The Gleaners and I Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		3.5

The Gleaners and I Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman July 31, 2020

Note: This film is available as part of The Complete Films of Agnès Varda.

In the wake (figurative or otherwise) of Agnès Varda’s death last year at the age of 90, quite a bit has rightfully been written about this iconic force in both French and global cinema. Varda’s output includes well over fifty credits as a director (including some television entries as detailed by the IMDb), and aside from listing some of her better known triumphs, many obituaries and/or eulogies about Varda mentioned any number of other biographical data points, including her rather unique position as a woman in France’s nouvelle vague movement, her own feminism which was featured none too subtly in some of her films, and her frequently provocative experimental style. But you know what one of the things that kind of fascinates me personally most about Varda? That she was married for 28 years to Jacques Demy, from 1962 until Demy’s death in 1990. That Varda, often a purveyor of verité infused “realism”, whether that be in outright documentaries or at least ostensibly more “fictional” outings, and Demy, a director whose candy colored, dreamlike and at least relatively "Hollywoodized" musicals with Michel Legrand brought a new luster and gloss to French cinema, managed to make a marital go of it for so long is certainly testament to the maxim that “opposites attract”, even if those oppositional forces in this instance played out at least in part in terms of what kinds of films the two were often best remembered for. If Varda's long marriage to Demy is more than enough reason to celebrate her personal life, her professional life is beautifully feted in this rather astounding new set from Criterion, which aggregates an amazing 39 films (albeit some running as short as a few minutes) to provide what is arguably one of the most insightful overviews of Varda's cinematic oeuvre. Perhaps unavoidably, but also undeniably movingly, these personal and professional sides of Varda merge in at least some of the films in this set, including The Young Girls Turn 25, The World of Jacques Demy, Jacquot de Nantes, and The Beaches of Agnès.

"Glean" is one of those words that has entered the general venacular to such an extent that many people, even devoted etymologists like myself, may not think that much about its use or even its actual meaning. However, the term, which has come to mean "gathering" of any sort, typically information or other content, evidently had a historical use that referred specifically to field workers who would "glean" the remnants left on farmland after the official harvest. As such, the term probably inherently tends to allude to people collecting leftovers, and in this odd but rather captivating documentary, Agnès Varda takes her typically wide ranging approach, offering both literal and figurative interpretations of the word.

There's a rather famous painting by Jean-François Millet called The Gleaners which Varda uses as a jumping off point of sorts for her exploration of this activity in some of its many forms. Both the painting and the documentary itself have at least a bit of socioeconomic subtext, with allusions to the fact that those engaging in "gleaning" of various types may not be that well off, and are therefore consigned to "picking up" what other, presumably better off, people have discarded.

Varda, evidently intrigued by the Millet art, set out on a whirlwind tour of sorts throughout both urban and country locations, armed with a minicam and a small crew, to document all sorts of "gleaning". There's a really interesting aspect to some of the vignettes Varda captures, with both "recyclers" and maybe even a few "hoarders" entering the fray. What becomes rather evident (and which is probably made clear in the film's original title, where the "I" is the female form of gleaner and obviously refers to Varda) is that Varda herself is "gleaning" snippets of lives and behaviors in order to "recycle" them herself for this documentary.

This has the typical amount of Varda whimsy, but one of the film's funnier moments was evidently a mistake that Varda just decided to leave in the film. In that regard, some of you may have experienced "technical challenges" suffered by your parental or grandparental units where they haven't been able to operate a camera properly. Let's just say even a filmmaker of Varda's expertise can occasionally make a kind of funny mistake.

The Gleaners and I Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Gleaners and I is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of The Criterion Collection with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.34:1. This is perhaps tellingly one of the few transfers in this set without any prefatory text, but the IMDb lists the Sony DSR-300 and Sony DCR-TRV950E as the minicams that Varda used, with the effort evidently being transferred to 35mm for release. This has an undeniably video- esque appearance, with a kind of processed, digital look and what appear to be sharpening artifacts at times, something that can be especially noticeable in panaromas against the horizon, where haloing around foreground objects can be noticed. The palette is rather nicely suffused, all things considered. Occasional interludes like some material in an industrial kitchen can looks somewhat softer than the bulk of the presentation. Despite the progressive presentation, there are what look like minor combing artifacts in some of the truck footage, and some of the archival video looks pretty rough.

The Gleaners and I Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Gleaners and I features an LPCM 2.0 track in the original French. This is another Varda documentary that doesn't have an overly ambitious sound design, and the bulk of this piece is simply narration and first person talking head segments, with occasional interludes of classical music. Everything is rendered cleanly and clearly without any problems whatsoever. Optional English subtitles are available.

The Gleaners and I Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Post Filmum to The Gleaners and I (1080p; 00:43) is a brief addendum. In French with English subtitles.


• The Gleaners Museum (1080i; 23:43) is a piece by Varda done for the 2002 home theater release of the film.

The Gleaners and I Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Gleaners and I is another typically distinctive Varda documentary with both "text" and "subtext" in about equal measure. Video here is a little iffy looking at times, but audio is fine and the museum supplement quite interesting.