Okay I don't remember the exact quote but it goes something like, "The crowd could tell the cavalry's legs from the infantry's legs because the infantry's calves were bigger." It is one of the rare scenes that McElwee (almost said Ross) actually discusses Sherman's battles and how gory it was with soldier's random dismember body parts laying all over the battle field.
First, let me say that this documentary was awesome. At times I wondered if he had planned this all out and he knew all along that he was going to go on a 'love' search but claim it was suppose to be about Sherman.
One reason I believe this documentary worked as well as it did was because there was such a dichotomy of themes. For a good bulk of the movie McElwee chases around five or six southern girls attempting to find love, but then there are these historical and at times violent scenes, such as above, interwoven within the love story (not to mention the random nuclear war dreams). Because of this I am still baffled as to what the exact point of this movie is, but I have a theory.
My theory is that McElwee wanted to document Sherman's love for the South versus his destruction of the South. McElwee frequently mentions that Sherman loved the south, he painted portraits of it's landscape, wrote letters to his friends up North about it's beauty, and even gave reasonable terms of surrender for the Confederate army. These reasonable terms caused people in the north to rebuke him, thus he was not at home in the North or the South. McElwee parallels Sherman. Both suffered for insomnia, fits of depression, and a sense of not belonging. So when McElwee's heart is broken by Anna he decides to leave off this path of destruction and focus on love.
Question: What do you think the point of this documentary is?
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