Evies Blog

This is a fabulous documentary that reminds us of how grand we form and demolish in the world and how the disenfranchised (and artistic) manufacture consume of that end to survive. The scenes of tons of dumped potatoes and discarded food at the launch air markets are much 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 area 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 unruffled 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 delectable. All in all, this is a documentary that is eye-opening and respectful of its subject.

The explicit subject matter of this film is “gleaning”: the long-standing but currently threatened practice of taking up and making one’s contain what others leave unhurried. On that subject alone Agnes Varda has created a distinguished documentary, that covers the history of gleaning, its true aspects, the wide variety of gleaning practices, and most importantly the people who derive for a number of reasons, not all of which have to do with poverty or destitution.

Buy,Download, Or Stream The Gleaners and I! Click Here

What interests me most about the documentary, however, is the blueprint in which Varda connects her enjoy practice as a filmmaker to the practice of gleaning. After all filmmaking and especially documentary filmmaking depend upon and acquire 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 gain practices. What is nice about her involvement in the film is that while she is always show, and while she includes herself among the gleaners presented in the film, she does not in any procedure push herself upon the viewer. As mighty as I savor the films of new auteur documentarians such as Moore and Spurlock, there is something very refreshing about the contrivance in which Varda makes her presence felt in this film.

What is perhaps even more considerable about the film than this animated analogy is the plan 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 intention 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 acquire realities and reorganize them into something fresh, that is at a hold from reality. In this film, what Varda does is suggest a entertaining combination of these approaches. The example from her film that illustrates this is her myth of the “junk artist” (I can’t remember his name) who takes up trash (what nobody wants) in order to execute something of it that compels attention, a work of art. This film is able to do unprejudiced such a creation.

Buy,Download, Or Stream The Gleaners and I! Click Here

Buy,Download, Or Stream The Gleaners and I! Click Here

My well-liked “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 originate 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 show herself a subtle master stylist.
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