The Gleaners and I

Rating:
Summary: as touching as ever
Review: Agnes Varda is so clever and unique in dealing with this unusual theme. This work is as beautiful as other works of Varda, her camera lens will take you to those scenes which you never notice but will be deeply moved. With graceful and lithe tempo, you'll follow her into a trip you never know.

Rating:
Summary: topic is close to my heart; film leaves much to be desired
Review: First of all, the use of yellow subtitles was a terrible idea! Half of the time, I was struggling to make them out.
Secondly, why oh why did she film her hands and her hair? Yes, there is something poignant about aging and not recognizing your own hands BUT please tell me what this has to do with gleaning. Even better, the dancing lens cap made me motion sick. Overall, this film covers some interesting aspects of gleaning and gives a good superficial overview but has many idiosyncrasies that don't add charm- they just make it weird.
It covers gleaning (after harvest) of wheat, potatoes, food from garbage cans, grapes, figs, apples, cabbage, discarded appliances, water, food left after markets. The lawyers "in the field" are pretty funny and interesting.

I wish she would have addressed the psychological aspects of gleaning. Gleaning can lead to hoarding, which is in some cases a psychological disorder. For example, consider the case of the Collyer brothers, "the hermit hoarders of Harlem," who in 1947, were buried by the piles of urban junk that filled their four-story Harlem brownstone. If you're interested in this topic, I really enjoyed the movie called Unstrung Heroes with Cosmo from Seinfeld playing a hoarder.

Rating:
Summary: Waste not, want not.
Review: Gleaning refers to the practice of scavenging and recycling grain left behind by farmers at harvest time. It has been practiced for many centuries and is the subject of Jean-Francois Millet's famous painting "Les Glaneuses". Today the act of gleaning continues and is the focus of this insightful documentary. Agnes Varda travels throughout France filming people scavenging vegetables and produce dumped in large heaps on empty fields that have been determined unfit for sale at the market. It is a wonder to think of the abundance of edible food that is thrown out. Many individuals interviewed by Varda would certainly starve if it weren't for gleaning; they depend on scavenging to make ends meet.

Also interesting is how artists glean through the trash to build art pieces along with other eccentric individuals who have a tendency to horde bits of useless objects thrown out on the curbside. But there are many instances throughout the trajectory of this film that were just too weird for my taste, such as the bit about the dancing camera lense cap and the constant filming of her hands. It was difficult for me to make sense of these segments. Regardless, other aspects of this documentary are well worth watching and present many poignant questions regarding the waste of developed countries in the midst of unfortunate individuals. Recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Superb film from a long overlooked filmmaker
Review: One of Agnes varda's best films, created using a small digutal camera, as she documents the lives of the scavengers in France who live on the stuff that other people throw out. Compassionate, brilliantly composed, and widely distributed around the world (except in the US, where only mainstream junk receives any real distribution), this is a brief, funny and epigrammatic film that any real lover of cinema should check out. Varda is the forgotten founder of the French New Wave, and she is finally attaining some measure of the respect she deserves. Along with VAGABOND, this is one of Varda's very best works.

Rating:
Summary: An Engaging Documentary
Review: Quite simply, this was easily my favorite film released in 2001. The filmmaker Varda takes an immensely thoughtful look at contemporary gleaning practices and compares them to the gleaners of the past, particularly those potato field pickers seen in the famed Millet painting. Of great note is her use of digital video and how she considers this medium as a form of gleaning as well in that one can easily pick and choose among the remains ones collects in the camera. Lurking near the surface always are the concepts of age and decay, made all the more heartfelt by the aging filmmaker who pauses often to consider her advancing years.

Rating:
Summary: Absorbing, original and genuine
Review: Quite simply, this was easily my favorite film released in 2001. The filmmaker Varda takes an immensely thoughtful look at contemporary gleaning practices and compares them to the gleaners of the past, particularly those potato field pickers seen in the famed Millet painting. Of great note is her use of digital video and how she considers this medium as a form of gleaning as well in that one can easily pick and choose among the remains ones collects in the camera. Lurking near the surface always are the concepts of age and decay, made all the more heartfelt by the aging filmmaker who pauses often to consider her advancing years.

Rating:
Summary: Perhaps my favorite film on the nature of film
Review: The explicit subject matter of this film is "gleaning": the long-standing but currently threatened practice of taking up and making one's own what others leave behind. On that subject alone Agnes Varda has created a remarkable documentary, that covers the history of gleaning, its legal aspects, the wide variety of gleaning practices, and most importantly the people who glean for a number of reasons, not all of which have to do with poverty or destitution.

What interests me most about the documentary, however, is the way in which Varda connects her own practice as a filmmaker to the practice of gleaning. After all filmmaking and especially documentary filmmaking depend upon and take up the remains of reality, that aspect of reality that can be taken for free, and the taking of which does not diminish the possession of its owners. In that sense, filmmaking is essentially gleaning, and in arguing for the rights of gleaners, Varda is also providing a defense of her own practices. What is nice about her involvement in the film is that while she is always present, and while she includes herself among the gleaners presented in the film, she does not in any way push herself upon the viewer. As much as I love the films of recent auteur documentarians such as Moore and Spurlock, there is something very refreshing about the way in which Varda makes her presence felt in this film.

What is perhaps even more remarkable about the film than this provocative analogy is the way in which her film subtly raises questions about the nature of film and responds to a long-standing debate on this topic. There are two major strands of thinking about what is distinctive of film. One is the tradition of thinking (e.g. Bazin) that takes its example from the work of the Lumiere brothers: that film is about taking up reality as it presents itself and preserving it for the viewer, revealing it in a way that is potentially more complete, more detailed and more compelling than its ephemeral presence in time. The other tradition takes its example from George Melies, and suggests that film is illusion, that what is distinctive to film is the capacity to take realities and reorganize them into something new, that is at a remove from reality. In this film, what Varda does is suggest a provocative combination of these approaches. The example from her film that illustrates this is her account of the "junk artist" (I can't remember his name) who takes up trash (what nobody wants) in order to make something of it that compels attention, a work of art. This film is able to accomplish just such a creation.

My favorite "scene" in the film is her discovery, by chance, in a thrift store, of a painting that combines several of the images of gleaning that she had been discussing in her historical overview. She says, roughly, in a voice-over: "this really happened, I didn't make it up." There's something very telling about this scene: that even in a documentary, one must call attention to the reality of the events depicted, for we all know that events can be fabricated. It is such a nice and simple reminder that "realism" is itself a style, and from her early film "Cleo from 5 to 7" to this film Agnes Varda continues to prove herself a subtle master stylist.

Rating:
Summary: An Engaging Documentary
Review: This is a wonderful documentary that reminds us of how much we produce and waste in the world and how the disenfranchised (and artistic) make use of that waste to survive. The scenes of tons of dumped potatoes and discarded food at the open air markets are remarkable as well as the gleaning laws France has on its books...its this whole underworld of gleaning I found so compelling. The characters Varda encounters are equally compelling and interestingly are not portrayed as whiny or blameful of others for their situations: they simply state how they live and we are left impressed with their ingenuity.

At times the film moves slowly as Varda includes some personal shots related to her aging and trucks passing by on the highway, but these moments of introspection are quiet pauses and do not detract from the whole of the film. The DVD has a bonus hour- long "Two Years Later" film that revisits some of the people we first met and is equally enjoyable. All in all, this is a documentary that is eye-opening and respectful of its subject.

Rating:
Summary: gleaning
Review: This movie is absolutely beautiful. Not everyone can appreciate a film like this, but those who do will make a personal profound connection. This is a film for artists, scavengers, and those with wandering souls and brilliant imaginations.