Sorry, this movie sucks

As Good As It Gets

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

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.

I saw this movie again last night (at the Harvard Film Archive) as they are having a retrospective with Agnes introducing and doing Q&A after the films. I've got to say that I love many of Agnes' films (and Jacques Demy's, her late husband, as well), but this is my favorite. So, I like the "I" part of the "Gleaners and I" even though she said that she didn't like the English-language title (the French title doesn't include the "I" in the title). I do a little "gleaning" here and there, not that I need to, but I think in this current crazy world gleaning is an important topic. I'm going to rent the DVD again as I want to see the "two years later" piece again. The audience at Harvard loved Agnes, why is it wrong for her to have a voice? Her most recent film is a "film essay" of all the people she met during her long life: the guy behind me complained about it being "too much about" her even though it was a memoir! Making any documentary involves making many choices, picking the "sound bites" that express the documentarian's points, why should the documentary "hide" the inherent subjectivity? Her perennial interests have to do with subjectivity/objectivity, real vs subjective time, film as a "cimema essay" and so on. There is a lot in this movie that is both important and interesting.

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.

Jean Francois Millet, the French painter of the Barbizon school, seems to have been the inspiration for Agnes Varda's interesting documentary "Les glaneurs et la glaneuse". In fact, Ms. Varda makes it a point to take us along to the French countryside where Millet got the inspiration for his masterpiece "Les Glaneurs". Like in his other paintings, Millet comments about the peasantry working the fields in most of his canvases. One can see the poverty in his subjects as they struggle to gather crops for their employers.Ms. Varda takes a humanistic approach to another type of activity in which she bases her story. In fact, the people one sees in the film are perhaps the descendants of the gleaners of Millet's time, except they are bringing whatever is left behind once the machinery takes care of gathering the best of each crop, leaving the rest to rot in the fields.Agnes Varda takes a trip through her native France to show us the inequality of a system that produces such excesses that a part of it has to be dumped because it doesn't meet standards. On the one hand, there is such abundance, and on the other, one sees how some of the poor people showcased in the documentary can't afford to buy the basics and must resort to take it on their own to get whatever has been left in order to survive.With this documentary, Agnes Varda shows an uncanny understanding to the problems most of these people are facing.