the leading man is my tpye

An absolute waste of money

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Title: "I mean this is my project: to film with one hand my other hand" -Agnes Varda username: docugleanerFor any documentary lover that enjoys a little French humor, great cinematography, people speaking in French, rides in a car, a one-hand held camera, and having the director on-screen at times or listening to what he/she has to say, "The Gleaners and I" is the perfect documentary for you. If you know the definition of what a gleaner is that's great, if you don't know then just watch the film! "The Gleaners and I" is one of those films that will make you feel like you're on a roller coaster ride. There is a lot going on whether its interviews with gleaners in the farms or in the streets, talking about famous paintings about gleaning, traveling around in a car, or listening to Varda's voice-over about her interests. Varda accomplishes this taking her hand-held camera everywhere she goes and occasionally giving her insight on gleaning or philosophical thoughts on aging in a voice over. Varda has a lot to say in this film, mostly about gleaning but a lot about aging as well. It's interesting how she combines her own aging, shots of her graying hair and wrinkled hand, with decaying of food or things, shots of her collection of rotting heart-shaped potatoes. You'll feel as if a lot of what she does or says in the documentary has no connection with the topic on gleaning but you'll soon come to realize how it fits all together. It's not only about the gleaners she interviews but a personal travelogue on herself as a gleaner of frame shots, heart-shaped potatoes, driving trucks on the freeway, and a lot more. So, as a filmmaker, Varda gleaned all this footage into this captivating documentary. The original French title, Les glaneurs et la glaneuse, gives away what the documentary is about. In the film you can tell Varda has a lot of knowledge on art when she mentions artists who created paintings of how people used to glean. She actually presents some of these paintings and pays much attention to a particular painting of a gleaner alone who she comically imitates in the film. Although when you think about it, people gleaning in the streets is a depressing subject, Varda pokes fun at it especially on gleaning in general. She collects peoples different knowledge on what the French law says about gleaning and puts it all together as a way to make fun at how lenient the law is in France or how these people don't know the specifics of that law and quite honestly don't care. There is a lot that can be said about this documentary. I tried not to give too much specifics because I want people to see this film through their own eyes and to discover things in the film as I discovered them. Throughout the film you will discover Vardas interests and love for these people and the little details in life. In the end, you will come to enjoy them as much as she does. And you will end up looking for the beauty in your own life.

From director Agnès Varda (Cleo from 5 to 7), there are a few documentary films that feature in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, and this French one sounded like a very interesting one to look forward to. The definition of "gleaning" is to collect or gather left over crops after a harvest, but for the purposes of this film it is not crops that is seen picked up by people, it is other forms. In this film we see people in cities, towns, villages and in open spaces picking up food, such as fruit (apples, tomatoes), vegetables (potatoes, lettuce), bread, meat, near its sell by date packages, and much more. There are many forms of people who are seen gleaning in this form, such as homeless people, people in poverty, travellers, unemployed people, and some that just take advantage of the opportunity. There are also the occasional other forms of gleaning, such as using rubbish and old items and turning them into something else whether to be used again or for art, including pieces using recycled materials, and old paintings not put on show. Through the film we follow these various types of people doing what they can to survive and get by, director Varda has her participation in the situations seen, and there are interviews from the people who do it, and psychologists who explain the reasons. This is a very insightful film that shows the things people will do to eat and survive, and it is really informative about what you can do with these foods and materials that most people would think should be left alone, a great documentary. Very good!

What is it about New Wave directors and cats? Rivette, Resnais and Marker often feature them prominently, and a kitty opens this masterful essay by the "Grandmother" of the New Wave, which has plenty of space in its very tightly constructed 80 minutes or so for other shots of the director's beloved companions.Cats (and dogs) of course are often scavengers, both around human companions and left to their own devices, and it's quite possible that the director is drawing some subtle parallels here between the placid animals and the surprisingly well-adjusted (though probably not placid) humans that scavenge, pick, and "glean" for their lives, conscience, and art in this wonderfully multifaceted and wide-ranging exploration of those who take up what society throws away. Shot on hand-held digital video, the whole film has an immediacy and street-level appeal, but the intellect behind it is anything but cheap or simple.The largest part of the focus here is on those who glean from the soil, dumpster and tree, the poor (mostly) who gain sustenance from the leavings of farmers, vintners, supermarkets and restaurants. Though there is certainly an underlying scorn, even outrage, against the waste in society and the few provisions made for the poor when there could easily be more, the director is amazingly even-handed and unsentimental in her portraits both of those on society's margins and those who might be numbered amongst the wasters. The same attitude prevails when she is dealing with the art, artists, and collectors who take the castoff physical properties of the ownership society and transform them into other things often beautiful as well as useful. Though it is only expressed obliquely, the attitude present throughout the film seems to be, why have we come to this pass? Why are we so careless as a species, throwing away useful items and usable foods, treating everything in the world as disposable, treating life and each other as just things to use until we don't need them or care about them anymore.Mixed in with all of this are personal musings by the then-72-year-old director on her waning strength and energies, and towards the end of the film, on possible answers as we meet the most extraordinary character, a well-educated scavenger in Paris who sells newspapers and tourist maps, and teaches (for free) incoming African immigrants in the shelter he lives in and who seems perfectly adjusted to having a different idea of "success" than the rest of the world, movingly articulated as he explains what the word means to his eager adult students.Watched on DVD accompanied by the "sequel" which is reviewed separately.

The modes of documentary film-making, as brought out in Bill Nichols' INTRODUCTION TO DOCUMENTARY, evoke sensations that frame the viewer's connection to the subject. Some documentaries cause the viewer to come to his/her own conclusion, some prompt him/her to sit back, relax, and enjoy spoon-fed information given by the "voice of god." Others freely mix these modes, creating an approach that cannot be classified within the confines of one specific mode. Agnes Varda's THE GLEANERS AND I, a concoction of several documentary film modes, explores the reality achieved when various techniques are used to bring together a coherent whole.Referring to expository documentary film, Nichols deems it "ideal… for conveying information… (adding) to our stockpile of knowledge." Varda presents viewers with paintings by Van Gogh and Millet of women in fields gleaning wheat, a reminder of the historic nature of the practice. Discussion of the Bible book Ruth is included where Ruth, an alien resident in the land of Israel benefits from the Mosaic Law's provision of gleaning. Although GLEANERS isn't a typical expository documentary, it holds true to many of the mode's characteristics. Interviews, narration, facts -- Varda allows viewers to walk away with a sense of enlightenment about gleaning. The sole purpose of expository documentary is to educate an audience on a subject, a purpose Varda employs by "educating" viewers about gleaning alongside related subjects of homelessness and art.Expository documentaries have one characteristic not present in Varda's film: the nonexistent relationship between the audience and filmmaker. This absence achieves a greater emphasis on the material and retains a sense of detachment between the filmmaker, the subject, and the audience. Varda does indeed add to ther viewer's "stockpile of knowledge," and her commentary is along the same vein of the expository -- the only difference in her case is the viewer's active relationship with her voice.GLEANERS exhibits aspects of the expository documentary while intermeddling a personal overtone that resonates with another mode -- the participatory mode, defined by Nichols as giving the viewer "a sense of what it is like for the filmmaker to be in a given situation and how that situation alters as a result." The filmmaker shows himself participating in the construction of the film. He tells viewers it is he who is filming, it is his voice narrating, and it is him who has put the film together. Likewise, as she relates factual information, Varda reminds viewers it is her presence that shapes the documentary. Nichols continues: "The first-person becomes prominent in the overall structure of the film… It is the filmmaker's participatory engagement with unfolding events that holds our attention." Subjectivity predominates due to Varda's participation and is amplified by her use of the performative mode. Defined as "a deflection of documentary emphasis away from a realist representation of the historical world and toward poetic liberties, more unconventional narrative structures, and more subjective forms of representation" (Nichols) Varda presents viewers with information, actively participates in the film's development, and includes her own bias. While these elements do not detract from the factualness of information she presents, one must remember it is presented in a way that serves Varda's purposes and reflects her opinions.The performative aspect of GLEANERS is highlighted in intensely subjective moments Varda entertains. Another theme in her film is that of being thrown away like left-over food. Varda, an aging woman, does not want to be thrown away and forgotten like scraps in a field. Coupled with her commentary, viewers get to know Varda as a real person who feels. She is seen in her flat looking at her aging face in a mirror alongside forgotten heart-shaped potatoes she herself gleaned. In another interlude, we see her hand "glean" passing cars, plucking them from the air, symbolically alluding to herself as a gleaner of images and moments -- one who remembers and collects. Her strive to gather moments points to her desire to be remembered. Far from an invisible, faceless narrator, Varda is an active entity in her documentary, the central figure.Varda uses yet another mode: "Instead of seeing though documentaries to the world beyond them, reflexive documentaries ask us to see documentary for what it is: a construct of representation" (Nichols). Viewers are highly aware of the camera in GLEANERS. Varda comments on her little video camera during a contemplative aside, shown looking into a mirror filming herself. Within this filmic self-consciousness, the viewer is forced to ask: Does the awareness of the film as "a film" detract from its message? What does documentary film-making as a mode of representation achieve? Evocative of Dziga Vertov's MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA (1929), Varda, by blatantly revealing what we are watching is a film, causes viewers to ascend to "a heightened form of consciousness about (our) relation to a documentary and what it represents" (Nichols). Varda reflexively poses viewers with questions, unavoidable and penetrating. Viewers become players in her film, decision-making agents striving to make sense of the themes she presents, stringed together by the gleaning motif while searching for a correlation to how this information is conveyed through the film medium.Nichols' modes come together in GLEANERS and form a fresh representation of documentary film-making. This nexus forces one to question the act of labeling films under a given "mode." A jumble of gleaned styles becomes a new style, a new mode, Varda's mode, and cannot be classified other than a creation of the generalized modes Nichols presents. Does another mode exist? Varda shows the product that can be achieved when these modes are fused into one. She shows how these modes are in fact derivatives of each other that seamlessly interweave to achieve a certain taste truth.*See Bill Nichols' INTRODUCTION TO DOCUMENTARY