Last night we finished watching The Gleaners and I, a film by Agnes Varda.
I am not going to say it shows how the homeless and have-nots live in France, because (for example) it’s not about “the homeless” even when it’s about homeless people. It’s about persons, some of whom are homeless, down on their luck, in difficult circumstances. And not all of the gleaners are have-nots. Some do it out of general principles. There are a lot of ways of living off of other peoples’ throwaways.
I especially liked that the Netflix DVD has an epilogue, in which Varda goes back two years later to see how some of the people she had filmed are doing. For some life goes on as before, for some there have been small changes for the better, at least in one case because of the publicity and recognition from having appeared in the film.
It’s very different from what NPR would do with a topic like this. There was not a single NPR-sounding voice in the whole thing. I don’t think I could have watched it if there had been.
And Varda is skeptical, like when the guy who lost his job as a truck driver for drinking on the job says, two years later, that he doesn’t drink any more. She points out that he smelled like wine. So he explains that he still drinks, but it’s a lot less than he used to. And it’s believable, because Varda was willing to dig below the surface. She is not hostile and she is not gullible or superficial. She is curious. And we come away having gotten to know some people we might not have otherwise met.
It also reminds me that I have some gleaners among my own relatives in the U.S., who might not mind my talking about it here, even if I can’t do so as colorfully as they do. But I’m not sure about that and I’m not going to. I suppose some people think I have my own tendencies along those lines.
And this Wednesday I was prepared to do some dumpster-diving at McDonalds where I thought I had thrown my billfold away with my burger bag. I suppose that would have given me a new appreciation for this whole topic. But my wife and I were relieved of the obligation to have that experience when we were told the trash had already been hauled away. I wrote more about it at The Spokesrider.
I’m going to watch this film at least once more, to help me work on my French. I can’t get anything new from Netflix for a few days anyway, because my credit card has been cancelled due to that billfold incident. But I’m also eager to get back to Russian films. I haven’t been working very hard on Russian in any form in the past couple weeks, though I do spend a few minutes with it almost every day.