Sherman's March (Ross McElwee, 1986)

[zedz]

Since domino was interested in expressing his negative opinion of the film (my number 2 for the 80s), and since it rated respectably on the final list so doesn't exactly qualify as a neglected darling, we can discuss it over here.

So why is this my favourite American film of the 1980s?

It’s a sentimental favourite, it’s true. I first saw it in the late 80s and somehow managed to see it semi-regularly ever since. By now, it might just be the film I’ve rewatched the most times (maybe 7 or 8).

The number one reason for my high placing of it is sort of unarguable: it’s one of the funniest films I’ve ever seen, and it continues to be just as funny on each revisit, maybe because the humour is character-based and situational rather than tied to specific gags. If you’re not laughing, it’s not my fault and no amount of debate is going to make you do so.

But the film is much, much more than that. Like The Thin Blue Line (also in my top ten), McElwee’s film has been hugely influential on American documentary in the ensuing decades, even though that influence has often been deleterious. Being influential is neither here nor there when it comes to assessing a film’s worth for good or ill, and it’s hardly McElwee’s responsibility if lesser and lazier filmmakers have turned his innovations into schtick.

What is important to understand about this film’s structural conceit is how perfectly matched it is to its deeper concerns. Sherman’s March is one of the best films about the interaction of the personal and the political in the 1980s era of nuclear dread, and McElwee’s form – a historical documentary about a regional apocalypse that is continually interrupted and subverted by the filmmaker’s abortive present-tense romantic encounters – allows him to shuttle deftly back and forth between the big and little pictures. We are not expected to take the film’s conceit seriously (he didn’t really set out to make the Sherman documentary and nothing else), just as we’re not expected to read Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting as authentic art history, but we need to buy into it in order to lap up the pleasures it facilitates. The same thing goes for his sad sack persona, which is at least more nuanced and edifying (and funnier) than Woody Allen’s. He adopts that pose to give the women he encounters something to play off without diverting our attention from them.

The women he encounters are unequivocally the stars of the film. If you can only see irony and satire in their depiction, you’re not going with the spirit of the film. Odd and singular as some of the women appear, they’re the life-force that drive the film, and they exist in counterpoint to McElwee’s passive protagonist, who’s inspired by them all in different ways. Charleen Swansea is a great case in point. Her relentless matchmaking is an exquisite comic turn and might appear reductive, but she’s playing to Ross’s camera and Ross’s respect for her (shading, understandably, into awe and fear) is crucial. We only get to see a couple of sides of Charleen in this film, but when you add in her many other dimensions that McElwee has explored and documented in other films, she becomes truly one of the most complex and compelling characters in American movies. Even Pat, whose unintentionally hilarious (or is it really so unintentional?) science fiction screenplay provides one of the film’s most surreal moments, is admired for her drive and ambition. When she leaves the film, it’s clear that she’s been using Ross just as much as he’s been using her (they’re both getting a film out of it). The other women all exhibit an enviable commitment to their faith, politics and / or careers, and McElwee respects and documents the work they do (a rare thing in Hollywood films of any era), with prospective relationships in most cases decidedly secondary to those women's central concerns (a virtually unthinkable perspective in mainstream or indie American cinema, except as psychopathy).

It’s a wonderful picture of the American South in the 1980s, and like all of McElwee’s diary films, the question of race is never far from the surface, even if, in this film, it’s not explicitly addressed. The moment in which the black mechanic makes that unexpected connection between his daughter and McElwee’s mother is one of the rawest and most beautiful displays of emotion I’ve ever seen on film, and it just gets richer and deeper the more I see of McElwee’s work – there’s nothing really in Sherman’s March to suggest just how difficult that moment must have been for Ross, given his feelings about his mother’s death, but the moment still hits you between the eyes. The change in tone, gaze and expression when the mechanic says the fateful word is something I’ve never seen anywhere else on film (and it’s rare enough in real life: the sudden dropping of a backdrop to reveal a different reality beyond it), and then it’s casually turned back on the filmmaker to create an even more singular emotional twist.

Sherman’s March captures the mood of nuclear dread we lived through in the 80s better than any other film, simply because it’s not about massive disasters, superpower politics or souped-up menaces, but about how ordinary people have simply, unquestioningly reorganised their lives around the expectation of global catastrophe. Domestic fallout shelters and visual petitions may seem quaint and futile now, but they were common enough responses to supremely irrational and barely imaginable threats. McElwee doesn’t need to address the consequences of a nuclear holocaust head-on and risk sinking in a swamp of didacticism, because he has the Sherman material through which that material can be refracted. Thus several women in the film have the oddly doubled role of reporting back from a post-apocalyptic America – which evokes for me another indelible detail from the film: the defiant swish of the old woman’s head when she condemns warmongerers everywhere with a dismissive “death and destruction.”

What else? It’s a great narrative film: an emotional and physical journey presented as a deceptively rambling picaresque (in fact, there’s a daunting thematic unity to all of the episodes, however far they might seem to stray from the through-line), but it’s also got that ingenious multifaceted Chinese box structure. It simultaneously succeeds as a series of character studies, a comedy (the Burt Reynolds subplot is beautifully incongruous and all but thrown away – when the capper comes it’s delightfully unexpected), a diary film (and a parody of one) and, against all the odds and in the crevices of the rest of the film, a documentary on Sherman’s March to the Sea.

For those who did like this film, don’t miss Time Indefinite when considering your 90s lists. It’s a much darker and more personal film – really magnificent stuff.

[Adam]

Well put.
I think I even prefer Time Indefinite to Sherman's March. And Six O'Clock News is also great.

[Camera Obscura]

I can't put it as well as Zedz, but I would defintely rank this with the very best films from the eighties! Watched it at least 5 or 6 times, perhaps even more. I only saw this for the first time in 2004, so there's no nostalgia in my case, but after watching this film I almost immediately decided to make a trip to The South, the Carolinas in particular, which I did, and it was one of the most pleasant trips I've made so far.

Pretty essential though to accept Ross McElwee for the romantic sadsack that he is, otherwise it won't work, because it's generally more about him than anything else. I heard some reactions from people who were disappointed that it wasn't about General Sherman (well, it is - some of it anyway), ór the South, ór the eighties in particular. It's primarily about the women, they are the life-force and main drive of the film indeed.

I cannot really judge about America's in the eighties. For starters, I am too young to have experienced the eighties full swing, but to me, McElwee's portrayal of these various women and many of the other encounters he has, says more about Southern Women of perhaps America's state of mind than all the other documentaries and films I' ve seen.

Anyway, this is all from an outsider's point of view. I am not from the South. I'm not even an American, but it certainly inspired me a whole lot more than dozens of movies set in the South, eccentric Southern journeys and all kinds of portrayals or documentaries of - admittedly - mostly musical legends that I've seen so far.

For me, it also embodies the kind of personal documentary filmmaking that - although very different - that Werner Herzog tries to achieve in his films. Few filmmakers have this talent, but I think Ross McElwee is one of the very few filmmakers who can pull this off and make these kind of "personalized documentary-style films", and at the same time remain a wider view of the world and their surroundings. For me, it's the perfect combination.

[MyNameCriterionForum]

The best thing Ross McWeeney ever filmed occurs at the 13-minute mark of this film.

[Floyd]

Really nice post zedz and I must say I have a lot of admiration for both this film and Time Indefinite which I most recently watched back to back for the first time in awhile. Time Indefinite was much more affecting this time some years later I think because of how time is passing for me and I've dealt with similar losses and issues (death). I have lived in the south most of my life, pretty close to where Ross lives for some years as well and perhaps that helps my understanding of the religious aspects of the film and how families place such an importance on family and marriage. Most of everyone I know were married by the age of 20-23 and that is just how things are done here. It seems not a lot of thought is put into the difficulties of now raising a family and marrying a woman. It is just done because that is what is known and that hasn't changed from the time he made this film to now.

I commented to a friend of mine who is a big admirer of Sherman's March how it almost has this feeling of an epic documentary with so much shift in places and people. As a documentary filmmaker (more experimental than McElwee's narrative) it is pretty stunning how he finds all of these people. From the woman who tells Ross that slavery should be a choice made by the person and the guy now dating his crush that for some reason is transporting statues of animals throughout the area. Of course I've had this feeling there is more eccentric people in the south I think because of its lack of hustle and bustle that they find other ways to use their time. A lot of people do very tedious tasks with their time. I suppose I can see why people would just be bothered by his ramblings and what not but I never really thought of it as being some McElwee spilling his troubles as much as it is showing how it is to be where you are from and have these different moral ideas weighing down on you from your family and childhood.

[Camera Obscura]

The best thing Ross McWeeney ever filmed occurs at the 13-minute mark of this film.

Forgot to mention the film is funny as hell. Some truly laugh-out-loud moments, for me anyway..

I don't see a separate McElwee thread, so I might as well bring it up right here. Has anyone seen his latest film In Paraguay (2008) ? I have a bit of a hard time imagining McElwee rambling around in Paraguay, but apparently, he and his wife have adopted a Paraguayan infant girl named Mariah.. hence the trip to Paraguay...

[zedz]

As a documentary filmmaker (more experimental than McElwee's narrative) it is pretty stunning how he finds all of these people. From the woman who tells Ross that slavery should be a choice made by the person and the guy now dating his crush that for some reason is transporting statues of animals throughout the area.

I think his passive persona is important: people just keep opening up to him - even the new boyfriend can't conceive of him as a threat. I've heard criticism that McElwee's inclusion of that bonkers defence of slavery is somehow 'unfair' - that the woman is included simply to make her look ridiculous - but as far as I'm concerned, if somebody says something that asinine (and gloriously spot on for the themes of McElwee's film) on camera, it deserves to be immortalised.

For those interested, there's a great interview with McElwee in Scott MacDonald's A Critical Cinema 2, which goes into a lot of detail about the filming of Sherman's March. (It's an essential volume all round, with extended interviews with Su Friedrich, Yoko Ono, Peter Watkins, Michael Snow, James Benning et al.)

[hearthesilence]

I was hoping this would get a new scan and at least a high-def release, so I checked with a Google search and found this clip. Disappointedly, it's merely SD and perhaps an indicator that First Run still has the rights, but surprisingly, Claudia's real-life daughter (seen in the clip) chimes in on the comments thread every few years and it's pretty touching:

"I am so grateful though that I can come to YouTube and see my mother as she passed January 15th of 2004. So when I have watched the video it's amazing to hear her voice as I don't remember it quite as Angelic or Southern LOL.

"Yes this is a great bird's-eye view and to life at the time..... Ross definitely had an eye. He definitely made himself cozy in the lives of these women, whether truly welcome or not he definitely got into the intimacy of their lives just being women. I know at the time my mother was really sweet but it was super stressful for her and she did not enjoy being in front of the camera. Well it seemed a huge imposition and her life at the time it is absolutely precious to look back at now."