The Third Monday in October - Reaction

A well crafted documentary focusing on student-council president elections, covering four schools with differing amounts of resources. Although it may sound like keeping track of candidates in four separate races is a lot, I found the documentary and the differing personalities made it easy. The structure revealed the similarity of adolescents throughout the country. All these wanna-be leaders, just at the cusp of adulthood, are earnest, passionate, awkward and surprisingly mature in some ways and immature in others. I was surprised to realize I cared about the students and the outcomes of the elections.

Thematically, the movie's about how we choose leaders. Even in junior high, despite popular belief, it's not just a popularity contest; passion, qualifications, and speaking ability count. A secondary topic is how political ideology comes into play. In some campaigns, it was mentioned; in others, not. And, in any case, we see how an adolescent's ideology and attitude toward politics is strongly shaped by his/her parents' views.

The music, energetic and notably well chosen, and good cutting help maintain the film's forward momentum.

The director, a camera-man, a principal of one of the schools, and one San Francisco student who lost his race answered questions after the screening.

In the first question, the principal had to defend himself and the actions of one of his teachers to an incident in the film that made all us moviegoers gasp. A teacher had approved a speech. Later, the candidate was disqualified for giving the speech, told it offended a member of the staff and was never approved. The teacher did not stand up for her decision. In answering the question, the principal defended the teacher, saying the movie did not see everything that happened and that the permission was rescinded later, not on camera.

Apparently the cameraman actually had a strong influence on selecting who to follow and film for the movie. Mostly the decision was opportunistic but it still showed he had a significant amount of autonomy.

Even though the student present at the Q&A was one of the more mature candidates, I could still tell how he'd grown in the two years since the movie was filmed. He presented himself well.

The director said the students to whom she's shown the film all commented on what geeks they were back then and how now, at fifteen, they were so much cooler and more mature.

Incidentally, the movie's web site includes profiles of the students, presented exactly like one would see in a real election. Cute.