Women's Pictures - Agnes Varda's The Gleaners And I
Thursday, June 25, 2015 at 3:01PM 
At the 2013 AFI Fest, Agnes Varda told her audience that if one really wanted to understand her, they should look to her documentaries. Varda made documentaries throughout her career, interspersed with shorts and features, on a variety of subjects. Her best-known documentary was 2000's The Gleaners and I, an examination of France's cultural history of "gleaning," in all the word's definitions. There are crop gleaners who follow the harvest, protected by French law, and immortalized in art. There are urban gleaners who pick through trash to find food or art or inspiration. And of course, there is Varda the filmmaker, gleaning what truths about life that she can from her interview subjects, while also turning her digital camera on herself. What follows is a complex documentary that - like its director/subject - has many definitions and perspectives.
The film opens with Varda introducing her viewers to the romantic image of gleaners they're probably most familiar with - a series of paintings depicting gleaning as a noble, if backbreaking, labor. Varda quickly dismisses that halcyon image by introducing the viewers to modern day gleaners - thrifty, poor men and women stuffing potatoes or oysters or apples into plastic bags and pails. A different film would have stayed with these homeless folks on the fringes of society, but Varda doesn't dwell solely on their poverty. This is a film about people, and Varda finds some fascinating examples - chefs, anarchists, lawyers, teachers, and artists, of course.
It's clear that Varda commiserates with the gleaners. The people she dwells on have idealism, thrift, and nostalgia for a world since past. Yet even as she mourns that bygone era before mass consumerism - symbolized by the trucks they pass on the highway - Varda also revels in the freedom granted her by the new machine in her hand - a digital camera, which makes her filmmaking faster and cheaper than before. She films her own aging, the dilapidation of her house, the small bits of trash she repurposes as decoration after being inspired by an interview subject.
It's difficult to balance documentary and diary - many directors insert themselves into their movies and in the process overwhelm their films - but Varda treats herself, and her aging, and her camera, with the same bemused, artistic eye that she turns on the rest of her subjects. She gets as much joy from an accidental shot of the lens clap dangling as she does from filming the wrinkles and crevices of her hand. Varda revels in the contradictions that she and her gleaners present.
As we approach the end of Agnes Varda month, I have to be honest: I don't want it to end! In the past, four (or five) films have been enough to get at least a broad strokes picture of the directors we've focused on. However, after four weeks of Agnes Varda's films, I'm still curious and confounded by the Grade Dame of the French New Wave. Each film we've watched has been a unique challenge; the only continuous theme has been Varda's clear desire to push boundaries. At the beginning of this month I asked a series of questions about Agnes Varda, and I'm afraid I'm no closer to answering some of them than I was on June 4th. But if I've learned anything about Agnes Varda in the last four weeks, it's that questions can be much more interesting than answers.
Next month on Women's Pictures...
July is all about the queen of the blockbuster action flick, Academy Award-winning director Kathryn Bigelow! Join us for guys & guns & Oscars gold.
7/2 - The Loveless (1981) - Bigelow's first feature film is also Willem Dafoe's premiere, playing a biker who gets mixed up in trouble on his way to Daytona. (Amazon Prime)
7/9 - Point Break (1991) - The ultimate surfer/cop movie, starring Patrick Swayze as a surfer-thief, and Keanu Reeves as the cop sent to take him down. (Amazon Prime)
7/16 - Strange Days (1995) - Bigelow directed this LA-based cop thriller written by her ex-husband, James Cameron. (Amazon Prime) (Netflix)
7/23 - K-19: The Widowmaker (2002) - Hands down the most requested film after Point Break, this film follows Harrison Ford racing to prevent a nuclear holocaust via submarine. (Amazon Prime) (Netflix)
7/30 - The Hurt Locker (2008) - The film that put Bigelow's name down in history as the first female director to win the Academy Award is a thriller about a bomb squad in the Iraq War. (Amazon Prime)
Reader Comments (6)
This is one of my personal favorite documentaries and you've brought back fond memories of it. I just couldn't believe how rich it was when i saw it in theaters. so much insight, so many surprises. and so much gravitas despite being so playful.
she really is a wonderful filmmaker.
Extend Agnes' retrospective. She's fascinating to listen to in interviews and her work offers rewards for everyone who engages with it. Her body of work earns the envy of her more famous male counterparts. Her practices as a creative are encouraging to me.
This is fascinating! I'm so behind- haven't been able to keep up with the movies at home- but these writeups alone are schooling me on the apparently pretty wide swath of film subgenres she worked in. Agnes Varda sounds like such a character.
Excited for Bigelow month too! July is a perfect fit for her work :)
Questions directrices comprennent: Comment les vertus créatives de l'individu sont façonnées et échafaudés par son engagement avec un environnement matériel? Ne art décideurs créent une niche artistique, comme un penseur peut créer une niche cognitive? La conception 4E de l'expérience affective telle que réalisée et promulguée en mesure de faire la lumière sur nos réactions émotionnelles à des entités esthétiques? Dans quelle mesure est notre expérience de l'architecture et du paysage déterminé par la façon dont ces espaces sollicitent et offrent habile, l'activité incarnée? Comment nos capacités corporelles pour le mouvement informer notre appréciation de la musique? Y at-il affordances esthétiques?
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Bonjour,
Article de qualité et bien utile!