Sherman’s March is considered one of the documentary greats so I decided to finally watch it. Sherman’s March is a historically, politically and socially aware wannabe, Woody Allen take on The Bachelor set in the South. I thought that it would never end. I suppose in the 1980s, before there was reality TV, it was considered more anthropologically daring to explore people in doomsday prepper groups or actresses that want to make it big, but those people are a dime a dozen today. Sherman’s March is two and a half hours long so to say it was a bit repetitive and unfocused would be an understatement. Ultimately Sherman’s March is autobiographical so your enjoyment of the documentary will be directly proportional to your ability to relate to the filmmaker, Ross McElwee.
After I finished watching Sherman’s March, I decided to do a Google search on Ross McElwee. I discovered that is a professor in the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies at my alma mater, Harvard University. In the interest of full disclosure, I’m not sure if he was there when I was, or if he was one of the professors who annually rejected my application into his filmmaking class. (I was the only History and Film Studies concentrator, i.e. major, in the school. I can say that confidently because I created that course of study.)
I wish that I could say that bitterness affected my opinion of Sherman’s March, but I had no conscious idea that Sherman’s March’s director may have crossed my path before watching the documentary. After watching the documentary and over a decade later, I still would have liked to take that class since I could have learned a lot from McElwee about technical filmmaking. The class could have changed my life, but maybe if I did take it, things would not have worked out anyway. I usually love any documentary, but I do not like his style even if it was revolutionary for the time. If he was one of the professors at the time, the feeling may have been mutual if it was not just a numbers game. C’est la vie.
The emperor has no clothes. Skip Sherman’s March.