Ross McElwee is the film-maker who spun home movies into art, framing himself and his friends and his son Adrian. The director used to film Adrian for a few minutes each month. He tracked the kid from infancy to adulthood, trying to catch the significant turns of his life. When tragedy struck it back-shadowed the footage. Maybe every home movie is a ghost story at heart.<\/p>\n
It feels crass to compliment McElwee on his latest documentary, Remake, because it isn\u2019t the picture he\u2019d ever have chosen to make. It is instead a grief-struck tour-de-force: a magnificent film about film-making and its real-world repercussions. McElwee filmed Adrian because he loved him, but now fears he might have hurt him. So he sifts through the material in search of clues, addressing his son as though he\u2019s still in the room. \u201cI look at the footage to convince myself that you were alive,\u201d he says. \u201cBut also to convince myself that you\u2019re gone.\u201d<\/p>\n
The plan, he explains, was for a completely different film. A Hollywood producer wanted to shoot a fictionalised version of his 1986 documentary Sherman\u2019s March<\/a>. McElwee decided to follow the process \u2013 to make a new documentary about adapting an old documentary. That might be funny, he thought. But events overtook him. Adrian\u2019s mental health was deteriorating. He became addicted to opioids. He died from a fentanyl overdose at the age of 27, in the bathroom of McElwee\u2019s Boston home.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u201cEverything immediately ground to a halt,\u201d the director recalls. \u201cMy son was gone. I was devastated. And compared to everything I was facing, the film seemed banal and frivolous.\u201d He took a year to regroup and plotted a new course.<\/p>\n A more traditional film-maker would have junked the original idea. McElwee has audaciously chosen to preserve it, so that the remake plays as a kind of absurd counterbeat to the anguish of Adrian\u2019s death. The film would have been too depressing otherwise, he says. \u201cAnd in a sense I\u2019m remaking my life by picking up the camera again. I\u2019m reconstructing the life of my son from the scraps and pieces that had ended up being filmed.\u201d<\/p>\n Adrian, we learn, was gung-ho for a Hollywood version of Sherman\u2019s March. Remake shows him discussing the project at length. He feels that his dad should be making more mainstream movies. He says, \u201cWhy not just do some big blockbuster hit?\u201d<\/p>\n Charleen Swansea at McDonald\u2019s, as seen in Sherman\u2019s March. Photograph: Little Field Films<\/p>\n After seeing Remake, I rewatch Sherman\u2019s March. It\u2019s a joyous, insightful, free-ranging affair; a film that delights in taking the road less travelled. McElwee is ostensibly making a civil war documentary, but he keeps being set up with various \u201cnice southern girls\u201d. In one scene, Charleen Swansea \u2013 his voluble former English teacher \u2013 demands that he turn off his camera before a big date. \u201cThis isn\u2019t art,\u201d she roars. \u201cThis is life!\u201d<\/p>\n The success of Sherman\u2019s March made Swansea a cult celebrity. A poll of American critics named her \u201cthe greatest documentary character of all time\u201d. But when McElwee revisits Swansea for Remake, he finds she is now in the grip of dementia. She has no memory of the movie, or of teaching him English. \u201cThings just disappear,\u201d she says with a frown.<\/p>\n \u2018There is a possibility that I was in denial\u2019 \u2026 Ross McElwee. Photograph: Boston Globe\/Getty Images<\/p>\n People disappear, that\u2019s the tragic logic of life. Except that on the screen, in the footage, Adrian still feels alive, which is both a comfort and a torment. McElwee dips back through the archive to show him as a gorgeous, earnest little kid, netting crayfish on the rocks (\u201cI just love the deep surprise of the ocean,\u201d he says). Now here he is again as a tense, watchful teenager, raising his hand to block the camera lens. \u201cThere was no evidence for me that my films were a problem for him,\u201d McElwee tells me. \u201cOverall I would say that they were more a plus than a minus.\u201d All the same, he can\u2019t help but wonder.<\/p>\n Might the issue be one of divided loyalties? McElwee has a set of responsibilities as a parent and a set of responsibilities as an artist. But maybe these are always going to be at loggerheads.<\/p>\n McElwee nods. \u201cYeah, they\u2019re antithetical. And when it works, the antithesis is what gives a film its creative friction. Because it never resolves itself. It\u2019s always part of the problem. You have the camera, which means you have the power and other people don\u2019t. And that\u2019s the big responsibility. You can\u2019t push your subject to say what you want them to say. You have to keep that in mind when you shoot and you edit.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018They recognise what it means to you\u2019 \u2026 Victoria Mapplebeck and her son, Jim. Photograph: Martin Godwin\/The Guardian<\/p>\n If McElwee has a British counterpart, it might be the film-maker Victoria Mapplebeck. On Motherboard<\/a>, her fabulous 2024 documentary, Mapplebeck condensed two decades of life as a working single mother alongside her phlegmatic son, Jim.<\/p>\n After speaking with McElwee, I call Mapplebeck. She says she relates to Remake and the ethical issues it raises. It\u2019s about the compulsion to film and its effect on a family; the granting of consent and how that is understood by both parties.<\/p>\n \u201cWatching it,\u201d she says, \u201cI felt both ashamed and moved. Because the thing with both Jim and Adrian is that at times they do provide consent [to film] because they recognise what it means to you. I think Jim definitely got more from the process than Adrian did. It was a useful way to get us talking. But fundamentally I needed to do it more than Jim did.\u201d<\/p>\n In his 2011 film Photographic Memory, McElwee painted Adrian as a troubled but basically resilient young man. The pair promoted the picture at the Venice film festival. Adrian posted pictures of speedboats, gondolas and wild parties. It should have been a triumphant moment. But McElwee now worries that his film got Adrian wrong and that the subsequent fuss turned his head and caused problems.<\/p>\n \u201cDid I give him a false impression of who he was? That he was more or less invincible and could therefore keep doing drugs?\u201d He doesn\u2019t know; he fears the worst. \u201cFor a child to see himself in a movie that his father has made and to then travel with him to festivals \u2013 often that would be wonderful for both father and son. But then all these other things arose from that. So there is a possibility that it had a corrosive effect on him and that I was somehow in denial about that. It was only later \u2013 after he got into trouble and then after he died \u2013 that I began to see the film in a different light.\u201d<\/p>\n Adrian in Remake. Photograph: Giant Squid Films<\/p>\n I\u2019m glad McElwee has made space for his unquiet old work. It speaks to Remake\u2019s themes of representation and memory, and suggests that a film is never truly finished. The Sherman\u2019s March remake, for instance, is initially billed as a comedy feature from the director of Paul Blart: Mall Cop. We then see it redrafted as a dramatic miniseries and a TV sitcom before it\u2019s finally rolled out as a verbatim live opera. McElwee wonders what his son would have made of all that.<\/p>\n What, for that matter, would he have thought of Remake? That\u2019s the unanswerable question; the director can\u2019t say. \u201cI\u2019d like to think that he came out the other side sober, and that he would think it had honoured him and was honest, and also that I was admitting the mistakes I\u2019d made. But I\u2019ll never know for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n Another thought strikes him. \u201cIt\u2019s also possible that he\u2019d say, \u2018Yeah, this is good but you need to get a proper Hollywood deal.\u2019 He was relentless about that. He liked my films, but I could tell they were never quite up to snuff in terms of the interest they generated and the money they made. He saw them as interesting exercises but a waste of time when I could have been doing something else.\u201d<\/p>\n McElwee is 79 and slowing down. Ideally, he\u2019d like to make one last documentary \u2013 something light, warm and funny. But something is missing: the old itch, the compulsion. \u201cI\u2019ve been to family reunions in North Carolina,\u201d he says. \u201cAlso, I had a nephew who got married. Each time I thought, \u2018Gosh, I should be filming this.\u2019 And I just can\u2019t do it. This whole past year. I want to take a break and let life be life without me trying to turn it into art.\u201d<\/p>\n It reminds him of what Charleen said in Sherman\u2019s March: \u201cThis isn\u2019t art, this is life.\u201d That\u2019s four decades ago now. McElwee almost smiles. \u201cI\u2019m a slow learner,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Remake is out now<\/p>\n In the UK, the charity Mind<\/a> is available on 0300 123 3393. In the US, call or text Mental Health America<\/a> at 988 or chat 988lifeline.org. In Australia, support is available at Beyond Blue<\/a> on 1300 22 4636, Lifeline<\/a> on 13 11 14, and at MensLine<\/a> on 1300 789 978<\/p>\n In the UK, Action on Addiction<\/a> is available on 0300 330 0659. In the US, call or text SAMHSA<\/a>\u2019s National Helpline on 988. In Australia, the Opioid Treatment Line<\/a> is at 1800 642 428 or call the National Alcohol and Other Drug Hotline<\/a> on 1800 250 015<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ross McElwee is the film-maker who spun home movies into art, framing himself and his friends and his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":913548,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[64,63,134],"class_list":["post-913547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=913547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913547\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/913548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=913547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=913547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=913547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}