\u201cSherman\u2019s March\u201d<\/a> into a movie. That landmark picture features McElwee, then in his mid-30s, as he tries to chronicle the exploits of Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, who laid siege to the South during the Civil War. Except, in the midst of that project, McElwee\u2019s focus shifts, delightfully, to his disastrous love life and the fascinating women he meets in his travels, becoming a deeply humane examination of modern courtship.<\/p>\nCarr doesn\u2019t seem like an obvious choice to oversee a narrative remake, but McElwee decides to sell him the rights anyway. Soon in \u201cRemake,\u201d though, it becomes apparent that this is just one chapter of the story \u2014 and hardly the most essential. McElwee\u2019s last film, 2011\u2019s \u201cPhotographic Memory,\u201d dealt with his increasingly frayed connection to Adrian, who was already fighting substance-abuse issues. \u201cRemake\u201d retraces Adrian\u2019s childhood while filling in the details of the director\u2019s life after \u201cPhotographic Memory,\u201d including brain surgery and the dissolution of his 24-year marriage.<\/p>\n
But Adrian is never far from his thoughts or absent from the screen: this smiling, happy boy slowly transforming into an edgy, troubled young man whose sweetness still occasionally shines through.<\/p>\n
The passage of time is central to McElwee\u2019s work, but he\u2019s rarely scrutinized the topic as aggressively as he does here. It\u2019s not simply that we watch Adrian age or revisit some of McElwee\u2019s \u201cSherman\u2019s March\u201d subjects. (\u201cSherman\u2019s March\u201d is now screening in a new 4K restoration at the Laemmle Royal with \u201cRemake.\u201d) It\u2019s also in the way that McElwee\u2019s formerly wry narration now sounds far more resigned, his voice grown froggy and hushed as he nears 80. McElwee has often pondered the downside of essentially treating himself like a human camera, observing the world rather than fully engaging in it. But in \u201cRemake,\u201d he openly questions his artistic approach and, fittingly, he lets his son be his loudest critic.<\/p>\n
As a boy, Adrian is enchanted by McElwee\u2019s filming. In childhood, he paints an abstract picture of God in which the Almighty eerily resembles a movie camera. But although Adrian soon picks up a camera as well, increasingly interested in being a filmmaker himself, he resents how his father intrudes on their time together by constantly shooting their conversations. McElwee\u2019s scenes of them at the Venice Film Festival for the \u201cPhotographic Memory\u201d premiere are especially fraught, Adrian\u2019s prickly reaction to a movie about his drug abuse creating tension between the two men at the subsequent press conference.<\/p>\n
In \u201cRemake,\u201d McElwee laments that he didn\u2019t do enough to help him navigate addiction and the mental-health issues that exacerbated it. (Adrian was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.) Was McElwee too consumed with his own career to be there for his son? The question haunts \u201cRemake\u201d \u2014 he includes an indelible sequence from \u201cSherman\u2019s March\u201d in which his longtime friend Charleen upbraids him for always having the camera out. \u201cThis isn\u2019t art,\u201d she hollers. \u201cThis is life!\u201d Did McElwee never come to appreciate the difference?<\/p>\n
A eulogy that also serves as an apology, a reckoning and a confession, \u201cRemake\u201d is filled with moments that are crushing because of how understated they are, none more brutal than when McElwee visits Adrian near the end of his life, when he\u2019d moved to Colorado to get a fresh start. \u201cHe seemed to be doing OK,\u201d McElwee recalls thinking. \u201cBut I always leave knowing I\u2019m probably not seeing the whole picture.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even now, poring through his footage, desperately looking for clues, McElwee pines for that larger view \u2014 the one that might somehow bring the boy back to his inconsolable father.<\/p>\n
‘Remake’<\/p>\n
Not rated<\/p>\n
Running time:<\/b> 1 hour, 54 minutes<\/p>\n
Playing: <\/b>Opens Friday, July 17, at Laemmle Royal<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"p]:text-cms-story-body-color-text”> \u201cRemake\u201d has a tragic tale to tell and director Ross McElwee wastes no time revealing its grieving…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":939526,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[28],"tags":[22762,19728,171,1020,81102,378275,378276,378274,3250,378272,3196,53,286017,378273,214934,12295,6620,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-939525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-adrian","tag-director","tag-entertainment","tag-film","tag-filmmaker","tag-happy-boy","tag-human-camera","tag-lost-son","tag-march","tag-mcelwee","tag-movie","tag-movies","tag-own-life","tag-photographic-memory","tag-remake","tag-sherman","tag-time","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116931436699743004","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/939525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=939525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/939525\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/939526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=939525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=939525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=939525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}