Final Rating: 4.5/5
In 1985, director Ross McElwee released his magnum opus, Sherman’s March. The filmmaker, who at that time had made films like Space Coast and Charleen Backyard, nurtured an interest in the mundane. This film narrates his return from Boston and New York to his home, down South. Borrowing the name of a campaign by General William T. Sherman during the American Civil War, where he left Atlanta to capture the Savannah Port in a month.
McElwee’s journey might not be as lethal and quintessential as the general’s one, but it is arguably as challenging. The documentary filmmaker narrates his odyssey to find a partner as he captures the multiple attempts of his family members and friends to hook him up with a compatible candidate. Forty-one years after its release, the film is back with a 4K restoration before the release of McElwee’s latest, Remake.
At first, Sherman’s March is a documentary diary. The director documents his point of view, especially in a first-person perspective, where the camera stands on his shoulders, as he shoots the world surrounding him. In scarce moments, the camera is on a rig to film him as he walks in an empty studio in Boston, for example. Most of the time, Ross interviews the people in his daily life, especially his family.
In one of the first moments, he captures his sister, Dede, rowing their boat, while he holds the camera, and asks about her friends. Dede stops amidst other boats in the lake, and Ross finds one of the girls swimming attractive. Suddenly, he is going on dates with Patricia Rendleman, who is divorced and has a daughter. This sequence of events in his life is quick, fast-paced, and surprisingly engaging. Despite the self-centric nature of the diary documentary, Ross enchants us with the self-deprecating aspect of his personality.
Although the director and the subject have multiple compatible partners, a characteristic prevents him from committing: his fear of a global nuclear war. McElwee marches down South to enchant girls as he restores a vintage sports car and films the daily activities of his life. Fascinatingly, he meets singers and actors, artists who struggle with the artistic life like him; still, there is a sincerity and vulnerability in his life throughout the cameras.
Ross is honest about the lack of stability in his life, highlighted by the sequences of himself with the broken car or needing fuel to power the vehicle. In those moments, there is an honesty particular to the director documenting his life, such as the conversation between him and the mechanic.
McElwee’s march is inherent in the conversations he has in the South, his home with people whom he had a passion for in his childhood. Everything is about the interaction he has with those individuals, in different degrees, attempting to unlock his difficulty with the relationships. In the meantime, there lies his fascination with Burt Reynolds, who is shooting a film nearby. He attempts to document him, but fails, shooting with his double. The film is about a man who is willing to love, but is too occupied with the elements of his life.
Borrowing the name from one of the most important moments in the history of the American South, Ross McElwee makes history with his diary documentary about the difficulties of falling in love when you are too busy thinking about the nuclear war.
If the 2010s and 2020s have been flooded with autobiographical documentaries, Ross was a visionary in 1985, when his Sherman’s March works, such as a proto-John Wilson non-fiction, inspired by the quirkiness of their communities and themselves, crafted a unique piece of film.
Thank you to Film Forum for the screener.
