A brilliant documentary ostensibly about a man tracing General Sherman's swath of destruction across the south that won the civil war for the North. What it ends up being is a video journal of Ross McElwee getting hooked up or trying to hook up with a variety of southern ladies, from an aspiring model to scientist living in a small island in a lake by herself. Watching "Sherman's March" is like discovering a great novel for the first time. Though it's relatively obscure, the American Library of Congress was right to include this among their important historical works. It's every bit as personal as "Crumb" and as politically complex as Micheal Moore minus the soap box. The lines between personal, political, fiction, documentary, history, and present are blurred from the beginning, and this only continues for two hours where McElwee's personal scars mirror the blasted landscape Sherman carved, and just as equally the South's selective memory when it comes to the war. McElwee says "Sherman really loved the South. It must have been a terrible choice to make to destroy it.", and so continues to echo a southern Gothic tradition of ambivalence and nostalgia through the personal documentary medium way ahead of its time. Sherman's March" is complex, awkward, sad, sweet, and very funny, a film so rich in character it's impossible to forget.
Review of Sherman's March
