The Gleaners and I

An 82-minute non-fiction film about foraging may seem an unlikely candidate for “greatness”. But Agnès Varda’s apparently modest film presages several important trends in 21 century cinema: in its embrace of digital photography as an instrument for democratization and artistic autonomy, for instance; and in its formal hybridity, which organically meshes documentary, personal and political commentary and moments of creative whimsy; as well, for its focus on salvage and sustainability as principles for life and work. Varda was for a long time the unheralded pioneer of the French nouvelle vague, but in her fruitful later decades (she was 72 when she made this one) she was recognized as a trailblazer for women filmmakers everywhere.

Agnès Varda’s The Gleaners and I is fleet and silvery, its plein-air lightness an index of Varda’s joy at wandering the roads of France, her DV-CAM and Mini-DV at hand, to capture the foraging, rummaging and scavenging that are the subjects of her new film. Varda begins her investigation with a traditional semantic gambit: a dictionary definition of the odd, antique word “glean.” As the film progresses, the meaning of the word multiplies; Varda extends its connotations to take in her own gathering of images and memories, her digressions and asides on waste, aging and art… Driven by curiosity and moral disquiet, Varda visits various sites of gleaning, and meets those who make their living from the refuse of others. Some are survivors, piling through dumpsters and poubelles to find food carelessly discarded by a society obsessed with packaging and perfection. Some are thrifty pragmatists, picking the potatoes and fruit left unharvested or dumped for its insignificant flaws… Some are activists whose refusal of consumerism leads them to live off res derelictae or “ownerless goods,” even though they may have good jobs and handsome salaries… It’s perhaps inevitable that framing a political subject with a self-portrait will be faulted as trivial or narcissistic, but Varda… clearly agonized over finding the right balance of “self-reference,” as she calls it, and objectivity. She has succeeded, modestly, miraculously.

James Quandt, Cinema Scope

Urgent, graceful, accessible and at times openly cheerful — it takes a big bite out of life.

Stephanie Zacharek, Salon.com

Studded with found metaphors and serendipitous insights.

AO Scott, New York Times

A thrilling subject, Varda’s best since Vagabond.

Susan Sontag, Artforum