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Critics Consensus: The Gleaners and I takes a compassionate look at a rarely considered subculture whose individualism resonates powerfully with director Agnès Varda's humanistic approach.
Critic Consensus: The Gleaners and I takes a compassionate look at a rarely considered subculture whose individualism resonates powerfully with director Agnès Varda's humanistic approach.
All Critics (40) | Top Critics (13) | Fresh (37) | Rotten (3) | DVD (1)
[A] lyrically ramshackle essay about people, including Varda herself, who don't fit into society's cubbyholes.
The 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.
One of Agnès Varda's best works, the down to earth charm effectively hides a damning political critique in plain sight.
...minor Varda, in a way, but it's also a moving summation of her life's work.
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.
Agnès Varda is a filmmaker who is always fascinated by the tiniest things she encounters, and it is just as fascinating for us to see what a comprehensive documentary this is, full of details about the gleaners and also herself, and yet perfectly-edited together into a beautiful whole.
Super Reviewer
Agnes Varda brings forward a very interesting documentary on the tradition of gleaning or picking up discarded food that wasn't brought by farmers to food distributors. It is a practice that is practical in terms of supplementing the food sources for the working poor and a good lesson in how to avoid waste.
This lovely, whimsical documentary is director Agnes Varda's tribute to the quaint practice of "gleaning" -- sifting through others' harvested farmland for leftover fruits and vegetables. This gentle foraging is not stigmatized like digging through trash (in fact, it's often presented as a commendable effort to cut ecological waste) and almost all of the interviewed gleaners are surprisingly clean and articulate. Many farmers even accept the gleaners, and merely set up some light rules for their trespassing. "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.
a lovely documentary/road movie on the theme of recycling society's castoffs. director varda travels france examining the lifestyle, from the ancient custom of gleaning the fields after harvest to modern 'freegans' and artists using salvaged junk. fascinating characters, not least the filmmaker herself, who sees her art as gleaning images from everyday life
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