Sherman’s March: A Meditation on the Possibility of Romantic Love In the South During an Era of Nuclear Weapons Proliferation (1986, dir. Ross McElwee)
When you think of Civil War documentaries none is more prominent than Ken Burns’ aptly titled The Civil War mega-series of the 1990s. It was an incredibly detailed and exhaustive look at an event that reshaped America and is still felt today. This is not that sort of documentary. Ross McElwee is a Southern filmmaker born into the war-haunted landscape of North Carolina. He begins the film with an honorable premise, attempting to travel the path of destruction Union General William Tecumseh Sherman left across the South. This quickly crumbles when McElwee’s girlfriend breaks up with him to go back to her ex. Suddenly, the tone of the film shifts into a bizarre examination of women in the South mixed with occasional delves into the original premise of the picture.
McElwee is like a Southern fried Woody Allen, neurotically crippling his ability to make a historical documentary by suddenly leaving a family reunion to follow an amateur actress to Atlanta or spending a week on a barely inhabited island off the South Carolina coast with a former lover and her current beau. It sounds like a mess, and in moments it is, but its a fascinating mess to behold. It’s rare that you have a documentary filmmaker who so abandons the objective examination for total introspection. McElwee, as a character in his documentary can be incredibly unlikable but its ends up being incredibly hilarious.
Early in the film, as McElwee listens to the aforementioned actress as she describes her screenplay premise (wherein she is a space prophetess who ends up becoming a sermonizing floating head), he comments that he was attracted to her in a very primal, indescribable way. It’s obvious in this moment why McElwee has such poor luck with women, he seems to pursue the insane ones. However, in the latter half of his film, his friend and former teacher, Charleen sets him up with a very attractive young female folk singer who, upon further examination turns out to be a One World Order believing Mormon with tons of supplies in her pantry in case of Armageddon. So, we have to wonder, is it really all McElwee or is there something in the water here in the South.
As a resident of the South since the age of five, Sherman’s March is a painfully real film to me. Every type of person, male and female, you encounter in this region is represented. This is the sort of tableau Flannery O’Conner could only dream about. In spite of the larger than life nature of many of these people, they are ultimately endearing. You can’t help but smile at the fact that we live in a world with such oddballs in it. All this, and McElwee stumbles upon a Burt Reynolds lookalike pacing in front of a motel. What more could you want!?
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