On Thursday, we discussed the way that the chapter structure of The Hour of the Furnaces is a limitation on the truly active form that the essay mode typically takes. We discussed the way that breaking up the topic by chapters keeps the documentary from flowing from one idea to another freely. I was very confused by this idea, until we watched Sherman's March. However, after watching this film, I think that I am beginning to understand this concept. I appreciated in Sherman's March the way that Ross McElwee flowed from one concept to another in a way that felt really natural. He would be talking about a woman, and then would suddenly be talking about an aspect of Sherman's March across the South. He moved from woman to woman, and between discussions of various topics in a way that was illuminating to the topic at hand, and that did not feel incredibly contrived or purposeful. It just felt like he was talking to us, and that we accompanied Ross McElwee on a journey.
There is a quote from the reading that really resonated with me, in relation to the way that Sherman's March is structured. "This mode is an active one, in which a proposed idea or question is tested by a range of means and intersecting lines of argument. One stab may lead to a tangentially related concept, personal anecdote, or new approach, providing a serpentine, unexpected, and present tense realness to the journey. Quite often, an essay does not arrive at a finite conclusion, yet the ideas discovered during the process may reshape and reinform the initial query in unforseen ways" (Fox, 44). In the journey that Ross McElwee took us on, many of the various pieces came from tangents. For example, the parts of this documentary that dealt with the state of McElwee's automobile were all tangential to the true topic that was being discussed. Actually, everything in this film that was not specifically discussing Sherman, and his actual, historical march was tangential to the original topic at hand. This film was one long, fantastic tangent.
Just like the reading says, I don't think that we really ended at a finite conclusion at the end of this documentary. Of course, we did end up at the end of Sherman's historical march, and at the physical end of Ross McElwee's journey. However, I do not think that there was much resolution at all in the state of McElwee's love live or of his feelings on love in general. I think that this was not purposeful, and that it just ended up happening, and that it just happened to be a hallmark of essay mode. Even though the entirety of McElwee's personal journey was tangential to Sherman's March, it was apparent that both topics were able to inform the same theme in a way that I had never before considered.
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