In a sentenceAgnès Varda makes us feel we have been putting the wrong things in the bin
Agnès Varda (herself) turns her camera towards people who gather what others discard, seeking to understand how they glean a living. Bodan Litnanski (himself) and François Wertheimer (himself) are among the participants. Using a lightweight digital camera, she also brings her own responses into the account. Her enquiry follows people living on society’s margins and asks what can still be used when somebody else has decided it has no value. As she moves between encounters, collecting observations of her own, the question of what is worth keeping extends beyond objects to the lives and experiences the camera records.
Agnès Varda makes an absorbing, funny documentary about finding uses for what other people discard. Her curiosity gives people space to speak, though the wandering occasionally takes us away from someone worth hearing.
The Gleaners and I is a fine documentary about a practice most of us seldom consider: living from what other people leave behind. Agnès Varda approaches gleaning with interest rather than alarm, and the film benefits from her refusal to treat every encounter as an emergency. She wants to know the people doing it. The result is warm, funny and more searching than its casual manner first suggests.
The lightweight digital camerawork helps. Cinematography is shared by Didier Rouget, Agnès Varda, Didier Doussin, Pascal Sautelet and Stéphane Krausz. The unpolished images suit a film interested in what gets overlooked. The pictures have the quickness of someone noticing something and wanting to show us, and their playfulness suits a director happy to be distracted. We can follow her attention without having every change of direction explained.
The people she meets are the reason that restlessness matters. She listens without turning every reply into proof of how decent or resourceful somebody is, even though resourcefulness keeps appearing. We were moved by the gleaners talking about getting by, and by her willingness to listen. Their accounts are allowed to be ordinary; she does not hurry them towards a dramatic declaration about their circumstances. The conversations reward that patience because the speakers have room to decide what they want to tell her.
The editing by Agnès Varda, Jean-Baptiste Morin and Laurent Pineau gives that curiosity plenty of room. The film asks us to accept a detour simply because she finds it interesting, and mostly that is enough. Occasionally we wanted her to stay with a person a little longer, and the movement towards the next discovery felt premature. At 82 minutes, the film is short, but there are still moments when its freedom to wander becomes an excuse for not pressing further. We leave some encounters wishing she had asked another question.
Joanna Bruzdowicz and Isabelle Olivier are credited with the music, which suits the film’s unforced manner. There is no need for the score to manufacture warmth when Agnès Varda supplies so much of it herself. As both filmmaker and participant, she is amused, interested and quite happy to follow an apparently minor thought. Her presence could have made the film tiresome: a visitor congratulating herself for noticing other people’s lives. Instead, her humour makes her good company, and she remains interested in the people she has come to meet.
There is a familiar danger in documentaries about people living on the margins: the audience gets to feel compassionate while learning surprisingly little about anybody. This film earns our trust by giving the people it meets room to be funny, practical and individual. They need not become examples of how the rest of us ought to live. Anyone expecting a methodical account of gleaning may find the personal diversions frustrating, and we sometimes shared that frustration. Give it an evening when there is no hurry to get to the point.
The critic finds the documentary captivating, inventive, and warmly observant. He especially praises Varda’s curiosity and the resilience and generosity of the people she encounters.
Read the full review →The critic finds the film joyful, lighthearted, and hopeful. She praises Varda’s playful, unpretentious curiosity and her ability to let the people she meets speak for themselves.
Read the full review →Tobias gives Varda’s documentary a warm, positive assessment. He especially praises her playful camera work and the affection and good humor she brings to its social observations.
Read the full review →The review presents the documentary as delightful and encouraging. It praises Varda’s identification with the people who glean a living.
Read the full review →Kelly finds the documentary memorable, intriguing, and fascinating, despite its limited commercial prospects. He praises Varda’s down-to-earth, off-the-cuff approach and the portrait it creates of people on society’s fringes.
Read the full review →Brooks presents the documentary as a likably mercurial, engaging work. He singles out its first-person approach and flyweight digital-camera style.
Read the full review →
The Beaches of Agnès · not on Fi1m yetA personal documentary with the same appetite for people, play and digression.
The House Is Black · not on Fi1m yetA short documentary that looks closely at people without reducing them to hardship.
Local HeroA dry comedy about money, place and the people outsiders fail to notice.
PatersonAnother patient observer finding enough for a film in overlooked daily routines.
HoneylandClose attention to work and survival, with a less forgiving view of scarcity.
