Searching for love while making a documentary about the Civil War
December 15, 2018 11:05 AM   Subscribe

Sherman's March: A Meditation on the Possibility of Romantic Love In the South During an Era of Nuclear Weapons Proliferation (1986) [Trailer: Youtube] At the beginning of Sherman’s March, director Ross McElwee, "has just received a prestigious grant to make a historical documentary about Sherman’s March; but en route to the South, his girlfriend ends their relationship. Heartbroken, Ross heads to his family’s home in North Carolina. No one there wants to talk about Sherman; they want to find him a wife. And so begins Ross' sharp turn from Sherman to an exploration of Southern womanhood and the quest for love." [Documentary Magazine]

A Contentious Debate About Sherman's March
"In my efforts to get more movie fans more into documentary, Sherman’s March is my favorite to recommend. Yet it’s also one of the hardest to pitch to people. For one thing, which I always forget, it’s kinda long. Also, very few people have heard of it. As far as doc classics go, it’s not as well-known and therefore easily promoted as The Thin Blue Line, Gimme Shelter, Nanook of the North, or even Triumph of the Will (thanks, Star Wars!). But it’s one of the most influential films of all time. Ross McElwee’s first-person style led to the model we associate today with people like Michael Moore and Morgan Spurlock. Still, nobody else has ever made a film quite like this." [Film School Rejects]

Hiding Behind The Camera
"When “Sherman’s March” came out, McElwee fielded a lot of mystified questions about his methodology: Why the interest in turning the camera on himself? When, if ever, did he put his camera down? One critic asked him, “Is there a sense in which you use the camera as a weapon?” Twenty-five years later, this exchange seems quaint. And, technically, in “Sherman’s March,” McElwee uses his camera not as a weapon but as a pickup line. McElwee’s persona is Southern and mannered, and filming is his method of flattery. It works—his female subjects are eventually convinced that his lens is an extension of his heart." [The New Yorker]

Reconstructing Dixie: Race, Gender, and Nostalgia in the Imagined South
"Toni Morrison has noted that an author's "response to African Americanism often provides a subtext that either sabotages the surface text's suppressed intentions or escapes them through a language that mystifies what it cannot bring itself to articulate but still attempts to hold together." The "Africanist" presence in Sherman's March cracks open the film's seeming whiteness, signaling the role blackness plays in maintaining certain images of southern hospitality. Although the text does not overtly call this role into question, it hints at other possibilities for meaningful black visibility [...] Although neither documentary thoroughly analyses blackness in relation to whiteness, Sherman's March does limn a space from which to critique whiteness via the shadowy figures it places in juxtaposition to its white characters. McElwee moves us forward by moving away from a melancholic take on southern history, coupling nostalgia with strategic irony to break melancholy's backward pull. [...] McElwee's attitude toward historical events is far from monumental, but a certain sense of melancholia still tinges the edges of his work, perhaps because he can never really unpack the romance of the South without fully integrating race into his analysis. This underlying melancholy leads me to ask why "we," as a nation, remain so fascinated with the details of this war. [...] There is an overriding sense in much of Civil War popular culture and, to different degrees, in both documentaries that, as a nation, we had to sacrifice something to survive our country's "greatest test." These meditations on the Civil War reveal how easily different representational strategies can serve to connect the ruins of war with the ruins of a lost culture by collapsing images of battle onto images of plantation life and hoopskirts. To maintain this fantasy about the Old South and our nation's history, gender and especially race must be suppressed as integral terms of analysis." [Tara McPherson]

FILM REVIEW: A DOCUMENTARY, 'SHERMAN'S MARCH'
"In ''Sherman's March,'' Mr. McElwee more or less follows Sherman's trail in that he visits Atlanta, Savannah and Columbia, S.C. Occasionally he even stops off at a Civil War battlefield, fort or monument. Primarily, though, he's picking up pretty, oddball young women or looking up old girlfriends, most of whom are now committed to other people. Quite early, he confides that the movie really is ''a meditation on the possibility of romantic love in the South today.'' Or, to put it another way, is romantic love possible in an age of supermarkets, fast food, nuclear arms and the sort of lightweight camera and sound equipment that allows anybody to film his own life?" [NYT Archives]

Southern Exposure: An Interview With Ross McElwee
Film Quarterly: Sherman's March is another portrait of the South, and like other films, it includes interesting moments of interrelationship between whites and blacks. Your conversation with the fellow whose daughter has died is especially memorable.
Ross McElwee: It's an amazing moment. It happened totally unpredictably. I was there because the car with its mechanical woes was becoming a theme I thought I might be able to develop. It's pretty much a single unedited shot that takes you from a discussion of the car to his son to his daughter's death to my mother's death. To me, that's preferable to piecing together five different shots to create the same impression. This way you can see the emotional shift in his eyes, hear it in our voices, as we move from discussing something that's mundane to something that's of profound importance to both of us. It's the kind of thing you could never set up ahead of time because people will put up their defenses. If I'd said, "I'd like to talk a little bit with you about the death of your daughter," he might have done it, but it would not have happened organically the way it did. That's something I feel very strongly about. Another instance of this is when I'm talking to Mary, the fashion model, near the opening of the film. I haven't seen her since we were kids. We start off talking about something very superficial--when we used to play Superman--then the conversation turns to her kids, then to her feelings about divorce. Again, it's all one shot and you can track the development of the dialogue in her eyes. There's a moment of real sadness there that to me is absolutely amazing. [Film Quarterly via PBS]


Sherman's March was added to the National Film Registry in 2000.
posted by nightrecordings (19 comments total) 30 users marked this as a favorite
 
A professor of mine made us watch this movie and I loved it so much. Charleen was exactly the kind of lady who seemed to run the world when I was little and will still give me instructions on exactly how to act when I visit home next week. She just passed away this past summer; she had a pretty remarkable life.
posted by Countess Elena at 11:21 AM on December 15, 2018 [7 favorites]


And if your public library offers access to the wonderful Kanopy service, the film is streaming there.
posted by PhineasGage at 11:30 AM on December 15, 2018 [6 favorites]


Little late to find Sherman a wife, ain't it?
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 11:35 AM on December 15, 2018 [1 favorite]


And if your public library offers access to the wonderful Kanopy service, the film is streaming there.

Yes, just want to give an extra shout out to Kanopy! If your public library or school offers it (many do), it's a great way to access independent/classic/art/foreign/doc films for free.

(Also please note that the runtime on this film is 155 minutes.)
posted by nightrecordings at 11:38 AM on December 15, 2018 [1 favorite]


My gut reaction to this is that it's both exploitative and self-indulgent. And yet I'm intrigued and want to keep watching and find out why someone would film this.
posted by Fizz at 12:06 PM on December 15, 2018 [1 favorite]


I remember this watching this film back in the early 90s. At first it seemed like a cool little project, but it got progressively more weird. Really great (inadvertent?) insights into the male gaze.
posted by JamesBay at 12:15 PM on December 15, 2018 [4 favorites]


One of my favorite episodes of Brows Held High is on Sherman's March, with special guests Jourdain Searles and the now-defunct Film Struck.
posted by muddgirl at 1:20 PM on December 15, 2018


My memory of watching this was that I started out mildly amused and curious. As the movie went on I slowly realized it was both devastatingly funny and sad. Near the end, it dawned on me that I was watching one of the best, and most original, movies I had ever seen.
posted by xammerboy at 3:31 PM on December 15, 2018 [2 favorites]


I loved this movie as well as Errol Morris' 1981 film Vernon, Florida -- another failed documentary concept that turned into a better movie. In that film, his car broke down en route to a film shoot and the place was so weird that he made the movie about the residents.
posted by msalt at 5:20 PM on December 15, 2018 [1 favorite]


I loved this movie as well as Errol Morris' 1981 film Vernon, Florida -- another failed documentary concept that turned into a better movie.

Wait! I always thought that Morris changed the film's subject because he was there to make a film about residents cutting off their own limbs for insurance money, and when they found out they physically threatened him.
posted by nightrecordings at 5:31 PM on December 15, 2018


Saw it at the Biograph in Georgetown DC in 86 or 87 (I think it's a CVS now). Felt squeamishly close to the narrator/filmmaker. A look into the tumid ego of a young overly articulate straight male of a certain era.
posted by vicusofrecirculation at 6:23 PM on December 15, 2018 [1 favorite]


Of course it's on MetaFilter, the gratest cat-wedgey site in the world. Great post, btw.

My experience was, funnily enough, exactly the same as xhammerboy's. "What th' ... Heh. Okay maybe this'll be fun ... Hmmm interesting ... Oh c'mon, really? ... *snif* man that's hard core ... Wow. ... Hah, of course. ..."

Plus it humanized Sherman in a way that was positively unheard of in 1980's The South, including things I had never heard of such as his love for and experience in said South.

Also, iirc, it had a stunning story about the filmmaker's childhood experience witnessing a nuclear test that is riveting.

For years my default phrase for snafus was Charleen's "This is not art, this is life!"

His next film was interviewing people whose tragedies had been covered by the local news, but I just couldn't. I think Sherman's March is that one-off post-punk masterpiece album by that band that no one heard of that broke up right afterwards.
posted by petebest at 6:43 PM on December 15, 2018 [4 favorites]


I love this movie and also my cousin is in it! She’s one of the ex girlfriends but her part is super brief. I haven’t seen her for years; she married a Mormon and went sort of full wacky religion weird.
posted by mygothlaundry at 7:17 PM on December 15, 2018 [3 favorites]


Has anyone seen any of McIlwee's later films? Looks like "Something to do with the Wall" (1991), "Past Imperfect" (1991), ""Time Indefinite" (1993), "Bright Leaves" (2003), "In Paraguay" (2008), and "Photographic Memory" (2011).


I guess he likes two word titles.
posted by msalt at 7:25 PM on December 15, 2018


Has anyone seen any of McIlwee's later films?

"Bright Leaves" is pretty solid and had a similar feel to Sherman's March. Explores the legacy of the tobacco industry/culture in the south but gets distracted with tales of his friends trying to quit smoking. "Photographic Memory" is okay- I found his son a bit too insufferable to deal with on screen for more than a few minutes, though.
posted by nightrecordings at 7:54 PM on December 15, 2018 [1 favorite]


This film is amazing. I first saw it maybe 20 years ago, and it has a dreamlike quality that has stayed with me ever since. The Burt Reynolds impersonator. The woman describing her science-fiction screenplay. The guy trying to teach an Alsatian about defending a house from intruders (pretty sure the dog thought it was all a big game). McElwee trying to sleep alone in a tiny shack after his hostess graphically described the insect vermin in the area. His sister! There’s just so much in it that two-and-a-half hours feels short.
posted by um at 8:17 PM on December 15, 2018 [2 favorites]


I saw Sherman's March when it first came out, and then I dragged several friends to see it while it was still running in West Los Angeles. I thought it was HILARIOUS. Not everyone really *gets* it, but it's not a bad way to weed out new acquaintances if you have any questions about their tastes.

I recommend it to this day and in fact recommended it only last week to someone who was baffled by the mere description of this work of genius.
posted by janey47 at 5:52 PM on December 16, 2018 [1 favorite]


I recommend this film if you know someone that thinks documentaries are good and you want to prove otherwise.
posted by runcibleshaw at 5:33 AM on December 17, 2018 [1 favorite]


Second best doc about the modern south: Moving Midway.
posted by bendybendy at 6:09 AM on December 17, 2018 [1 favorite]


« Older “Simply put, Gris is absolutely gorgeous.”   |   Showering Has a Dark, Violent Period in its Long... Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments