Sherman's March

Sherman's March, directed by Ross McElwee was a linear closed documentary. McElwee used the voice of God narration in the beginning, and some of the images were random. McElwee shot this film in a participatory mode because you can see and hear him. He is often speaking to his subject and can be seen in random shots where there are mirrors. He used word/signal phrases on word titles. This film could definitely be considered an avant-garde film because of its extremely unusual characteristics. There are points of no narration in this film, for example, when Pat is doing her cellulite exercises, he turns off the sound on the camera. There are other instances like this where he seems to be so focused on his subject he cannot narrate at the moment. It can be considered to have been shot by an amateur camera man because of the many times you see the camera and McElwee often hugs his subject and leaves the camera to focus on nothing or to be jostling around. There are constant interviews that constitute for the narration, there is no one narrator. There is a mix of historical places and just following Pat around randomly. There is often dim lighting throughout the film, and at one point McElwee even films himself, so he obviously needed a tripod for that one scene in his hotel room. There were also points where McElwee stayed focused on one frame but spoke a lot. For example, the moon in the sky was the focus, but he was rambling about the A bomb tests. There were also not always smooth transitions between frames.

When relating to the masculine conquest in this movie, you can relate the title to Sherman's actual military march which was a conquest of destruction, McElwee had a romantic conquest in the film, the camera (the way he used that to attract the women to him and also gave him something to talk about), the car work ( an attempt to be masculine by McElwee) , and the nuclear war (a way to get out aggression in his mind).