Die Sammler und die Sammlerin

You may remember director Agnès Varda from her 1986 film, VAGABOND. But over the last five decades, the `grandmother of French New Wave' has completed 29 other works, most showing her affection, bemusement, outrage, and wide-ranging curiosity for humanity.

Varda's most recent effort-the first filmed with a digital videocamera-focuses on gleaners, those who gather the spoils left after a harvest, as well as those who mine the trash. Some completely exist on the leavings; others turn them into art, exercise their ethics, or simply have fun. The director likens gleaning to her own profession-that of collecting images, stories, fragments of sound, light, and color.

In this hybrid of documentary and reflection, Varda raises a number of philosophical questions. Has the bottom line replaced our concern with others' well-being, even on the most essential level of food? What happens to those who opt out of our consumerist society? And even, What constitutes--or reconstitutes--art?

Along this road trip, she interviews plenty of French characters. We meet a man who has survived almost completely on trash for 15 years. Though he has a job and other trappings, for him it is `a matter of ethics.' Another, who holds a master's degree in biology, sells newspapers and lives in a homeless shelter, scavenges food from market, and spends his nights teaching African immigrants to read and write.

Varda is an old hippie, and her sympathies clearly lie with such characters who choose to live off the grid. She takes our frenetically consuming society to task and suggests that learning how to live more simply is vital to our survival.

At times we can almost visualize her clucking and wagging her finger-a tad heavy-handedly advancing her agenda. However, the sheer waste of 25 tons of food at a clip is legitimately something to cluck about. And it is her very willingness to make direct statements and NOT sit on the fence that Varda fans most enjoy, knowing that her indignation is deeply rooted in her love of humanity.

The director interjects her playful humor as well-though it's subtle, French humor that differs widely from that of, say, Tom Green. Take the judge in full robes who stands in a cabbage field citing the legality of gleaning chapter and verse.

Quirky and exuberant, Varda, 72, is at an age where she's more concerned with having fun with her craft than impressing anyone. With her handheld digital toy, she pans around her house and pauses to appreciate a patch of ceiling mold. When she later forgets to turn off her camera, she films `the dance of the lens cap.'

One of the picture's undercurrents is the cycle of life-growth, harvest, decay. She often films her wrinkled hands and speaks directly about her aging process, suggesting that her own mortality is much on her mind. The gleaners pluck the fruits before their decay, as Varda lives life to the fullest, defying the inevitability of death. Toward the movie's end, she salvages a Lucite clock with no hands. As she films her face passing behind it, she notes, `A clock with no hands is my kind of thing.'

If you'd be the first to grab a heart-shaped potato from the harvest, or make a pile of discarded dolls into a totem pole, THE GLEANERS is probably your kind of thing.

This film is a feast for anyone who loves film, photography or art in general. Agnes Varda takes the viewer along on a very personal exploration about what it means to be an artist. To glean means to gather whatever crops have been left in the field after a harvest and the film is on one level a straight documentary about gleaners in France, exploring the various reasons why they glean - survival, to feed the poor, for fun. But gleaning is revealed to be an apt metaphor for the process of making art, and so, perhaps on a deeper level, Varda is examining her role as a film maker, a "gleaner" of images and life moments. Regardless of why you might watch this film, I recommend it for the playfulness and beauty of the photography, and the complex and personal depth of Varda's narrative.

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.

There are a number of reasons why I enjoyed this movie.

1.) I am into etymology. Most english words come through French through Latin and it was fun to attempt to match spoken word and subtitle.

2.) French rap. I am very much interested in the hip hop subculture and was amazed how similar theirs is to ours.

3.) Scenic shots. There were: orchards, fields, barren highways, a gypsie camp, a great many paintings, "junk" yards, and such.

4.) The camera shots. The journal/documentary filming allowed for several film taboos to be artfully waived. For example, the directors hands often purposefully find themselves in a shot, these were my favorite parts because of the witticisms she gave at these times. Also, an accidental shot were the camera lense gets in the way was made into another piece of ordinary object art.

5.) Also, I was intrigued by the comparison between classical gleaning, modern gleaning, and modern scavenging. See Dark Days for another good real life scavenger flick.

6.) Lastly, I felt a connection with many of the characters. People who were on the fringe of society and enjoyed it. Specifically, there were a few who had jobs and apartments, but still chose to rumage through old trash for their meals. "I've been living off trash for 10 years and I haven't been sick once," as on of them candidly stated.

Note - For me, these 6 items more than made this movie an enjoyable experience, but this is basically all there is, so be warned: There is no plot! Really it is just a bunch of stuff that happens, but feel that this helps the movie more than hurts.

Yeah, it was that good. I was introduced to the French New Wave when I was in college and I was instantly a fan. Of course I loved Godard and Truffaut but I was also a always a fan of Varda's work. The one woman allowed run with "the boy's club".

Even in her later years in 2000, the mark of the Nouvelle Vague was still evident in her work. Shot on video at a time when things looked like they were shot on video, this movie held true to all of the same ideals that Varda stood for 40 years earlier. There wasn't a lot of time or money spent on lighting and capturing the perfect image but what was lacking was made up for with true cinematography and framing of the shots. Visually the movie is both cheap and no frills and meticulous and artistic.

But like any good documentary, Varda's vision and message trumps any superficial aspect of the film-making. The message that there is beauty in every aspect of our existence regardless of how insignificant we think it is resonates throughout the story and will stick with you long after the movie has ended.