User Reviews

Agnes Varda's documentary The Gleaners and I celebrates the notion of "freeganism" or what the French call "gleaners." Unlike the punk antics of activists, gleaning in France is not so much a matter of rebellion but a matter of rite. There is a tradition in France from days of old that allows people to come behind a harvest and pick up any fruit and veggies that weren't elected by the grower to go to market, over-sized or heart shaped potatoes for instances. "This apple is like a stupid ugly woman," says one person of the discards, "zero value." Here, gleaners give new meaning to the phrase "having a field day." (Although gleaning is forbidden in precious Burgundy wine country!) The film moves from these rural gleaners to the urban gleaners as Varda talks with a wide variety of interesting characters: drunks, gypsies, artists, activists, rappers, volunteer teachers... many with a very "lived" look to their faces. Gleaners come from all walks of life and here they include a gourmet chef and a psychoanalyst. Picking a patient's brain is too a form of gleaning as the therapists is in a state of poverty, a state of not knowing.

Varda uses this film as her owns means of self-exploration. It is told in a very self-reflexive style that you will either enjoy or be irritated by. We are subjected to extreme close-ups of her gray hair or her aging liver spotted hands as she says, "we enter in the horror of her hand". The beauty in her choosing to take home a clock with no hands is symbolic of the overall poetic style to this work - "an emotion film." Long shots of her lens cap dancing in the wind, repetitive shots of trucks on the highway, and of course, her fascination with the heart shaped potatoes - food that warms the heart.

There are many words to describe this gleaning behavior: stoopers, pickers, retrievers, recyclers... Some see found objects as dictionaries - helping us to come to an understanding of humankind. Varda has a fascination with old paintings showing gleaners, like Millet's famous Gleaneuses (pictured here), but she unearths many others - from op shops to the storage basement of a museum. Marey, an early innovator of photographer, even gets evoked somehow and the combination of all her elements gives this film a very ethnographic feel.

Varda describes herself as a gleaner of images and she explores this idea in a 60 minute follow-up 2 years on (an extra on the DVD). Here she not only revisits some of the characters in the original documentary but she also meets with new gleaners who flooded her with letters and gifts in response to the release of the first film. She looks at the impact the film had on her and those who participated, the characters who share their "confidence and confidences." The Gleaners and I is a delight to watch on so many levels. It is a meditation on waste, of living on the fringes of society and conversely, what this says about people we don't see in the film: the thoughtless consumers. To me, the film is not only about the discarding of objects, but of the decay and disenfranchising of the aged. Finally, in a subtle way, this film is about self and our relationship to the world through the eyes of a very creative filmmaker for whom low production values equates to high art.

This was my first film which was a record by Agnes Varda and I don't know what can I say now. It was very different from what I have watched anything until today. Actually, it is a documentary about any kind of gleaners: Rubbish, food, fruit and secondhand stuff. Agnes Varda has worked too much on this piece and she has made interviews with many people who are doing collecting something. Firstly, we see some agriculture gleaners and their life. In many zones, people are waiting for harvest time to collect remaining crops and also the law is allowing these stuff like that way. The people who need something are providing food and money by selling their stuff to themselves and at the same time, the remaining products are not wasted in that way. For instance, for the potato, factory and field owners are collecting potato that has a nice shape and enough weight. The others left in the field or going to rubbish so this means opportunity for many gleaners. Secondly, there was a man who is collecting some second-hand goods from the street and rubbish and then he used them for his works of art. He is giving correct shape to them and bringing them together for use in his works and he says ''I like secondhand stuff and doing some kind of arts with them because they have memories and I am giving second chance to them by using in my works.'' This sentence affect me too much and I asked myself ''Are goods have an experience or memories?'' obviously he is looking from another side of the window to his life. Thirdly there was another guy who studying for a doctorate and he is collecting food from the bazaar in the city to saving his money. And he is living in a kind of shelter with a lot of immigrants. He said that fifty percent of people in this building don't know literate and he is giving a course to teach reading and writing in French for free. We see a part of their class and I can say this scene was very impressive. They are making some jokes with each other and look very happy. At this moment I was thinking about we are all happy when we realized some little things to make us happy and be thankful for our life. Also in the documentary, you can see some clues about 90s France. All in all, I liked it and I am happy to watch this documentary. In this text, I tried to explain some points that remain in my mind. I have learned some interesting information and have experienced very different kind of film.

From director Agnès Varda (Cleo from 5 to 7), there are a few documentary films that feature in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, and this French one sounded like a very interesting one to look forward to. The definition of "gleaning" is to collect or gather left over crops after a harvest, but for the purposes of this film it is not crops that is seen picked up by people, it is other forms. In this film we see people in cities, towns, villages and in open spaces picking up food, such as fruit (apples, tomatoes), vegetables (potatoes, lettuce), bread, meat, near its sell by date packages, and much more. There are many forms of people who are seen gleaning in this form, such as homeless people, people in poverty, travellers, unemployed people, and some that just take advantage of the opportunity. There are also the occasional other forms of gleaning, such as using rubbish and old items and turning them into something else whether to be used again or for art, including pieces using recycled materials, and old paintings not put on show. Through the film we follow these various types of people doing what they can to survive and get by, director Varda has her participation in the situations seen, and there are interviews from the people who do it, and psychologists who explain the reasons. This is a very insightful film that shows the things people will do to eat and survive, and it is really informative about what you can do with these foods and materials that most people would think should be left alone, a great documentary. Very good!

When I was young I would go with my grandparents to my uncle's farm to pick fresh vegetables. The main vegetable that I remember picking is okra. Armed with my pocket knife, I was informed by my grandmother to only gather the medium sized okra pods because they were the best ones to eat. I was a bit bothered by this because I felt that the other ones would go to waste. I am not sure what my uncle did with remaining vegetables, but I assume they were often left to rot in his fields without serving their purpose to feed the populace.

Varda's film The Gleaners and I is a documentary depicting her travels throughout the countryside of France in her pursuit to find individuals who live off of the items cast off by others. Gleaning used to be a normal activity of woman in the countryside who gathered the remaining grain in the fields after the harvest came to an end, but this practice almost ceased to be after heavy machinery came to gather the food. Now, gleaners are quite often the destitute who gather the leftovers of the harvest in order to add to their meager diets. However, there are also those who glean because the activity was passed down in their blood or it is something they enjoy doing.

Traveling from vineyards to potato fields, apple orchards to the urban sprawl, and the seaside to museums, Varda's documentary encompasses the waste that is common in capitalist societies and how many farmers, winemakers, store owners prefer the excess to rot, spoil, and be thrown away instead of being used to help the down and out. However, the mood of the film is not entirely dark, because Varda does a wonderful job of depicting the beauty of castoff items and how some individuals, the castoffs of society, make due in a society that would prefer them just to disappear.

It could of been good if she had stuck with the focus upon the gleaners instead of trying to catch a lorry with her hand and also get constantly distracted by pipes or her hands. Maybe it was trying to be artistic but to me, art wasn't the main point of the film. The main point were the poor people of France and their struggle to find food while gleaning. Her mention of her old hands and hair meaning she would soon pass away made the outlook of the film more depressing and couldn't even be uplifted by the spirit of the gleaners who, if you think about people picking up the leftovers would be a depressing subject, did it with a spring in their step and never let it stop them. All in all, a waste of a film in my opinion.