Ross McElwee's SHERMAN'S MARCH (1985)
"You're not as interesting because you're so self effacing and polite!... How can you be a filmmaker if you don't have any passion?"- Charlene Well, on the one hand McElwee does capture some remarkable footage of deep-fried and (ftankly) well meaning Southernerns talking about the decidedly mixed legacy of Sherman and his March (and the "death and destruction" as one woman says bluntly in an off the cuff interview), not to mention some Civil War pageantry. And there's even something to the parallels to the (then, still relevant) fear and dread over Nuclear annihilation always hanging over a then still prevalent Cold War threat. When McElwee keeps the focus on visiting those sites and even a Nuclear war protest (because in the South most of the Nuclear waste gets sent there from the North), and when he can successfully thematically connect himself to Sherman in a manner of speaking - how the futility but persistence of Sherman and himself with relat
