The Gleaners and I

Gleaning has meanings both literal (to gather grain left behind by reapers, the subject of nineteenth-century French paintings like Jean-François Millet’s famed Les glaneuses) and metaphorical (to collect bit by bit). Agnès Varda’s rumination on the art of “living off the leftovers of others” finds inspiration in both the past and the present, the rural and the urban, the political and the highly personal. Camera in hand, Varda moves from the highways and back roads of France to its urban alleyways, interviewing those for whom gleaning is a way of life or an encompassing philosophy. For some, gleaning is a means to an end, like finding still-edible food in fields or restaurant trash cans; for others, using only what others throw away is a rebellion against consumer culture. “A wandering-road documentary” is how Varda termed the project; in the Chicago Reader, Jonathan Rosenbaum was more effusive, calling it “beautiful, absorbing, and touching . . . a mind-bending experience not to be missed.”