When Ross McElwee's girlfriend walked out on him, the expatriate Confederate filmmaker decided to channel his frustration into a documentary of William Tecumsah Sherman's destructive campaign across Georgia during the Civil War. But along the way something unexpected happened: the project began to evolve into a roving chronicle of McElwee's own unsuccessful love life. With his camera fixed firmly to one shoulder the erstwhile historian trekked across Dixie in search of true love, meeting a diverse (and often eccentric) assortment of Southern belles and, in the process, creating a remarkably funny and insightful self-portrait. The finished film is both a fascinating account of the creative process ("I was filming my life in order to have a life to film", says McElwee) and a unique, all-too human comedy recalling, at times, the self-deprecating charm of Woody Allen. But McElwee's more personal vision (relating the romantic quest to his nightmares of a nuclear holocaust) resists any easy comparisons, because the truth he discovers is not only stranger but (by far) more funny than fiction.
Review of Sherman's March
