Well today we finished watching what I thought was probably the most ridiculous attempt at a documentary I have ever seen: Sherman’s March by Ross McElwee. In the beginning, Ross walked back and forth sweeping what looked like an empty apartment in a city high rise. He told the audience that this documentary was going to follow William Tecumseh Sherman’s march through the South. He made a comparison between himself and Sherman because both of them tried hard and something, and even when they succeeded, people viewed them as a failure. Sherman marched to the sea to prove he was not a failure, but nobody accepted him. All of Sherman’s loves were also disasters and Ross seemed to want to reenact Sherman’s own life. What was ridiculous about this film was that Ross McElwee never actually seemed to document Sherman’s march. Instead the film ended up being about how pathetic and depressing his life was. At parts this film was almost comical, whether Ross meant for this to be so or not. He tried to act professional, but he was mostly just awkward in his attempts. During a particular scene, he sets up the camera and begins talking about the cannons fired over this river. Then as Ross backs up more and more, he eventually falls down through the thick, tall grass and landing what looked like in the river’s edge. But why did Ross decide to leave this in the documentary when he had plenty of pointless other footage to cut it? As a matter of fact, most of the film was pointless footage. The strange women he meant along the way were a complete distraction from his original goal. Not only were they distracting, but they were also extremely annoying. One of the first women claimed to be an aspiring actress, and perhaps only to have film time, stayed around Ross. She wanted him to tape her exercises which were hilarious and awkward to watch at the same time. Ross claimed to forget to turn the sound on but as our professor pointed out, perhaps he only wanted to audience to pay no attention to her words but only her somewhat sexual or provocative stretches. The film had I do not know how many women involved and it eventually became a film on the women of the South. Another strange thing about Ross was his crazy dreams about a nuclear war. I understand that at the time, nuclear attacks were very feared, but why did he have these elaborate dreams that he could not detach himself from: and what did it have to do with Sherman’s March? Although most of this film was meaningless and irrelevant to Sherman’s March, there were small parts of historical information which appeared more documentary-ish. I contemplated writing my second paper over this film, but without much regret, I went against it. Although it might be quite easy to pick a topic, the pain of watching this over again would be too much.