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Such a frustrating disappointment

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Absolutely Fantastic

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

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.

The French film Les glaneurs et la glaneuse was shown in the U.S. as The Gleaners & I (2000). It was written and directed by Agnès Varda,Varda is a fascinating figure in the history of French filmmaking. Although she was making movies in France in the 60's, she wasn't actually a member of the French New Wave. Instead, Varda was part of a loosely joined group of directors that also included Alain Resnais and Chris Marker. (Although theoreticians place them into a group, Resnais said, "It is true that we are always ranked together, but what can you say we share apart from cats?") In any event Varda has a secure place in the history of French filmaking.The Gleaners is a movie about people who survive by searching for food or objects that others don't want, or, at least, don't want to work to find. In the country, gleaners find fruits and vegetables that remain after the harvest has been completed. In the cities they scavenge for food that has been thrown out as garbage, or that has been left behind when the vegetable markets close. They also claim discarded furniture and appliances for repair and resale.Whether by choice or by necessity, gleaners do their work at the fringes of the society. What they do isn't illegal, but it's not exactly mainstream either. However, this doesn't mean that the gleaners don't have their own fascinating personalities and informal codes of conduct.Varda interviews gleaners in both rural and urban areas. What she learns--as do we--is that they are very skilled at--and often proud of--what they do. As Varda shows us, it takes skill and knowledge to survive as a gleaner. You have to know where to look and when to look to get enough to eat, or to sell. The gleaners are interesting individuals, and they're happy to talk about what they do. Varda has taken what they told her, and fashioned it into a fascinating movie.The irony of this is clear when you look at the French title of the movie. The film is about gleaners, but it's also about one gleaner--Agnès Varda. Varda uses the bits and pieces offered to her by the gleaners, and fashions them into a movie. So, in that sense, she herself is the ultimate gleaner.We saw the film on the large screen at Rochester's Dryden Theatre, as part of the excellent Rochester Labor Film Festival. However, it should also work on DVD.

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 is a sweet, engaging, inspiring movie, not diminished by itsbeing very personal, even if AV obsessing over aging and death isa tad off the subject. don't listen to some orange county type orhollywood type for that matter calling it down!...it's kind of sad that people can't get into the dance of the lens cap if I wonder if they like it better in "american beauty" when the bagdances around with all this meaningful monologue on top (I foundthat a tad indigestible somehow...) anyway, it's most definitely akind of acculturated blindness that goes right through to theirtroubles with the rest of the film.this is definitely a functioning documentary. since farenheit 911this whole question of what is a documentary is more in peoples'minds, like farenheit 911 this film is also political speech of a kindthat begs to be heard in this messed up world . . .