Mark Reviews Movies: REPRESENT

Follow on Facebook | Follow on Twitter | Become a Patron

Review by Mark Dujsik | August 13, 2020

Director Hillary Bachelder's documentary Represent doesn't seem too special for a while. It simply follows three political candidates, all of them women and from the Midwest, as they run for various offices. The end, we suspect, will be election night, as each candidate learns her fate.

Bachelder, though, doesn't stop there—at least for two of the candidates. We watch Julie Cho, a Republican running as an Illinois state representative in a district in Evanston, for the entirety of her campaign, as she comes into conflict with a political party that's clearly scared her stance against gerrymandering will get more Democrats to the polls. As for Detroit native Myya Jones and Ohio farmer Bryn Bird, their stories don't stop with an election.

Jones, recently graduated from college, decides to run for mayor of her home city. Bird, who returned to rural Ohio after her mother's cancer diagnosis, is running for the local township committee. We watch their grassroots campaigns unfold with some drama. Jones has to convince voters that her youth and inexperience shouldn't matter, because she cares about Detroit's neighborhoods, not just downtown. Bird realizes that, in order to have a chance, she'll have to undermine the re-election campaign of the only woman on the committee.

Their stories appear to conclude with their respective elections. In continuing them after the votes are tallied, though, Bachelder proves that she has bigger points, beyond simply documenting the efforts of first-time candidates, to make.

Bird learns how the "establishment" exists at all levels of government and that the actual process of governing doesn't help one make friends. Jones refuses to give up, and she notices that, while the state Democratic Party talks a big game about representing minority communities, they're a lot less eager to actually support a young Black woman when she decides to run for office. Cho, a Korean immigrant, wants to put aside concepts of race and gender, but she, too, encounters some obvious and covert racism during her run.

Represent shows a lot about the political system, simply by observing all of the challenges and obstacles placed in front of these women—ones that don't appear to exist for their various opponents. Bachelder doesn't hammer home any of these issues, because they speak for themselves. The most pertinent one, perhaps, exists in noticing who won, who lost, and to whom she lost.

Back to Home

Buy Related Products