what Ross McElwee is too canny to say, in maintaining his fumbling neurotic underdog persona, is that in retracing Sherman's campaign through the South he has also become him, returning from the North to the region he once loved, and blazing his own trail through it by way of sexual conquest (aside from his two exes, consensus among the women i saw this with is that he slept with the linguist—that's a given—the nightclub musician, and possibly Pam the actress, and there are a couple of subtle reframings of his camera-eye that made me whisper "you dirty dog").
His bearded beta vibe, in contrast to the fling-them-across-your shoulders goold-ol-boy masculinity of his nemesis Burt Reynolds, is one of several ways…