Celluloid Companionship
I don’t remember how exactly I discovered the documentary director Ross McElwee. Most likely it was a piece in Film Comment on Bright Leaves, his most recent film, which came out in 2003. It’s not, however, very likely that the article convinced me of the stunning personal connection offered by McElwee’s films, since it wasn’t until many months afterward that I actually sought out a DVD copy of one of his films, Sherman’s March, for myself.
Besides the actual content of the film, which you’ll read about soon enough, I loved the unexpectedness of this discovery. I had not encountered McElwee at all in either my formal education in the media studies department or my extracurricular reading anywhere outside of that single issue of Film Comment. It’s not a great shock when revered classics like The Seventh Seal or 8 1/2 turn out to be personal favorites, but for a film or director to seemingly come out of nowhere like this, from my perspective, was infinitely more delightful.
Such issues, though, matter far less than the way Ross McElwee crafts his first-person documentaries with such an endearing and seemingly scattershot sensibility, which is almost immediately apparent in Sherman’s March. Given the pretext on which he acquired financing for the project, the viewer might expect a fairly serious documentary tracing the steps of General Sherman on his destructive march to Atlanta during the Civil War. Within minutes, however, McElwee winds up off track at a family reunion, looking for (non-incestuous) love with help from his relatives. Later in the film, in another fine example of the meandering course the film takes, he turns the camera on himself late at night, trying not to wake his family while whispering about his uncertainty regarding the future of the very film he’s making, along with the sudden paradoxical realization that if someone is indeed watching this late night confession, he must have finished the project.
This movie, the subtitle of which is A Meditation on the Possibility of Romantic Love in the South During an Era of Nuclear Weapons Proliferation, turned out to be a powerful experience. I’d gotten a glimpse of what personal cinema could be from Jonathan Caouette’s critically acclaimed Tarnation, assembled from video he’d shot throughout his childhood and early adult years, but this hit me on a deeper level, perhaps because I’ve been fortunate enough never to have had to deal with the pain and abuse Caouette details in his film.
The effect of McElwee’s friendly “voice” as the director, narrator, and star of the film is amplified by the fact that the viewer is present as somewhat major life events, albeit edited, are occurring on camera. More than a motion picture photo album, it’s almost like the best, most honest episode of Blind Date ever produced, except both funnier and far more insightful. He gets romantic advice and encouragement from his friend and former teacher, Charleen, who is adamant that he get married and reproduce as soon as possible. That their somewhat intimate conversation is being filmed is not so weird; it’s the fact that since McElwee is behind the camera, as the viewer is behind the screen, I started to feel as if I was the one being criticized, especially since I share a lot of the personal flaws that Charleen picked up on in the filmmaker.
At first the departure from serious documentary to something more informal and personal seemed as if it would be merely diverting, and McElwee does retain a sense of humor throughout. There are moments where you can tell he must be excited to have some ridiculous situation fall so serendipitously into his lap with the camera running, such as when an aspiring actress he’s attracted to asks if he wants to watch her do stretches in her underwear (he does). But as the film progresses McElwee becomes a semi-tragic figure, continually falling in love with women who either leave for another city or state far too soon or with whom he is clearly incompatible. I kept waiting for some redeeming success story or surefire advice to come out of all this, but life, even on camera, isn’t a trite romantic comedy, and I was forced to make the distinction between traditionally blissful celluloid fantasies and the reality that true relationships require effort, sacrifice, and a lot of sheer luck.
When I finally saw Bright Leaves around Labor Day, it was more like catching up with my old friend Ross than watching a movie, and that sort of easy experience can be difficult for those of us with a more critical or analytical mindset. A nagging (and in this case, wrong) voice in the back of our heads suggests that something so effortlessly enjoyable can’t be enriching, can it? Deep personal connections are hard enough to find anywhere, though, much less through a mediated experience like the movies, and thus I suspect that Ross McElwee’s films will continue to be discovered for a long time to come, one enchanted viewer at a time.
Andy Slabaugh (http://andyslabaugh.blogspot.com) is enjoying his first autumn away from school in 17 years and wonders just how long it will be until the truancy officer comes calling.
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