Our Paul Gratton takes a look at the new documentary of Remake, now in limited release in North America.
ABOUT: Filmmaker Ross McElwee has spent forty years recording himself and his family, creating documentaries that chronicle the shifting contours of American society through the lens of personal history. His son Adrian grew up inside those films, and eventually began experimenting with the camera himself. When a Hollywood producer acquires the rights to adapt McElwee’s 1986 breakthrough SHERMAN’S MARCH into a work of fiction, twenty-year-old Adrian sees a chance for his father to finally reach a wider audience. As the adaptation stalls, Adrian gets swept into a deepening drug addiction and dies from a fentanyl overdose, leaving behind hours of personal video footage. Retracing Adrian’s final years, McElwee reckons with what his camera captured and what remained hauntingly out of frame. As he reflects on a lifetime behind the camera, Ross’s own effort to remix and remake the movie that Adrian never got to finish takes on new significance. An ever-expanding hall of mirrors built from decades of home movies, REMAKE is both McElwee’s attempt to hold onto his son, and to let him go.
Reaction: Generally speaking, most personal diary-type documentaries are insufferably self-indulgent and seemingly made for the therapeutic benefits of the filmmaker and not with much regard for the audience. However, the masterpiece of this type of filmmaking is undoubtedly Sherman’s March (1985), ostensibly a historical doc about General Sherman’s March to the sea near the end of the Civil War, which turns into a rather hilarious personal diary as the young filmmaker breaks up with his girlfriend, loses interest in the subject matter of his doc, and awkwardly tries to date a variety of mostly Southern belles. It was self-deprecating, entertaining as hell, and probably inspired way too many filmmakers to pick up a camera and film their own lives, instead of going to see a therapist on their own time. So McElwee has probably earned the right to continue to make personal docs that interweave family matters with other issues. His docs in the intervening years, such as In Paraguay, (about the three months he spent in South America with his wife trying to adopt a daughter) generally premiered at the Venice film Festival and had little impact theatrically after those premieres. But now McElwee is back with Remake, a sort of summary of his life since the success of Sherman’s March, with a focus on his son Adrian, who died at a tragically young age in his late 20s, and a series of visits with the scene-stealing flamboyant advice-giver from Sherman’s March, Chelsea Swansea, who is seen suffering from the onset of Alzheimer’s and can’t even remember making the film. It is therefore a sad and heartfelt film, made by an aging filmmaker who has experienced much fame and success, but also has many regrets, as clearly expressed in this film. Perhaps more than most, McElwee has earned the right to work out his feelings on film for all to share. But anyone expecting the Woody Allen-esque humour of Sherman’s March should be warned that this is an entirely different kind of documentary voyage. It is about memory and loss and the inevitable passage of time. And it is suffused with sadness and regret, which is actually quite moving, if you like this kind of thing.
Rating: 6 out of 10
REACTION is now in limited release in North America.