Word: shermans
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Ross McElwee's amazing new film Sherman's March shares the best elements of home movies. The film's ostensible subject is the director Ross McElwee himself, and the photography and synchronized sound were taken by McElwee as he lugged his 16mm camera to secluded islands, mountain retreats and the guest bedrooms of a series of women from his romantic past. But unlike your basic home movie, McElwee has not sent forth a slew of random holiday footage. On the contrary, he has edited meticulously some 30 hours of hand-held adventure filming to produce a rueful, bittersweet...
...McElwee headed South to retrace the path taken by General William Tecumseh Sherman on his devastating Civil War march. McElwee was born and raised in Charlotte, N.C., so the trip was to be a kind of homecoming. He had been obsessed with Sherman's legacy since coming North to school and was all set to film a serious documentary about the man whose infamy lives below the Mason-Dixon line. Taking a quick detour in New York to bivouac with his girlfriend, McElwee...
...went poorly in New York. His girlfriend broke off their relationship to return to an old boyfriend, and McElwee changed the film's focus to explore his self-professed problems with women, perfunctorily set in the larger context of a Southern historical odyssey. Thus the film's full title: Sherman's March: A meditation on the possibility of romantic love in the South during an era of nuclear weapons proliferation...
...generally spoken to the camera as he lies scratching himself in his pajamas, are tour-de-force, unrehearsed stand-up routines. If Ebert/Siskel ever decide to review this film, which they won't because no one gets exploited, I vote they show the four-minute passage where McElwee discusses Sherman with his pal the camera while dressed in a Confederate uniform and swilling good Southern Scotch...
...Sherman's March raises provocative questions about the relationship between art and life, about the consuming passion of art in the face or ordinary life, and about the love of one artist for the medium that gives him pleasure and sometimes threatens his life. To these young eyes, all that spells one masterpiece of a home movie. Look for it to screen at the Orson Welles or Carpenter Center theaters in the spring...