I thought this documentary was the funniest and the best one that we've seen. I'm not sure I understood the objective of this film though. At first I thought it was going to be a war documentary about Sherman's March, but it turned out to be more about this guy's quest for finding a female companion/love interest. So it seems like this documentary ended up differently than how it started or maybe that was just his style and approach.
I agree that this is the best documentary we've watched so far, but I'm still trying to grasp exactly why. It was extremely hilarious and I have no doubt that the director meant for it to be such, maybe not when he first began filming, but it certainly stands out in the editing. One scene that shows this is when he is drinking (I think at his parents house, while they are asleep) and talking directly to the camera about Sherman. He seems to drone on about the guy and the history of the civil war and thats all: just a history lesson. This was the only instance in which I completely tuned out of the movie. And then about a minute and a half into his speech I snapped out of my day dream and realized what just happened and I cracked up. The director purposely included that scene to show just how frickin boring an actual documentary solely about Sherman's March would have been, and I really appreciate his humor about it too.
My favorite thing about the film is that much of it is real while at the same time, so much of it is (seems) staged. I don't think the director actually set off to do a documentary on Sherman at all, I think rather that statement is just a front for the connection the director wanted to make between himself and Sherman (though I don't understand the full connection).
It's also interesting that there isn't a real sense of time in the film. Like Grey Gardens, I was unaware (and didn't really care) of exactly how much time passed between the women the director filmed. It gave me the age-old feeling that the journey is as important, if not more, than the destination. You don't really need to find the perfect love in a certain amount of time: you should just experience life, and face the changes that happen within it. The director brought his experience to us.
Shot wise, I was surprised to find that scenes were not as artsy as in other documentaries we've watched. What I mean is that the director (while holding the camera) did not intentionally try to make shots look a little better from different angles (like what was done in Titicut Follies). This definitely added to greater realism, as if we are looking at the world like any normal person. Though I do recall the director in one scene filming one of the women on the left side of the screen, while he appeared with his camera in a mirror on the right side. I guess the opportunity was too good to pass up...
I agree with Patrick. So much of Sherman’s March seems real and purely coincidental but then again things just worked out too well in Ross’ favor that I truly question was some of it staged or not. However I’ll cling on to my hope that it was all real and if so, to me this is the purest example of cinema verite. For the longest I considered films like Grey Gardens and Don't Look Back cinema verite but after watching Sherman's March I think the definition "cinema of truth" works best with this film. Ross wasn’t attempting to objectively follow someone or tell two sides of a story, instead a bad break-up led him to just document his life and the women in it which just so happened to unfold with great drama and humor.
I think that while he didn’t try to be artistic-- I guess-- his knowledge of how a camera can capture a story worked extremely well in his favor. His use of close-ups and zooms worked very well to express his feelings and thoughts on certain women. And I especially loved the parts where he "forgets to turn on the sound" which I'm not sure was purely an accident or not due to how effective the scenes were when he did that. The best being when Pat’s showing off her “exercising” which is perfect to not have sound because seriously what man would actually listen or care to what she was saying while thrusting her naked pelvis around?
Overall I thought it was a great documentary that makes me want to go out and watch more of his documentaries however I’m sure they won’t be as good considering this was made on a whim. But this movie also gave me hope that if I walk around with a camera long enough I can bang as many people as I want.
Documentaries, despite having the advantage of being about "real" life, are rarely as personal as fictional films. Sure I've said that Michael Moore makes his films personal, but only insofar as he treats whatever irks him as an antagonist, and Morgan Spurlock's Super Size Me is exactly the same way. There is always something rather impersonal about taking a subject and making a film that attempts to create a truth about it because the filmmaker (presumably) wants to create something that can be universally understood and digested.
I guess that's what strikes me the most about Sherman's March, is how intensely personal it is. The people above me have written about how little pretense it makes towards having a subject - McElwee occasionally returns to the Union general, but mostly the film is one long digression. Instead of trying to present a truth about history or culture it presents a truth about lived experience, or at least the experience of one man over an indeterminate amount of time, or as his fussy friend from Charleston said, "This is not art, this is life!"
A majority of the time we are tethered to McElwee's visual perspective, looking through the camera at the world as he experiences it. We've talked a lot about post-production - angles and editing constructing truth after the footage is shot. Here, we see a lot of the same thing (how many people ACTUALLY believe McElwee accidentally turns off his tape recorder while Pat pantomimes sex), but here there is no hidden agenda: the filmmaker is presenting his perspective about the world around him, the truth as it appears to him, and you are more than welcome to take or leave it. Again, the fussy friend from Charleston: "Are you using that camera because you don't want to be with us?" I would argue he's doing something else entirely, using the camera because he wants us to be with him.
The last quote I often think of from this film is one of McElwee's own, "Filming a life in order to have a life to film." At a certain point in the film we see that the project has consumed him entirely and it is what drives him everyday, that he is now looking for it to provide some essential truth about himself. He fears annihilation, perhaps viewing his visual record of his experience as a defense against mortality. He continues to make the film, regardless of his amorous setbacks, because it provides him the companionship and perspective that relationships cannot. It is telling that he chooses to end the film by saying he's asked his teacher out, since it seems to imply a happy ending. Now that he has someone else, he no longer needs William Tecumseh Sherman.
I meant to also mention that I think so many people are enjoying this film because it is such a uniquely human experience to view. I think this is due in large part to the fact that he only seems to interact with human beings with a camera in front of his face, giving the viewer the complete McElwee experience. There is no ambiguity about his feelings for or perspective on any of the women in the film, and the audience finds itself identifying with and immersed in McElwee's persona in a way that fiction film so rarely achieves. So to sum up I think what people like about this movie is their recognition of their own humanity in Ross McElwee, with all his flaws and affectations.
This film was my favorite yet. When I first heard we were watching something title Sherman’s March, I started preparing myself for a boring History Channel special. That said the film definitely surprised me. I think the main reason this film was so easy to watch is because of Ross’s personality. Every time he begins to talk about Sherman I wanted him to go back to Pat’s house or go talk to Charlene again. He created an almost hybrid documentary style, whether he meant to or not, by switching his topic back and forth. This film is similar to Grey Gardens but I think the directors participation in the film made it much more interesting. Like Patrick, I also zoned out for a second when Ross is addressing the camera. I remember his funny suit and the alcohol but no specific information about Sherman.
This film is one of the funniest and most awkward documentaries I have ever seen. I like the style in which McElwee presents the film, specifically turning the camera on himself as if, Dr. Roberts mentioned earlier, presenting an auto ethnographic documentary focusing on his struggle with the women that come in and out of his life. The camera becomes his confessional not only for him be his audience.
I cannot help but think the title and film itself is very symbolic of McElwee's struggle with woman. Supposedly, as we are to assume, his intention was to track the life and significant aspects of Sherman's historic march throughout the south. However, he becomes the subject of the film and the one marching throughout the south in search of the right woman. The film becomes an autobiography so to speak involving his history and connection with the numerous women presented throughout the film.
This documentary examplifies Dr. Roberts' suggestion that one cannot go into producing a documentary pursuing one particular story with a closed mind. One must be open to new ideas that are bound to come about. Documentaries are, in part, meant to raise questions and then attempt to answer them. One of the main elements of pre-production is research. The more you find out about a story the more questions come up about it. The idea should be to answer them instead of avoiding them.
In the case of Sherman's march, his questions did not come about during pre-production but rather during production of the film. He began researching about the civil war but ended talking about his personal life/relationships. The main turning point of the film is when he turns the camera to himself and shares his questions with us. What ultimately ends up driving the film forward is his pursuit of the answer to the overarching question, "why am I still single?" What makes the documentary intersting is the way the audience begins discovering the story with him. It could be said that because he allowed himself get swept away by his questions the final product turned out to be a million times more interesting than whatever he would have done had he ignored those questions and continued doing the civil war documentary.
I thought this documentary was the funniest and the best one that we've seen. I'm not sure I understood the objective of this film though. At first I thought it was going to be a war documentary about Sherman's March, but it turned out to be more about this guy's quest for finding a female companion/love interest. So it seems like this documentary ended up differently than how it started or maybe that was just his style and approach.
ReplyDeleteI agree that this is the best documentary we've watched so far, but I'm still trying to grasp exactly why. It was extremely hilarious and I have no doubt that the director meant for it to be such, maybe not when he first began filming, but it certainly stands out in the editing. One scene that shows this is when he is drinking (I think at his parents house, while they are asleep) and talking directly to the camera about Sherman. He seems to drone on about the guy and the history of the civil war and thats all: just a history lesson. This was the only instance in which I completely tuned out of the movie. And then about a minute and a half into his speech I snapped out of my day dream and realized what just happened and I cracked up. The director purposely included that scene to show just how frickin boring an actual documentary solely about Sherman's March would have been, and I really appreciate his humor about it too.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite thing about the film is that much of it is real while at the same time, so much of it is (seems) staged. I don't think the director actually set off to do a documentary on Sherman at all, I think rather that statement is just a front for the connection the director wanted to make between himself and Sherman (though I don't understand the full connection).
It's also interesting that there isn't a real sense of time in the film. Like Grey Gardens, I was unaware (and didn't really care) of exactly how much time passed between the women the director filmed. It gave me the age-old feeling that the journey is as important, if not more, than the destination. You don't really need to find the perfect love in a certain amount of time: you should just experience life, and face the changes that happen within it. The director brought his experience to us.
Shot wise, I was surprised to find that scenes were not as artsy as in other documentaries we've watched. What I mean is that the director (while holding the camera) did not intentionally try to make shots look a little better from different angles (like what was done in Titicut Follies). This definitely added to greater realism, as if we are looking at the world like any normal person. Though I do recall the director in one scene filming one of the women on the left side of the screen, while he appeared with his camera in a mirror on the right side. I guess the opportunity was too good to pass up...
I agree with Patrick. So much of Sherman’s March seems real and purely coincidental but then again things just worked out too well in Ross’ favor that I truly question was some of it staged or not. However I’ll cling on to my hope that it was all real and if so, to me this is the purest example of cinema verite. For the longest I considered films like Grey Gardens and Don't Look Back cinema verite but after watching Sherman's March I think the definition "cinema of truth" works best with this film. Ross wasn’t attempting to objectively follow someone or tell two sides of a story, instead a bad break-up led him to just document his life and the women in it which just so happened to unfold with great drama and humor.
ReplyDeleteI think that while he didn’t try to be artistic-- I guess-- his knowledge of how a camera can capture a story worked extremely well in his favor. His use of close-ups and zooms worked very well to express his feelings and thoughts on certain women. And I especially loved the parts where he "forgets to turn on the sound" which I'm not sure was purely an accident or not due to how effective the scenes were when he did that. The best being when Pat’s showing off her “exercising” which is perfect to not have sound because seriously what man would actually listen or care to what she was saying while thrusting her naked pelvis around?
Overall I thought it was a great documentary that makes me want to go out and watch more of his documentaries however I’m sure they won’t be as good considering this was made on a whim. But this movie also gave me hope that if I walk around with a camera long enough I can bang as many people as I want.
Documentaries, despite having the advantage of being about "real" life, are rarely as personal as fictional films. Sure I've said that Michael Moore makes his films personal, but only insofar as he treats whatever irks him as an antagonist, and Morgan Spurlock's Super Size Me is exactly the same way. There is always something rather impersonal about taking a subject and making a film that attempts to create a truth about it because the filmmaker (presumably) wants to create something that can be universally understood and digested.
ReplyDeleteI guess that's what strikes me the most about Sherman's March, is how intensely personal it is. The people above me have written about how little pretense it makes towards having a subject - McElwee occasionally returns to the Union general, but mostly the film is one long digression. Instead of trying to present a truth about history or culture it presents a truth about lived experience, or at least the experience of one man over an indeterminate amount of time, or as his fussy friend from Charleston said, "This is not art, this is life!"
A majority of the time we are tethered to McElwee's visual perspective, looking through the camera at the world as he experiences it. We've talked a lot about post-production - angles and editing constructing truth after the footage is shot. Here, we see a lot of the same thing (how many people ACTUALLY believe McElwee accidentally turns off his tape recorder while Pat pantomimes sex), but here there is no hidden agenda: the filmmaker is presenting his perspective about the world around him, the truth as it appears to him, and you are more than welcome to take or leave it. Again, the fussy friend from Charleston: "Are you using that camera because you don't want to be with us?" I would argue he's doing something else entirely, using the camera because he wants us to be with him.
The last quote I often think of from this film is one of McElwee's own, "Filming a life in order to have a life to film." At a certain point in the film we see that the project has consumed him entirely and it is what drives him everyday, that he is now looking for it to provide some essential truth about himself. He fears annihilation, perhaps viewing his visual record of his experience as a defense against mortality. He continues to make the film, regardless of his amorous setbacks, because it provides him the companionship and perspective that relationships cannot. It is telling that he chooses to end the film by saying he's asked his teacher out, since it seems to imply a happy ending. Now that he has someone else, he no longer needs William Tecumseh Sherman.
I meant to also mention that I think so many people are enjoying this film because it is such a uniquely human experience to view. I think this is due in large part to the fact that he only seems to interact with human beings with a camera in front of his face, giving the viewer the complete McElwee experience. There is no ambiguity about his feelings for or perspective on any of the women in the film, and the audience finds itself identifying with and immersed in McElwee's persona in a way that fiction film so rarely achieves. So to sum up I think what people like about this movie is their recognition of their own humanity in Ross McElwee, with all his flaws and affectations.
ReplyDeleteThis film was my favorite yet. When I first heard we were watching something title Sherman’s March, I started preparing myself for a boring History Channel special. That said the film definitely surprised me. I think the main reason this film was so easy to watch is because of Ross’s personality. Every time he begins to talk about Sherman I wanted him to go back to Pat’s house or go talk to Charlene again. He created an almost hybrid documentary style, whether he meant to or not, by switching his topic back and forth. This film is similar to Grey Gardens but I think the directors participation in the film made it much more interesting. Like Patrick, I also zoned out for a second when Ross is addressing the camera. I remember his funny suit and the alcohol but no specific information about Sherman.
ReplyDeleteThis film is one of the funniest and most awkward documentaries I have ever seen. I like the style in which McElwee presents the film, specifically turning the camera on himself as if, Dr. Roberts mentioned earlier, presenting an auto ethnographic documentary focusing on his struggle with the women that come in and out of his life. The camera becomes his confessional not only for him be his audience.
ReplyDeleteI cannot help but think the title and film itself is very symbolic of McElwee's struggle with woman. Supposedly, as we are to assume, his intention was to track the life and significant aspects of Sherman's historic march throughout the south. However, he becomes the subject of the film and the one marching throughout the south in search of the right woman. The film becomes an autobiography so to speak involving his history and connection with the numerous women presented throughout the film.
This documentary examplifies Dr. Roberts' suggestion that one cannot go into producing a documentary pursuing one particular story with a closed mind. One must be open to new ideas that are bound to come about. Documentaries are, in part, meant to raise questions and then attempt to answer them. One of the main elements of pre-production is research. The more you find out about a story the more questions come up about it. The idea should be to answer them instead of avoiding them.
ReplyDeleteIn the case of Sherman's march, his questions did not come about during pre-production but rather during production of the film. He began researching about the civil war but ended talking about his personal life/relationships. The main turning point of the film is when he turns the camera to himself and shares his questions with us. What ultimately ends up driving the film forward is his pursuit of the answer to the overarching question, "why am I still single?" What makes the documentary intersting is the way the audience begins discovering the story with him. It could be said that because he allowed himself get swept away by his questions the final product turned out to be a million times more interesting than whatever he would have done had he ignored those questions and continued doing the civil war documentary.