HW 1 Sep 5th 06- Video 1, Film

"The Gleaners and I" and I



“The Gleaners and I” the French documentary by Agnès Varda, tracks the lives of gleaners, both field gleaners and urban gleaners, traces the history of gleaning and also finds artistic representations of gleaners through time. This documentary is not your everyday documentary, with (what I thought) completely different structural organization, a few shots of the artists’ existentialist thoughts, and dosages of self-reference.
The documentary is shot on hand held camera, and if I remember correctly the first shot or sequence was that of a painting that had the theme of gleaners. At that point the documentary did not seem to be any different from other documentaries I’ve seen, but as it went on, I soon noticed that the artist, instead of organizing it much like you would an essay (as most expect), she organized it much like a train of thought. In my opinion, the train of thought structure made the documentary much more entertaining, and in a way more organic in feeling, taking you to unexpected segues, maintaining pertinence and more importantly, my attention. It also gave the director the ability to go from interviewing gleaners and their lifestyles, to taking interesting shots of art completely composed of recycled material.
This train of thought structure also gave the director an opening to spill some of her own existentialist angst, making us, the viewer, feel as close to death as she does, with lines like “My hands keep on telling me the end is near”. Even though it might sound like an off-tangent comment, one could argue that the director herself is a gleaner, of thoughts, of images, of time. A decent visual explanation of this could be the series of shots where the director films her right hand make an “o” over trucks on the road, closing it and saying she’s “catching” the trucks.
Another liberty that the documentaries structure allows is space for self reference, in which Varda takes advantage of, using even “mistakes” as part of the film. This can be seen when we see the director comb her hair, when she pulls out the luggage full of souvenirs from her trip to Japan (showing one of the directors manifestations of gleaning in her life), and when she accidentally leaves the camera recording, gracing us with “The Dance of the Lens Cap”. She ends the documentary with another painting with gleaning as theme, making what I thought was a looping effect.
If this documentary taught me anything, it would have to be that the approach towards a theme, or the structure on which the theme lies, completely affects and determines the sub themes that can be explored, and the way they feel to the viewer. To organize a film using train of thought, at least in my opinion, gave the director the ability to tell us what she thinks of the subject, or what the subject made her think of, drawing us closer to the artists world, creating more of an experience than a film, without sacrificing sociability.