In the mid-nineteenth century, French painter François Miller created a painting titled "The Gleaner". At the end of the twentieth century, French female director Agnès Varda was inspired by this work and filmed Made a movie called "Gleaners". This is a work that is incompatible with the mainstream film market, and everything presents a simple and casual work.
After the film came out, some critics asserted that it was an experimental film destined to "fallen the sea". However, the release result of the film was unexpected. The film was not only widely accepted, but also caused a great sensation at the time. Not only that, "Gleaners" patronizes almost all important film festivals in the world.
What kind of movie is "Gleaner"?
Gathering refers to picking up the leftover ears of wheat in the wheat field after harvest. In this movie, what we see is not the "gleaner" picking up the wheat, but the "gleaner". When Varda filmed this movie, our world had entered an industrial society from an agricultural society, and "gear picking" had already become "picking up".
Gleaners have become pickers. What they pick up is not just wheat ears, but all the things that have been forgotten or discarded: trash that is thrown away before eating, various beverage bottles and wine bottles. All kinds of clothes, shoes, hats, worn-out toy furniture, etc. In the history of France, gleaning is a virtue worthy of promotion, while in Varda's films, "gearing" is a fringe behavior, which means lack of food and helplessness.
"The Gleaner" filmed in 2000 is both a documentary and a road movie. The director Varda takes a camera and takes a car from Paris. He goes north and then south, shooting and interviews scattered all over the corner. Pickers. Some of them are farmers looking for crops in the land, some are city dwellers looking for food in garbage dumps, and some are artists looking for all kinds of art to make art.
All sorts of pickers gathered in front of Varda's camera to tell their views on life.
For the characters in her lens, Varda made a detailed classification. She divided these pickers into three categories. “Some people pick up because of life’s forces, some people pick up because of their artists, and some people pick up because of their artists. It’s because they like to pick and drop." Those who make a living by picking and dropping are the scars of the city. Those who are picking up because of artistic creation are for awakening, and those who like to picking and dropping are just for cherishing.
In Varda's words, this is a movie about waste. Although the camera is aimed at the pickers, what Varda really wants to show the audience are those things in the hands of the pickers. Those things that still have value, but are thrown away as rubbish. If Miller’s "The Gleaner" is the joy of the harvest, then Varda's "The Gleaner" is a critique and worry about the excess material in the world today.
Everyone in the film is picking up, and Varda, who is outside the film, seems to have become a "picked up". She uses the lens to pick up the fragments in life, and pick up the people and things that people have neglected or forgotten. Get up, and then chain them together. Was Varda walking from behind the camera to the front of the camera, even if this behavior was deliberately done, it does not go against the overall tone of the movie.
Sometimes, she uses the camera to shoot her other hand, and sometimes she points the camera at the road without a lens. She is like a casual shooting tourist, traveling back and forth between cities in a car. Everything seems to be out of order, but in fact there is a complete and rigorous logic inside. This logic is Varda's thinking about life and thinking about art.
Agnès Varda has created more than 30 films in her life. Her works are mainly female subjects, especially those who are good at portraying women who have the courage to fight the secular and take their destiny in their own hands. She used the lens to record their confusion, loneliness and hesitation, as well as their rationality, wisdom and determination.
In general, Varda is not a director who is good at grand narratives, so her works do not have grand and wonderful plots. However, her works have a sense and sensitivity that are unique to women. Compared to telling stories, Varda is better at observing, observing the various changes in the world, observing the relationship between people, people and things, and things and things. And no matter whether the emotions conveyed by the movie are sad or joyful, her movies always have a poetic touch.
In the works of Añez Varda, there are feature films, documentaries, feature films and short films, and these works have a strong personal style. "Gleaner" is an experimental work. The artistic achievements of this film are not only because Varda created an experimental digital documentary with first-person narrative, but its real value is directed by Varda. In the process of shooting, philosophical thinking is used-the relationship between "self and the other".
Varda did not shy away from the tremendous shock and subversion brought to her by filming documentaries. Therefore, her documentaries not only focus on the passion of life, but also have an attempt to "break the old and create the new". She always explores the narrative in her own way, constantly breaking the regularity of the traditional narrative mode, and replacing it with a more personal narrative method.
Filming is more like a process of exploration for Varda. She constantly absorbs new things, merges them, filters them, and collages them to create a new possibility. When I first saw "The Gleaner", I just thought it was a human being. Everyone is a scavenger in this world. Some people pick up love, some people pick up money, some people pick up luck... Until today, I didn’t understand. Agnès injects humanitarian care in this movie.
As a fan of her movie, I must admit that I am narrow-minded. Perhaps it is precisely because of my narrow-mindedness that I will appreciate this movie again, go deep into it, and break the original mindset. Really understand that "the ability to get along with concrete things is the starting point for human beings to learn how to get along with their own world." This sentence means.
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