CityFood Magazine - The Gleaners and I

THE GLEANERS AND I.
Agnes Varda, 2000
On DVD. In French, with English subtitles.
Also available for loan at the Vancouver Public Library.

Agnes Varda’s cult hit, The Gleaners and I, may have been shot in 1999, yet ten years later its subject matter is more timely and relevant than ever.

In the documentary film, the 80-year-old Varda (known as the “grandmother of the French new wave cinema”), focuses the lens of her portable digi-cam on gleaners -- those who 'glean' or collect, from the ground, the remnants of a harvest.

Starting with an examination of the famous painting by Jean-Francois Millet, she quickly turns to more contemporary examples of people who still feed themselves from the leftovers of big agriculture -- gypsies who forage the “too large” or “too small” rejects of potato packing plants that are dumped from the back of trucks by the ton; “bucketeers” who wade just beyond the perimeter of commercial oyster farm beds, hoping to find mollusks blown loose after sea storms; a musical family who takes advantage of an abandoned grape vineyard. She then moves on to examine the lives of their more urban counterparts: ferals at the supermarket, dumpster divers, and youthful anarchists.

Contrasting with this underclass is a wealthy restaurateur whose ancestors were once gleaners, as well as the lawyers and politicians who, dressed in their archaic garb, describe the legal boundaries for gleaning under French law. Included also are the artists, such as Louis Pons, who manage to turn abandoned rubbish into objects of intelligence and beauty.

Varda herself collects the heart-shaped potatoes that become the symbol of the film, and leaves them on a shelf to rot until they morph into dehydrated organic sculptures. Her film’s conclusion: “To bend down is not to beg”. Indeed, in light of our new awareness of the immorality of waste, gleaners have their own contributing role in society, even though they are often forced to play it out in a less than dignified manner.

However, ten years later, with economic concerns influencing the picture, even the gleaner’s form of humble livelihood could be threatened as industrial food manufacturers tighten and mechanize production to avoid even a wheat’s sheaf of lost revenue, or else cease to produce altogether.

From this potentially depressing field, Varda finds and preserves small portraits of humanity, that are touching, comic, and even unexpectedly noble, and at the same time, digs at the roots of some of society’s most pressing problems concerning consumption and sustainability.

Agnes Varda comments on YouTube Part 1.
Agnes Varda comments on YouTube Part 2.