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

  • A Moment of Innocence

    BySheikh Javed Mansuri

    In 1974, Mohsen Makhmalbaf stabbed a young police officer while attempting to steal his gun. Makhmalbaf was only seventeen at the time but had already been actively involved for a number of years in organized resistance to the Shah’s government. He served four-and-a-half years of his sentence before being released in 1979, soon after the…

  • Paths of Glory

    BySheikh Javed Mansuri

    Classifying Paths of Glory as an anti-war film is the result of lazy thinking. Shot in simple black-and-white in 1957, this is the film that put director Stanley Kubrick on the map, and there’s a very good reason why. While loosely based on a true story referred to as the “Corporals of Souain” during World War I…

  • Cave of Forgotten Dreams

    BySheikh Javed Mansuri

    On a Top 100 list that threatens top-heaviness with clergy, saints, and organized religion, Cave of Forgotten Dreams is a welcome outlier.  Its writer/director, Werner Herzog, professes no interest in God or religion, except as a subject for cultural exploration, a manifestation of our humanity. Yet his films, across a career spanning almost 60 years, are suffused with…

  • Heartbeat Detector

    BySheikh Javed Mansuri

    Simon Kessler is a psychologist high up in the human resources department of the Paris branch of the German company chemical company SC Farb. Kessler’s boss gives him what must be an intimidating job, though he never shows any hesitation. He needs to investigate the company’s CEO, who has been acting irregularly, deteriorating quickly from…

  • The Grapes of Wrath

    BySheikh Javed Mansuri

    John Steinbeck’s 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath opens with a view of the “scarred earth,” then lifts its eyes to consider the scarred people that lived on that earth.  It finds these people staggering through the Dust Bowl storms that struck the Southern U.S. in the 1930’s.  This early passage from the novel seems to lay bare the…