The Gleaners & I

BySheikh Javed Mansuri
The Gleaners & I

Agnès Varda tells as much about her own experiences and feelings growing older as she does about the history and practice of gleaning, an occupation that has itself grown old. By placing herself as the documentary’s ultimate gleaner, she collects wisdom about her subjects, her environment and herself and then shares it with her audience. She communicates a deep love for disregarded people and things, juxtaposing her wrinkled hands with images of weathered things that she finds useful and beautiful as if to say in every scene, ‘I’m not ready to be thrown out yet.’ – Ed Bertram (2019)

  1. Directed by: Agnès Varda
  2. Produced by:
  3. Written by:
  4. Music by:
  5. Cinematography by:
  6. Editing by:
  7. Release Date: 2000
  8. Running Time: 82
  9. Language: French

Arts & Faith Lists:

2020 Top 100 — #33

Similar Posts

  • Close-Up

    BySheikh Javed Mansuri

    In Close-Up, Abbas Kiarostami retells the true story of the trial of Hossein Sabzian who fraudulently convinced a family that he was the famous film director, Mohsen Makhmalbaf. The entire incident comes about in a seemingly innocent way; however, the moral struggle surrounding the deception involves a complex wrestling with themes of identity, belonging, forgiveness and repentance.  Sabzian is arrested, imprisoned,…

  • Au hasard Balthazar

    BySheikh Javed Mansuri

    With a rigorous style that is often off-putting to newcomers, Bresson eschews the usual emotional cues we’ve become conditioned to expect at the movies. His editing is, above all, efficient—refusing to emphasize one moment over another. We’re forced to pay fierce attention and draw our own conclusions about which words and gestures were important. But…

  • Nights of Cabiria

    BySheikh Javed Mansuri

    Federico Fellini’s Nights of Cabiria (1957) transcends the well-worn cliche of the golden-hearted prostitute. The film stars Fellini’s wife and constant collaborator, Giuletta Masina, as a woman named Maria Ceccarelli but known to everyone in her social strata as Cabiria. Cabiria was pushed into prostitution by her destitute mother when she was young and beautiful, and her…

  • Playtime

    BySheikh Javed Mansuri

    The great French comedy director Jacques Tati starred in four of his own films, playing one of cinema’s most beloved comic figures, Monsieur Hulot. Hulot has a charming, Chaplin-esque presence, but the wonder of Tati’s films come from the extravagant activity that plays out in the world around him. You might consider Hulot an ancestor…

  • Paris, Texas

    BySheikh Javed Mansuri

    Travis Henderson (Harry Dean Stanton) has been wandering in the desert for some four years at the beginning of Paris, Texas, and it shows. His suit is so begrimed with dust that it’s hard to tell what color it originally was, and in his eyes is the look of a man who does not know where…

  • Song of Bernadette

    BySheikh Javed Mansuri

    Based on the eponymous historical novel by Jewish author Franz Werfel, Henry King’s beautifully made film stands head and shoulders over most religiously themed fare from Hollywood’s Golden Age. Werfel learned the story of Bernadette Soubirous—an illiterate teenager who in 1858 claimed to see visions of a beautiful lady who was later identified as the…