User reviews

"Sherman's March" has some outstanding moments that capture the difficulties of relationships, but the lengthiness and lack of focus make it difficult to praise. The overall structure of the film is a clever look at the unpredictability of an artist's focus, in that filmmaker Ross McElwee set out to make a documentary about the Savannah Campaign and ended up making a film about his failed relationships. But McElwee's free-form approach to storytelling is the sole cause of the films only major flaw; at a whopping 157 minutes, it's padded with excessively long shots and pointless detours, including several attempts to find Burt Reynolds. It's impossible to become fully absorbed in the story when the subject repeatedly shifts from history lesson to love triangle to stalking celebrities. Ultimately, this film is worth viewing for its glimpses into the human condition and the interesting characters that enrich McElwee's travels (I especially like Charleen). However, much like the filmmaker, you may need to distract yourself periodically to make it to the end of this exhausting reflexive journey.

Ross McElwee, a native Southerner, started off wanting to make a straightforward documentary film about General Sherman's march, but then his girlfriend broke up with him. The result is an idiosyncratic and personal documentary, as McElwee tries to film his Sherman movie but can only obsess about the various women he meets along the way, and his own personal failings.

"Sherman's March" is funny because of its many characters and lines of dialogue that are so crazy, you'd never believe them if they were in a fiction film. Best of all is Charleen, McElwee's former teacher, who is convinced that Ross just needs to sweep a girl off her feet--even if he's never met her before. And nearly all of the young women McElwee meets come across as kooky--two of them believe that the Apocalypse is imminent and another considers herself a "female prophet." Many of them are attached to men who also seem weird or distant. A feminist lawyer, whom McElwee considers the lost love of his life, wishes she could love him, but is instead obsessed with a guy who collects giant plastic animals. Like I said: you can't make this stuff up.

The Sherman theme crops up now and then, but McElwee could have done more with it. At one point he discusses the strength and courage displayed by the women of Atlanta when Sherman destroyed their city, then cuts to some footage of two self-absorbed actresses--you can't help thinking that Southern women have diminished in quality over the last 100 years. But he never picks up this thread again.

"Sherman's March" is a rambling movie, and at over 2.5 hours, way too long. And though McElwee's deadpan observations, delivered in voice-over, are frequently amusing, he is also a masochist, which diminishes our sympathy for him. He spends time on a near-deserted island, where he is tortured by mosquitoes, ticks, and the knowledge that the only two other people on the island are an attractive female linguist and her boyfriend. Later, he breaks things off with a hot musician (one of the few women who doesn't seem like a kook) in order to agonize over the aforementioned lawyer. Moments like these just make you frustrated with the filmmaker and his quest, not approving of it.

McElwee has done many other similar works, some more deeply moving -- the one about his father the doctor, for instance. But this gives a great introduction to his "style" -- the guy who takes the camera everywhere and films his life, and not just in trivial ways -- ala web cams today. A tribute to women -- and women rate it much higher than men, as the imDb voting demographics show. This pre-dated the well-known and wildly successful "Sex, Lies, and Videotape" -- some would call it an outright steal or rip-off of "Sherman's March." As far as I know, McElwee had nothing to do with and is not credited in "Sex, Lies, and Videotape. "Sherman's March" clearly influenced "SL & V," to put things more mildly. SL&V has marketing written all over it, from the title to the stars (admittedly not as famous during the time of the shoot as now), and in its focus on sex and masturbation, particularly. "Sherman's March" has indie-film written all over it; it's not about stars, only indirectly about sex, and everyone plays themselves: it's a documentary. I liked all of that and it was a fresh approach when it first came out. Most such films are not done skillfully, thoughtfully, or edited well enough to make for excellent viewing. You may or may not like McElwee personally; he's a bit of an odd-ball, but a kindly one. His women friends are the focus here, however, and he wisely gets out of the way most of the time. Well worth your time.

Ill admit it.......I liked the three hours of woman chasing and obsession. Ross begins his documentary intent on the journeys of W. Sherman. Sherman was a southerner turned "yankee" during the civil war. Sherman's march through most of Georgia and the Carolina's left a painful scar of our country in troubled times. Ross parallels this scar to that of his present day life. Present day 1986 that is. And quite easily, this documentary changes tone as Ross becomes obsessed with the women he encounters on the way. At times he does jump back to "Sherman's March", but the lure of lust and love prove to be too much for Ross.

After seeing this movie, I ask myself, What did I just see? It took a while to think about this documentary, and it opens up thoughts of life and love. I really want to know if this was calculated to document a mans love of women, or a mans love of war. Sit down, watch, and be amazed by the documentation of life in this era, by following the path of a civil war leader.

First off, I'm not sure what this movie has in common with "The Road Warrior," which is one of the movies recommended on the IMD "if you enjoyed this movie." This movie cannot be compared with most other films because it is a documentary about the search for one man's inner happiness. Ross McElwee is a filmmaker commissioned to make a movie about the Civil War. Right before he begins his odyssey, his girlfriend leaves him. He's stuck with a camera and no inspiration to follow Sherman's trail through the south. His new odyssey is quite different than any historical documentary, and thank God for it. It is so wonderfully entertaining and funny because McElwee is a well-spoken, charming and insightful filmmaker. And a natural comedian to boot! His struggle to find true love in the modern south plays like a country fried steak version of Woody Allen. And the women he encounters are nearly as unforgettable and entertaining. This film and his follow-up, Time Indefinite, seem to serve as his personal catharsis. Normally I would cringe at the thought of watching someone make a movie just to better him or herself. But I have yet to see a more personal and entertaining documentary than Sherman's March.

An interesting documentary, it combines historical fact and autobiography together to produce a rather unique experience. It follows Ross McElwee around while he is trying to collect footage that can be edited into a documentary on General Sherman. For the first hour or so, the premise stays fresh and original, with highly effective narration and interesting characters that are real. Ross McElwee and his team of post-production editors would needed to have edited down from hours and hours of footage, however the final running time of two and a half hours is still too lengthy. Some of the kept footage seems to serve no purpose either. It is innovative, original and reflects something very true about all documentaries: that they are ultimately subjective, showing what the filmmaker believes and feels. McElwee compares his journey in the film to Sherman's actual march, which is a fascinating example of this type of subjective expression. Like all forms of art, documentaries are able to express something about the artist. The artist in this case, however, just does not quite know how to trim down what exactly he wants to say, but what he does say is interesting nonetheless, and you do learn something about General Sherman too.

I intended to watch only the first ten or fifteen minutes of this film, on a recommendation by a professor. I ended up watching the whole 2 hours 40 minutes, engrossed at every turn. I don't know why this film is so good; by all rationale, it probably ought to have turned out to be dull and pretentious. Instead, Sherman's March is an incredibly patient and passionate examination of oneself, the pain and frustration that come with mid-life depression, and the quasi-comic mystery surrounding Southern culture. I don't often find myself so enveloped in documentaries, particularly those that stop pursuing their apparent narrative ten minutes in and take on a totally new and divergent direction. But this film works. In filming his relationships with a number of different women over the course of a year, McElwee reveals himself to be a deeply frustrated individual, whose penchant for chasing life with a camera proves both constructive of an insightful film, as well as destructive to his own sense of balance and structure in his own life. The result is often funny, occasionally discomforting, and periodically profound. One sequence ends with McElwee's filmed conversation with a woman with whom he has tried to forge a romantic involvement out of an ancient friendship; the sharpness with which they speak to each other is jolting. McElwee manages to evoke an entire persona for himself - whether authentic or not - with scenes like these, at the same time drawing an insightful - if slightly overblown, though satirically so - comparison of himself to William Tecumseh Sherman and his devastating Civil War march through the South. This is a remarkable film for its willingness to examine the subtext of its maker's life.

Ross receives finance to produce a documentary on Sherman's bloody march through the southern states of USA during the Civil War. But the subject of looking for a wife sidetracked him as he followed certain women who had the potential to be Mrs. McElwee. Funny at times, this doco suffers from its running time. But the parallels between Sherman's violent march and McElwee's peaceful march through the States in search of love is an interesting concept in itself.

I love this film. I remember seeing it years ago on a NYC PBS station on a rainy night and I was immediately drawn into it. A southern documentary filmmaker starts to make his film about Civil War General Sherman but he breaks up with his girlfriend and goes back home down south and starts filming everyone in his life (his parents, his siblings, his friends) and they are all giving him advice on his struggling film career and his love life and they all try and fix him up with all these "southern belles" and he just films it all. It is fascinating and funny and real. Well, as real as life can be when you know someone has a film camera on their shoulder and they are filming you. I also highly recommend the two follow-ups to this "Time Indefinite" and "The Six O'Clock News". Ross McElwee is an incredibly talented filmmaker and a sweet, neurotic human being who has no trouble baring his soul on film. Check this film out.

This is an unfortunate waste of a good film concept. Despite a few mildly amusing characters, the story plods along and comes off as little more than an unedited high school project. Taking such a subject as love, lust, relationships and all that goes with them was intriguing at first. But then the point was repeated and belabored and handled inexpertly. The main character's life is pitiful, yes, but not as pitiful as his attempt at art. There are other, much better pseudo- documentaries in the indie world to spend time on. Save yourself 2 1/2 hours and don't see this one.

If Ross McElwee was aiming for a movie about a very sad, very pathetic man, then he hit the target. Unfortunately for him he made a mockery of himself instead of actually getting to a point with this uninspired, unintentionally funny documentary.

Let's start at the beginning. Mr. McElwee sets out to make a documentary on a man named Sherman, a famous General who destroyed a lot of things in the South during the civil war. Well, we get to learn a small amount about General Sherman throughout the film, facts that have no real context in the rest of the movie.

Now, let's get to the real point of the movie. Ross takes his camera on a mission to find out why his 'ex-flames' never really liked him. Well, I can tell you why they didn't like him just from watching this video: HE'S INSANE. The women he dated were insane. There was no sense of reality in any of the conversations he had with any of the females; the only one that seemed slightly sane he made CRY.

I think my favorite part in this movie is when he, Ross, takes the camera to a woman he sort of saw in High school. This happens to be the only sane person in the movie, mainly because she didn't continue seeing him afterwards. He takes her to a park and proceeds to badger her to get the reasons why she didn't 'love' him. He goes as far as to say, "WHY DON'T YOU LOVE ME?" to her. After she's literally about to break down, she tells him to cut the camera off. Does he? No. He proceeds to be a jerk.

I was told that this movie was good. It was not. I was told that this move was funny. Only because it was very sad.

This is a horrible movie. Watch it only if you wish to feel better about your own life, and/or to laugh at a very sad, very pathetic hairy little man.

Sherman's March is three hours of footage from a broken man's life. Ross McElwee takes us on a journey to make a documentary on Sherman's March, but ends up showing us a sequence of extensive real life footage from his subsequent crisis in love. The picture feels like a home movie. Experiencing so much of the director's personal life is an unusual experience and takes the motion picture somewhere it doesn't often go. However, the movie is long and I feel it should have been further edited for the public. it is a bit egocentric to expect people to spend so much time watching some random guy's life.

Ross McElwee sets out to make a documentary about the lingering effects of General Sherman's march of destruction through the South during the Civil War, but is continually sidetracked by women who come and go in his life, his recurring dreams of nuclear holocaust, and Burt Reynolds.

This epic documentary has received high praise. I can understand why, but it is rather weird and almost no documentary at all. What was allegedly supposed to be an investigation of Sherman's march to the sea, it instead seems to be the director's ongoing attempt to get romantically involved with a series of women.

As far as documentaries go, this one works well in an offbeat sort of way (like "Grey Gardens") but I think ultimately fails because it doesn't really document anything. After almost three hours, the only thing viewers will learn is about the pursuits of Ross McElwee, which hardly seems worth knowing. Prior to renting the film, I had never heard of McElwee.

The first 1/2 hour poses an interesting premise. However, by the time I passed the second hour, I had had enough. It slows to a halt, and never gets moving again. I decided to give Sherman's March a second try, and made it all the way through.

This was a mistake. If you want to see a good premise badly executed, this is the paradigm. If you want a good movie, march away and choose something else.

Yowch! Some of these comments are so negative! The anonymity of the internet seems to have spawned this new subculture of jaded dissing. I've seen "Sherman's March" four times (and its sequel, "Time Indefinite," twice) and loved it every time. It's true that this movie is very slow, very long, and very subtle, but those are not necessarily flaws. If you watch "Sherman's March" with that it mind, it can be a tremendously rewarding experience - touching, subtly funny, and thought-provoking. Ross McElwee will never have the commercial viability of Quentin Tarantino or Arnold Schwartzenegger or whoever, but I don't think his "home movies" are intended to be viable. They're just intended to be good old-fashioned well-crafted art. Some people get mad when movies have no freakishly attractive people or satisfyingly pat endings or giant explosions, and some people feel grateful. This movie is for the latter camp.

I say pseudo under the definition of pseudo-event--I think that is Boreman? Anyway, hilariously real account of a romantically experienced and entangled male going back into the past. A lot of future film makers-documentary folks have claimed this in their verbal bibliographies. Check it out!

A brilliant documentary ostensibly about a man tracing General Sherman's swath of destruction across the south that won the civil war for the North. What it ends up being is a video journal of Ross McElwee getting hooked up or trying to hook up with a variety of southern ladies, from an aspiring model to scientist living in a small island in a lake by herself. Watching "Sherman's March" is like discovering a great novel for the first time. Though it's relatively obscure, the American Library of Congress was right to include this among their important historical works. It's every bit as personal as "Crumb" and as politically complex as Micheal Moore minus the soap box. The lines between personal, political, fiction, documentary, history, and present are blurred from the beginning, and this only continues for two hours where McElwee's personal scars mirror the blasted landscape Sherman carved, and just as equally the South's selective memory when it comes to the war. McElwee says "Sherman really loved the South. It must have been a terrible choice to make to destroy it.", and so continues to echo a southern Gothic tradition of ambivalence and nostalgia through the personal documentary medium way ahead of its time. Sherman's March" is complex, awkward, sad, sweet, and very funny, a film so rich in character it's impossible to forget.

Unique--insightful and humane, never succumbing to the temptation to satirize the failings and fallacies evinced by the almost-too-real people the filmmaker documentarizes. And the viewer learns a surprising amount about William Tecumseh Sherman as well, a Sherman clearly admired by the filmmaker (a Southerner), who identifies with him in some characteristics. See it if you can--nothing like it.

perhaps it's a function of age and geography, but if this is what the younger generation of Americans is like, i am glad i lived at a better time.

mcelwee attempts to emulate errol morris but has a long way to go. mcelwee, with his narcissistic focus on himself, something morris always avoids, manages to record (as opposed to filming, because the recording mostly concerns his puerile musings on his own love-life) a lot of drivel. and at 2 1/2 hours you can imagine the size of the pile!!!

there was definitely some salvageable material in the film if viewed as a portrait of the south,but i don't know how the movie could have been organized or edited to save it.

I wish I had more time to write a review but Sherman's March is simply one of the greatest and most epic documentaries ever created. Rarely do epic two and a half hour documentaries show themselves to be worth watching, but this film does. Straddling between the lines of Richard Leacock (strict verite style) and later more intrusive styles, Ross Mcelwee pushes forward through his adventure and we are right by his side every step of the way. I believe some critic once said Mcelwee points his camera with "phallic resolve" toward the women he meets. This is indeed true. I wish I had time to say more.

Watch the film. It is a tour de force of documentary filmmaking.

It seems as though pride and responsibility have left director Ross McElwee long before his journey to find Sherman. If he would have stuck to the assignment and not been so self deprecating he may have had some successes in his documentary and maybe even some in his life and we viewers might have actually learned something. Instead he only succeeds in being a creepy stalker schooling himself in unhealthy, regressive isolationism and cowardly fear of nuclear holocaust. These qualities are equally reflective in his failed personal relationships that leave him to snuggle-up with ticks and mosquitoes in a tree house. The most we get from the movie is the satisfaction that we are not Ross and that we have a bed indoors.

After seeing this documentary "Sherman's March" by Ross McElwee in 1986, I was so confused and had no idea what the main point of this "documentary" is. My first impression was that why the title of this film is called Sherman's March? There are only a few parts about Sherman's history and background. I have no idea why he wanted to name this long film "Sherman's March"? Besides, the major part of this documentary / biography is about the women he met and his inner fantasy for nuclear war. If the director could change the title, and remove General Sherman part, this documentary could be a nice piece about man, woman, and love. In my personal opinion, McElwee's inner mind could be dark and invisible - it reflects on his insomnia and bad dreams. However, these women having different background could be lighthouses for him to guide him to a new peaceful world. Then I think in the process of seeking love, and he could realize what he really wants by meeting different women around him. He used his own voice to narrate what he is thinking and what is in his mind when he saw different people and experience different things. I think it is quite unique - the camera becomes his eyes and audiences see what he saw through the frames and the movie not only recorded all these people he met, but also became a tool for the director to analyze himself. Even though I think this is not Sherman's March - instead, it is Women's March! I still think the content itself is quite interesting and funny. The director's unrestrained and vigorous thought and humorous conversation actually made the "path way" to "true love" more interesting.

Okay... like everyone who probably came across this, they thought it was a documentary about The Civil War. But clearly after reading the back of the DVD you see that it's not. So I knew what I was getting... a documentary about a lonely man in search of love.

It's got so much in common with Grey Gardens. I just enjoyed being there with McElwee and all of his mumblings about death and war and his phobias. It's a tender movie about love. He takes us from one love to another very slowly.

YES IT'S SLOW, you idiots! But SLOW doesn't mean bad.

Ya'll act like y'all got better things to do. YOU DON'T!

I saw that film when i studied films in england, i liked the director's techniques with his subjects.First of all he provokes them in order to get more informations from them, second he manages to become intimate to the viewer with his monologues that take the form of a confession.Many commented that his life is pathetic, maybe so, but it takes courage to expose to the public some very 'personal' moments.Many people might comment about the ethics of documentary, because sometimes he seems to abuse some of his subjects, or even mock them,i have a specific scene in my mind:When he interviews one of the so called patriots,inside a snack bar he pans his camera and while we listen to the 'patriotic credo' we watch another man dressed like a clown.I think this is a film that deserves to be seen because it is a prerequisite for people who enjoy BIG BROTHER and other similar assortments, that victimize their subjects sometimes to the extreme.Compared to those SHERMAN'S MARCH is very innocent much more entertaining though.8/10

Sherman's March is one of the best documentaries I've ever seen. Ross McElwee starts out making a film about General Sherman's march through Georgia, North and South Carolinas during the Civil War. It becomes much more of a personal story, as Ross has just broken up with his girlfriend and has trouble remaining focused on his project.

On his journey through the south, he falls for almost every belle he meets along the way. Every near true love dissolves before our very eyes, and the history lesson becomes secondary to the director's longing for a soul mate. He is funny, introspective, and so genuine, that I kept hoping he would find his other half during his expedition.

Although a bit long at over two and a half hours, I never lost interest in McElwee's quest for knowledge and companionship; Sherman's March is a winner.