Part of Weekend Classics: Beat The Heat
In the early 1980s, filmmaker Ross McElwee planned to make a documentary tracing the route Union General William Tecumseh Sherman took when he laid siege to Confederate forces in the South during the Civil War. Just before filming begins, McElwee’s girlfriend ends their relationship, prompting his processing of the breakup and throwing the production into question. McElwee travels to his hometown of Charlotte to spend time with family (eager to help him meet eligible bachelorettes) and decides to bring his camera along, culminating in this self-aware and inventive essay film. As the filmmaker crisscrosses Sherman’s path of destruction to explore the relics, he reflects on his own wake of past romances while attempting new ones — often with partners who appear equally transitory. (Synopsis from the True/False Film Festival).
Screening alongside REMAKE (Tue, Jul 21), McElwee’s reevaluation of SHERMAN’S MARCH in light of the recent death of his son.
“McElwee is the Mark Twain of documentary filmmaking, a purveyor of American dreams whose wit is surpassed only by his uncanny knack for observation…. It makes sense that he’s often described as being self-effacing. In reconnecting us with the past, McElwee asks us to reconnect not only with each other but with our human spirit.” —Ed Gonzalez, SlashFilm
“What Ross McElwee’s classic SHERMAN’S MARCH offers is less a trenchant perspective on life in the Reagan-era American South than a rambling series of droll observations that accumulate into something more compelling than a self-portrait…. McElwee never pretends that he’s interested in his subjects as some kind of impartial documentarian — which is how we know that his curiosity about their lives is sincere.” —Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, A.V. Club
“Though Mr. McElwee's timing with women is awful, he's a film maker-anthropologist with a rare appreciation for the eccentric details of our edgy civilization…. As Mr. McElwee fusses with himself for not getting on with his meditation on Sherman's march, and as the loose ends of his private life accumulate, a wonderfully goofy, pertinent movie comes into focus.” —Vincent Canby, New York Times (Sep 5, 1986)
