Although the film opens with a stodgy professor describing Sherman's role in the Civil War, the unwieldy subtitle that follows that introduction is far more telling; specifically "A Meditation on the Possibility of Romantic Love in the South During an Era of Nuclear Weapons Proliferation." With that, McElwee has introduced his two greatest obsessions: women and The Bomb. In fact, these fixations seem inextricably linked for the filmmaker, his recurring dreams of nuclear holocaust coinciding with disaster in his love life. Such disasters are fairly common for the mild-mannered McElwee, and he admits he's never been in a successful relationship. There has always been some imbalance of affection, some element of unrequited love, and in the film we see McElwee on both sides of the equation. If there is any central theme to the film, a shaky proposition at best, it's the filmmaker's attempt to understand the fairer sex and why he seems doomed to fail time and time again.
Despite that failure, the film leaves no doubt that McElwee loves women, and perhaps more importantly, he respects them. One would be hard pressed to name one Hollywood film in the past 10 years that offers so many three-dimensional portraits of women, with all the complexities and inconsistencies that inevitably surface. Beginning his own march at a family picnic in the mountains of North Carolina, McElwee meets Pat, an aspiring actress who dreams of making it big in a Burt Reynolds film and enjoys the attention of the camera, even while doing her "cellulite exercises." In the wrong hands, she could come across as self-involved and empty-headed, but the film never takes such a superficial angle. McElwee admits he is fascinated by her and treats her with real affection, appreciating her ambition and unwavering optimism, refusing to reduce her to a bad stereotype.
