather than an expose of the individual. After all, the only thing that remains consistent year to year is the election process itself.
Frontrunners shines through in fact for avoiding the easy way out and not pandering to our country’s obsession with teenage centered reality television. It instead uses teenage life and high school as prism through which to examine a process that has come to define all of our identities as citizens. If that would fail to interest someone, then I suggest The OC.