Remake

I should say that I've never been a big fan of the "personal documentary"—those films in which the filmmaker is also the subject or the narrative device through which the subject is explored. These movies, with their endless POV shots, interviews with people talking informally to the camera, and endless takes of walking through environments while the director explains via voice-over narration what was happening when they shot the footage, have become more and more common as cameras got smaller, less expensive, and ubiquitous. Despite my dislike of the form, I can't deny that some stories are best told this way. In 2024 alone, four of my top five docs were movies in which the director or directors were also the central characters.

78-year-old Ross McElwee is one of the great pioneers of this autobiographical style of documentary. Since the late '70s, he's made films about his life, his family, his friends and mentors, and his Southern upbringing. Through these personal stories, the films comment on the political and philosophical issues of the day. His most famous work is Sherman's March: A Meditation on the Possibility of Romantic Love In the South During an Era of Nuclear Weapons Proliferation. That picture started out as an exploration of the effects of General William Tecumseh Sherman's Civil War campaign through Georgia and the Carolinas, but ended up chronicling McElwee's failed romantic life with several different women.

Remake, his first release in a decade, also starts out as one thing and becomes something radically different and far more personal. Beginning as a documentary about McElwee's participation in Hollywood director Steve Carr's attempts to adapt Sherman's March into a fictional feature, the picture quickly transitions to a harrowing chronicle of McElwee's son Adrian's downward spiral into fatal drug addiction. There have been so many features and documentaries about drug issues in families that I've been somewhat numb to them. That's the reason why I found this deeply personal 1st-person documentary so different and so powerful.

The always-filming Ross presents so much footage of Adrian throughout his childhood that, by the time things turn dark, we almost feel we know the kid. And it's just heartbreaking watching this sweet, happy, loving child first turn into a typically sullen teen and then become a young adult dealing with bipolar disorder and addiction to increasingly stronger, heavier, and more potentially lethal substances. Ross is the first to admit that all his filming may not have been healthy, at least in terms of his family life. His wife and kids seemed to enjoy being constantly photographed and having to communicate with their husband/father through a lens, but this eventually took its toll. McElwee's attachment to his camera certainly contributed to the end of his marriage, and through Remake, he asks himself if including his young son in his films, taking him to film festivals, etc., contributed to Adrian's problems.

It's the question every parent who has gone through this asks. You don't need to be a famous documentarian who has traveled the world to relate to this exact pain. Could I have done anything different? If I had, would things have turned out differently? Was I too lenient? Was I too strict? Was I too focused on myself to see what my child was going through? Am I a selfish person and a terrible parent? These are questions that can never be answered, but that doesn't stop anyone who's gone through this from asking them over and over. In Ross's case, he can play scenes that illustrate, to both himself and to us, choices he is now rethinking. The entire film is a reconstruction of his past decade and further back; an attempt to make sense of his life. The potential Sherman's March "remake" gives him an excuse to visit old friends who were featured in that landmark film. Most of these encounters are also tinged with feelings of sadness and loss.

Remake is a fascinating way of exploring the passage of time and how we humans tell the stories of our lives, both to others and, more importantly, to ourselves. Notably, Adrian McElwee's voice is almost as present in this film as is his father's. There is no shortage of recordings of Adrian at all stages of his life, including a great deal of self-filming he did long after he'd moved away from his parents, and Ross edits this all together in a sensitive, non-exploitative manner that is still incredibly raw and frank. Like most of Ross McElwee's work, it explores a societal issue by way of a fascinating portrait of a family.