Glaneurs et la Glaneuse, Les (Gleaners and I, The) (2000)

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General		Extras
Category	Documentary	Main Menu Audio Featurette-The Gleaners And I: Two Years Later Trailer-Calle 54, Amandla!, Standing In The Shadows Of Motown Trailer-Swing, Russian Ark
Rating
Year Of Production	2000
Running Time	78:38 (Case: 82)
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Agnès Varda
Studio Distributor	Potential Films Madman Entertainment	Starring	Agnès Varda Bodan Litnanski Agnès Varda François Wertheimer Agnès Bredel Joanna Bruzdowicz Richard Klugman Isabelle Olivier
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	?	Music	Agnès Bredel Joanna Bruzdowicz Richard Klugman

     Agnès Varda is something of an institution in independent film making. Her quirky, direct and honest approach has delivered some fantastic hits (and probably equally as many misses) in a long career, starting back in 1954 with the audacious making of La Pointe Courte.

      Les Glaneurs et la Glaneuse was completed in 2000, with the filmmaker now at the age of 72 years. Now equipped with state of the art digital video equipment, Varda discovers a new freedom of movement in her filmmaking. She roams the countryside of France, inspired by the glorious, romantic paintings of gleaners by Millet and Van Gogh, to see if there is still a remnant of their world remaining.

      Gleaners. Since biblical times and the story of Ruth, there is a quasi-romantic notion of nobility that surrounds those who gather after the harvest. Those who pick and break apart the ground to find what has been left behind. What Varda finds is less about romance, and more about layers of truth that can only be gleaned after the ground is broken by the first harvest. She states that in seeking out these people, she too is gleaning - gleaning images and gleaning a more honest understanding of how life is lived around her, but seen only when one really stops and looks.

      Confronting the fact that time too, is a harvester, reaping her youth and number of days, Varda adopts an almost childlike sense of play and directness. She indulges images which amuse her; she asks people very directly the questions she wants the answers for; she collects objects that have beauty to her eye. Her encounters with various gleaners of various persuasions inspires in her a simplicity and passion that is directly translated to her audience.

      And what a range of gleaners there are! They range from the humbly indigent and broken of society to those who glean for the thrill of the chase. There are strident, angry political gleaners and pensive, sensitive artistic gleaners. We learn the distinction between pickers and gleaners and also learn that France, like the rest of us, has an entire group of people who have slipped through all the safety nets and survive in a subculture with rules entirely of its own.

      The gleaning is not restricted to the fields of France, either. On city streets, market stalls at the close of day and rubbish bins behind supermarkets are ripe fields for picking over. That is, if the managers don't churlishly douse the bins' contents with bleach. Unwanted household goods left out for council collection are also prized treasures for gleaners of the non-food seeking kind. One of the themes that constantly springs to mind is just how wasteful we are as a society, and how little we prize the things we have around us. In questioning her interviewees so candidly, Varda shows the dignity and reality of each individual, without sentimentality or over-romanticisation. There is a really endearing, homespun and brutally honest atmosphere in this film. The filmmaker treats herself as just another subject in the film, and her candour opens the viewer emotionally to the experience.

Video

     The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, which is its original format.

     Filmed entirely on digital handheld camera, the detail is actually quite good. Shadow detail is generally fine, with the exception of the scenes of the chef in his kitchen, where everything goes to hell in a handbasket. But with that notable exception, overall luminance levels are entirely acceptable.

     The colours were rarely particularly rich, and had a somewhat cold edge to them, but they were overall very accurate with generally pleasing skin tones and little halation marring the image.

     With the exception of motion blur and jittery pans reminiscent of NTSC 3:2 pull-down artefacting (despite the transfer being PAL), there were few glaringly bad MPEG artefacts. Overall, everything felt crisp and clean and there were no film artefacts.

     The subtitles were generally acceptable, although there were two distinct instances in the production where entire sentences went completely untitled. My schoolgirl French struggled to keep up with the raw dialogue, and this was a genuine booboo on the behalf of the subtitlers.

     This disc is a dual layered disc, but there is no layer change with which to contend.

Video Ratings Summary

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Audio

     There is one audio track on this DVD - French Dolby Digital 2.0 .

     The dialogue and all other aspects of the audio on this presentation could best be described as "functional." There were no glaring audio sync problems.

     Generally I was pretty unaware of the music, with the exception of the wretched rap numbers that were - well - umm, pass. The only exception would be some rather glorious cello playing that was suitably haunting and beautiful.

     There was effectively no surround or subwoofer activity, and nor did there really need to be. The drama of this piece is definitely in the story itself.

Audio Ratings Summary

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Menu

     The menu design is static with a Dolby Digital 2.0 audio track.

Theatrical Trailers (Madman Propaganda)

     Calle 54 (1:13)
     Amandla (1:39)
     Standing in the Shadows of Motown (2:04)
     Swing (1:32)
     Russian Ark (2:10)

Special Feature - Les Glaneurs et la Glaneuse: Deux Ans Après

     The principal extra on this disc could possibly by rights better qualify as a double feature. Agnès Varda discovers how deep a chord she struck with her gleaners film two years previously. She shares with her audience some of the remarkable letters and gifts she has received from far and wide in response to the film, and then takes us to visit some of her correspondents as well as revisiting some of the characters from her first film. Two of the most moving follow-on stories are those of Alain and Salomon (I don't want to tell you too much - the journey of discovery is so important here.)

     There's a fantastic sense of completion in revisiting these stories, and it rounds out the entire experience in a wonderfully whole way. There's also a lovely little postscript feel to this, particularly how Varda's first film inspired an art gallery.

     The Region 4 version of this disc misses out on:

• Production notes by Varda
• Varda filmography
• Liner notes by New York Times film critic A.O. Scott

     The Region 1 version of this disc misses out on:

• Nothing

     The extras on offer in the R1 version are meaningful so that's the marginal winner folks.

     Les Glaneurs et la Glaneuse won the European Film Awards of 2000 for Best Documentary, and deservedly so. It is an unpretentious piece with a warm core and a spirit of social justice without stridency or banner waving. Disarmingly simple, subtle and candid, it is a little slice of social history about a people that society mostly fails to see.

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