Sherman’s March, starring, written and directed
by Ross McElwee
8 out of 10
Notes and
thoughts on other books are available at:
- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEVa4_CsRStSBBDo4uJWT8BSWtTTn0N1E
and http://realini.blogspot.ro/
Sherman’s
March is an interesting, outré and thoughtful film.
It was
included by The New York Times on its list of Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made:
Ross
McElwee is a one man band.
He has set
on to film the effects of the Sherman March through the South, during the
American civil War.
But although
the destruction that was severe, the many victims of that terrible war are
mentioned, the March takes little from the 2 hours and 37 minutes of this
documentary that can also work as a sort of autobiography.
For most of
the time, we hear the hero, who plays himself and is also the narrator, talking
about himself and his love interests.
If we look
at the list of names, the credits list five names from the McElwee family and then
the rest are friends or people met on the road.
One of
these friends is a would be actress that is very erotic and engaged in a
strange, daily exercise that we see on film.
If I am not
mistaken, she even mentions something about the effort being easier without
underwear, but I did not see this detail on the screen.
The actress
likes the camera, maybe the other way round too, and obviously relishes the
focus on her and her every move.
Alas, the
protagonist falls in love with this attractive and self-absorbed woman, who has
to go to film a movie and so this venue is closed.
At another
stage, we meet another couple of women, a mature one that had been the hero’s
teacher and a young prospect.
The former
teacher is very outgoing and somewhat controlling and maybe even tyrannical,
determined to get a result.
She wants
to see Ross married with her protégé and not just that, but before Christmas
and with children soon after the wedding.
The problem
is that the young bride to be is very religious, an adept of the Mormon Church
and she wants the spouse to join that faith too.
So we have
here another deception and the prospect of getting a girlfriend is stopped in
its tracks and Ross moves on.
He meets
some survivalists, a very strange group that even use their guns to blow up
some dynamite, and I do not see why …
But then
nothing of what they did, planned to or said made any sense, these being some
fundamentalists waiting for the end of the world.
Which may
come, but just because we are polluting the planet and the results will be
catastrophic if serious action is not taken.
Another strange
woman that we meet, through the hero, writer and director of this documentary
is a former girlfriend.
This one
does not know what she wants, even if she is a lawyer, and she keeps hanging on
to a man that seems to be no good for her.
But after
long discussions in which the ex-girlfriend showed symptoms of living in
another reality, finally there is some success.
Not with
the woman who has lost touch with this world, but another living again in an
awkward medium.
She lives
in the wild, where she does everything- well, almost- like centuries ago, even
if she is a very educated, perhaps she even has a doctoral degree…
Finally,
finally!! Ross is getting somewhere with
this woman of the woods that we see naked on a few occasions.
They have
intimate relations, although there is someone in the background that comes back
once Ross is off the premises.
And this apparently
successful match, coming after so much pain and “Games People Play” (a classic
by Eric Berne) does not have a long time fruition.
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