Taking the traditional definition of gleaning as the act of collecting leftover crops from fields after they have been harvested as its starting point, The Gleaners and I (2000) investigates various forms of gleaning through a zigzagging journey across the French landscape. Along the way, Agnes Varda interviews vagabonds, activists, artists, and individuals who forage and scavenge to get by, whilst reflexively gleaning images and ideas with her handheld camera. 

Following the form of Varda’s earlier documentary Daguerrotypes (1975), The Gleaners and I weaves together vignettes of different people, captured through conversational interviews. Through these portraits, the varied reasons people glean are revealed: out of hunger; alongside others to gain a sense of community; to gather material for artworks; to practice ethical beliefs; to remember a period of one’s life; and for the pure pleasure the act produces. The settings are equally diverse: the activity of urban gleaners who gather from bins and pavements are presented alongside that of those gleaning in the French countryside. The law and history surrounding gleaning in France is established by lawyers in full robes who appear, suddenly and surreally, in a field of dying cabbage and from the hustle and bustle of a busy street.

Just as the documentary’s subjects see treasure in the trash, through careful and ludic camerawork Varda enchants the everyday. The camera slowly grazes over cabbage leaves and the seeded centres of sunflowers, through which they appear as beautiful landscapes-in-miniature. Elsewhere, Varda films one hand with the other, “catching” trucks as they pass by on the motorway by encircling each in her fist held in front of the lens. Later, the camera is accidentally left running, its lens cap swinging across a view of the ground. Accompanied by a soundtrack of carefree jazz, Varda presents this footage as ‘The Dance of the Lens Cap’. At other points, through Varda’s voiceover, a yellowing bunch of parsley is transformed into a bouquet of flowers and black ceiling mould is framed as ground-breaking abstract art.

Varda’s filmmaking process of gathering footage and thoughts with her camera is itself an act of gleaning. This parallel is surfaced through clever self-reflexivity from the documentary’s offset. The documentary opens with images of Varda imitating the female gleaner in Jules Breton’s painting ‘La Glaneuse’, replacing a sheaf of wheat with a camera. Handheld throughout, the camera becomes an extension of Varda’s hand, roving and reaching out to objects of interest, including the heart-shaped potatoes which are the film’s central motif. Voiceover offers another means for Varda to reflect on her filmmaker-gleaner status, and she does so thoughtfully, describing her process as the gleaning of “images, impressions, emotions”.

As is typical in the road movie genre, which the documentary plays upon, the journey taken extends beyond the road trip to encompass interior reflection. Varda looks within, meditating on her creative process, memory, and aging through voiceover and image. Her changing body is presented as a landscape alongside that of the French countryside. Images depict her combing her hair, striped down the centre with grey roots, and her wrinkled hands in close-up. In the voiceover which accompanies these images, Varda reflects on the awe and horror she feels towards her anatomy.

In The Gleaners and I Varda stages an intimate and layered inquiry into the histories and practices of gleaning in France. At once playful, political, and profound, the documentary offers a meandering rumination on waste, aging, beauty, justice, and life’s quandaries and purpose.