Burn it all down.

I watched Sherman’s March (1986) tonight. I have no idea how this ended up in my queue. I think it was mentioned in a green cine newsletter. A documentary filmmaker sets out to explore William Tecumseh Sherman, the Union general who waged total war on the South’s civilian population.

Instead he spends a lot more time documenting his ailing love life, talking to a number of Southern women, his fear of nuclear holocaust, and trying to get Burt Reynolds on film. At two and a half hours I was a little concerned that this foray into his mostly trivial and mundane life would be tedious. I quite enjoyed it. Luckily he gets some really good characters like his sister (who’s getting plastic surgery), a flirtatious, exercise fanatic wanna-be actor named Pat and an old teacher who desperately wants him to get married. Along the way he takes little breaks to talk about Sherman.

It should have been awful, a tedious exercise by a self-indulgent documentarian. A Michael Moore without any grand ambition or humor but I was pleasantly entertained the whole time. I think part of it is laughing at trends from the late 70s and early 80s. Another part is how things are the same now as they were in the movie, or even during Sherman’s time.