"You should use the camera as a way to meet women…." What begins as an attempt to retrace the path taken by General Sherman and his Union soldiers in their devastating sweep through the secessionist South, becomes, in the words of McElwee's sister, a brokenhearted filmmaker's clumsy chivalrous quest to find love. In his most celebrated film, McElwee points up the paradox of the inquisitive documentarian: "He's gotten scalded by life, his lover left him, and so he retreats into the mollusk shell of his camera and pokes his head out now and then. Winner of the Sundance Grand Jury Prize".