The Gleaners and I (2001)
Average Rating: 7.8/10
Reviews Counted: 38
Fresh: 35 | Rotten: 3
No consensus yet.
Average Rating: 7.9/10
Critic Reviews: 13
Fresh: 13 | Rotten: 0
No consensus yet.
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Average Rating: 3.9/5
User Ratings: 2,234
My Rating
Movie Info
Both a diary and a kind of extended essay on poverty, thrift and the curious place of scavenging in French history and culture--a documentary capturing the world of French gleaners who collect and make use of what others have discarded.
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All Critics (42) | Top Critics (16) | Fresh (35) | Rotten (3) | DVD (4)
[A] lyrically ramshackle essay about people, including Varda herself, who don't fit into society's cubbyholes.
Top CriticThe Gleaners and I is a film well worth finding.
Charged with the pleasure of discovery.
For the most part, Varda's home movie is a simple and sweet thing.
Varda's subject matter is surprisingly rich, but it's her own energetic, curious nature that gives the film its snap.
In its frames, we see [Varda's] empathy, skill, curiosity, wit, poetry and passion for life: everything she has gleaned from a lifetime of love and movies.
Varda is, herself, a gleaner. Her eyes are her tools, and her camera is her basket. Insatiably curious, she seeks, finds, redeems. ... When we pay attention, attention pays.
A tribute to all the people who think outside the box.
A moving humanist/social conscience documentary.
strings together observations about psychotherapy, freeway traffic and the origins of cinema while opening our eyes to a subculture few of us ever think about.
Visually brilliant inside look at the world of food production.
A pleasure to watch - part documentary, part personal essay, part unguided tour. It's a chance to understand ourselves differently by seeing the things we choose not to use.
The Gleaners and I shows Varda in full flower, ever reaping what she has sown.
However rudimentary her thesis on the subject is, Varda is able to explore her interest, pass it on to the viewer and still give them something to learn about.
A bewitching documentary that mischievously fuses the past with the present, the rich with the poor, the idle with workaholic
Varda draws a neat parallel between the collective urge and her own career in filmmaking.
Audience Reviews for The Gleaners and I
Super Reviewer
"The Gleaners and I" is somewhat unfocused, especially considering it's only 82 minutes, and has quirky personal insertions that could be labeled self-indulgent. Varda not only narrates but intermittently appears onscreen, observing her body's aging, phantom-pinching trucks that she passes on the highway (shades of the Kids in the Hall's "I'm crushing your head" bit) and showing trivial lens-cap footage shot by accident. But such tangents are central to the film's homespun charm. She also becomes seduced by the gleaning concept herself, and gradually accumulates some chairs, figs, heart-shaped potatoes and a broken clock. "A clock without hands is my kind of thing," she smiles. "You don't see time passing."
Eventually, she introduces city settings and broadens her scope. We see people who search for appliances, turn trash into artwork and live off found food. One of them has a Masters degree. Some legal aspects are explored, and there's also discussion of gleaning as depicted in paintings. Varda seems to just spontaneously follow the story wherever it leads her. It's a warm introduction to a peculiar, less-known corner of French culture.
Super Reviewer
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Foreign Titles
- Die Sammler und die Sammlerin (DE)
- The Gleaners and I (Les Glaneurs et la Glaneuse) (UK)
