The Gleaners & I

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

  • Jesus of Montreal

    Before he became an Oscar-winning filmmaker, Denys Arcand was an historian. And some of his first historical projects—such as a government-sponsored documentary about Samuel de Champlain, one of the founding fathers of Canada—got him into trouble with the powers that be, who felt he didn’t toe the official line as closely as he should have. …

  • Song of Bernadette

    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…

  • Stop Making Sense

    Jonathan Demme’s 1984 concert film, Stop Making Sense, begins simple enough. Talking Heads front man David Byrne walks onto a bare stage and places a boombox on the ground. “Hi, I got a tape I wanna play you,” he quips. Byrne turns on the stereo and the musician’s acoustic guitar soon melds to a tight backing…

  • The Straight Story

    When you know that David Lynch directed such surreal, twisted films as Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, and Lost Highway, hearing that he also made a G-rated film about an old man and his tractor sounds like the beginning of a monumentally bad joke. In 1999, though, he did just that, and the movie he made is The Straight Story….

  • The Work

    There is a moment in The Work when a man utters a sound that I’ve never heard emerge from another human being. It is a cry of both anguish and relief, as if a levee has broken after a lifetime of repressed emotions, and the flood waters are finally free. It is the crack of a soul…