Eye For Film >> Movies >> The Gleaners And I (2000) Film Review
Making a documentary on people who collect what others throw away doesn't sound like great material does it? But this is a film all about finding value where others see nothing, and Agnes Varda's good-natured documentary does exactly that.
Varda herself is a big part of this film. Her eccentric humour and relentless enthusiasm takes her into the countryside to explore the history of the gleaners - traditionally those who clean up what's left after the harvest.
![Copy picture](/images/stills/g/glaneurs_et_la_glaneuse_2000_1.jpg)
From there she travels to the cities to see what urban gleaners get up to, and finds artists finding material in scrap and a man who eats left-overs as a form of activism against waste.
She also discovers that gleaning can be fun - after all when something has no value it's more easily shared, treasured and ultimately given value.
If I'm making this sound dull, then I'm doing Varda a misservice because her sense of humour dominates the film. Where else can you see a documentary that includes a scene of a lawyer in a cabbage field, a fridge full of Lego revolutionaries, a dancing lens cap and a dog wearing a boxing glove?
This film isn't some polemic against waste, it's a journey to places you'd never go, to see things you'd never expect to find. As salvage artist Louis Pont puts it, "Where others see a cluster of junk, I see a cluster of opportunity."
Reviewed on: 19 Jan 2001