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As a film studies professor, I recognize Sherman’s March (1986) by Ross McElwee as an example of a performative documentary. In this type of doc, the filmmaker appears onscreen, stages interviews with his or her subjects, and intervenes directly in events. The film becomes as much about the filmmaker as it does about the subject. Though made famous by Michael Moore in such films as Roger and Me (1989) and Bowling for Columbine (2002), this type of doc actually precedes Moore’s work. Michael Rubbo’s Waiting for Fidel (1974) follows Rubbo and a group of Canadians who had made arrangements to meet and speak with Fidel Castro in Cuba. Rubbo intended to make a documentary about their meeting. Every day, the party waited for Castro; every day, their meeting was postponed. With little else to do, Rubbo decided to shoot footage of his party visiting sites in Cuba. They never did meet Castro, hence the title Waiting for Fidel.
Performative documentaries are never objective, and they are not about dispensing information. Viewer response to a performative documentary will likely depend on tolerance of the filmmaker’s personality as well as an interest in the subject matter. The value of this type of doc is that it is a snapshot of our society at a given moment in time filtered through a personal lens. It can be a personal response to an important issue of the day, or a collection of details of everyday life.
But that’s the film studies professor in me. Sherman’s March is about a man on the rebound looking for a new relationship so he doesn’t feel so awful. The first time I saw Sherman’s March was after a bad break-up. I found myself relating to the film even though McElwee’s presence was annoying at times. Like anyone who second guesses themselves after an unexpected break-up, McElwee was in need of a new relationship—which I knew from experience would not satisfy him. But, I understood the impulse.
McElwee had intended to make a documentary about the long-term effects of General William Tecumseh Sherman’s devastating campaign across Georgia and the Carolinas during the Civil War. McElwee had received a $9,000 grant to finance the film, and he was in possession of a camera and sound equipment when he stopped in New York to see his girlfriend. It was at that point that she broke up with him, leaving the filmmaker with that lost, lonely, and wicked feeling familiar to those who have been there.
Though McElwee more or less travels the same route as General Sherman, the film contains little Civil War history. It consists of McElwee rebounding his way through Atlanta, Savannah and Columbia, South Carolina. His efforts to establish a lasting connection or a relationship with various women is the subject of the film. He refers to Sherman’s March as “a meditation on the possibility of romantic love in the South today.” The footage and the informal nature of the narration give the doc the look and feel of a home movie, but there is structure to the narrative and rhythm to the editing that makes it interesting to watch, even strangely compelling at times. Home movies never have structure and rhythm, as anyone who has ever sat through someone’s wedding video can attest.
During his romantic sojourn, McElwee is smitten with a spirited, almost ditzy actress whose ambition is to meet Burt Reynolds. At the time, Reynolds was Hollywood’s top box-office attraction, according to the Quigley Publications poll of exhibitors, so her goal is not as eccentric as it might seem. Of course, she was more interested in her career than in settling down. In Atlanta, an interior designer introduces McElwee to a group of survivalists who are building bunkers in the mountains. That didn’t work out either. By far, my favorite romantic interlude was when McElwee took up with a linguist named Winni, who was living on an island just off the coast of Savannah. With only one other person on the island, her lifestyle is best described as roughing it, or perpetual camping. I was reminded of the flower children from the 1960s who wanted to get back to the purity of nature to escape the phoniness of modern life. It’s not that I would ever be interested in living that way, even with a romantic partner, it was just fascinating to watch as McElwee acclimated himself to her lifestyle and to her goals. After an idyllic few weeks, he leaves for what he truly believes is a short period of time. Once gone, he finds it difficult to go back to living in such isolation. When he did return some months later, Winni had taken up with the only other person on the island. McElwee stuck around for a short time, but their interactions were painfully awkward. Did he really think she would wait indefinitely?
I was struck at how different each woman was—an extroverted actress, an introverted linguist. There was also a rock singer and a feminist lawyer. Though the feminist already had a partner, that did not stop him from pursuing her. In the middle of a rally to support the Equal Rights Amendment, he tries to talk about their personal relationship. In the film he notes, “With consummate timing, I insist on talking to Karen about our relationship in the midst of 10,000 angry women.” It was at moments like this that I was completely annoyed with McElwee, thinking, “Isn’t that just like a man.”
Watching Sherman’s March again recently, I realized that McElwee’s “meditation on romantic love” is also a time capsule of the styles, trends, political issues and dating rituals of the early 1980s. It almost made me nostalgic for a time when men and women met for the first time in person and lived in their own little worlds—a time before social media, online dating sites, and cell phones determined and controlled relationships.
Susan Doll