{"id":116886,"date":"2017-10-20T09:00:45","date_gmt":"2017-10-20T13:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=116886"},"modified":"2017-10-20T12:30:00","modified_gmt":"2017-10-20T16:30:00","slug":"agnes-vardas-ecological-conscience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/10\/20\/agnes-vardas-ecological-conscience\/","title":{"rendered":"Agn\u00e8s Varda\u2019s Ecological Conscience"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_116888\" style=\"width: 1034px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/the-recall-of-the-gleaners-1859.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-116888\" class=\"wp-image-116888 size-large\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/the-recall-of-the-gleaners-1859-1024x524.jpg\" width=\"1024\" height=\"524\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/the-recall-of-the-gleaners-1859-1024x524.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/the-recall-of-the-gleaners-1859-300x153.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/the-recall-of-the-gleaners-1859-768x393.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/the-recall-of-the-gleaners-1859.jpg 1400w\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 62.5em) 67vw, 100vw\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-116888\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Jules Breton, <em> The Recall of the Gleaners,\u00a0<\/em>1859.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u201cExistence isn\u2019t a solitary matter,\u201d says the shepherd to the wanderer in Agn\u00e8s Varda\u2019s 1985 film,\u00a0<em>Vagabond<\/em>. This vision of collectivity, the belief that we are all in it together, recurs throughout Varda\u2019s films, from her early, proto\u2013New Wave <em>La Pointe Courte<\/em> (1954) to her acclaimed <em>Cl\u00e9o from 5 to 7<\/em> (1961) to her most recent film, <em>Faces Places<\/em> (2017), made in collaboration with the young French street artist JR. (Filmmaking isn\u2019t a solitary matter, either.) \u201cThis movie is about togetherness,\u201d she told <em>New York Magazine<\/em>. Watching <em>Faces Places<\/em>, I couldn\u2019t help thinking about Varda\u2019s 2000 film,\u00a0<em>The Gleaners &amp; I. <\/em>Both are road-trip movies in which Varda interviews the kinds of people we don\u2019t often see in movies\u2014farmers, miners, dockworkers, and their wives. Both films proceed by chance, gleaning whatever they happen upon. But though <em>The Gleaners<\/em> is now seventeen years old, old enough to drive a car and almost old enough to vote, it\u2019s feeling as fresh and relevant as if it had been made in parallel to <em>Faces Places<\/em>. It rewards rewatching.<\/p>\n<p><em>The Gleaners &amp; I<\/em> is a documentary about the time-honored act of gathering what other people have abandoned or thrown away. <em>Gleaning<\/em> is most often associated with what\u2019s been left behind after a harvest; think of that famous Millet painting, <em>The Gleaners<\/em> (1857), which you can find in the Mus\u00e9e d\u2019Orsay. The women\u2014gleaners used to be mainly women\u2014bend over to collect the bits of wheat the harvesters have left on the ground; they gather what they find in their aprons. It looks like back-breaking work. \u201cIt\u2019s always the same humble gesture,\u201d Varda comments in voice-over: to stoop, to glean.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_116889\" style=\"width: 453px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/italic-magazine-agnes_varda_2.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-116889\" class=\" wp-image-116889\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/italic-magazine-agnes_varda_2-1024x778.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"443\" height=\"337\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/italic-magazine-agnes_varda_2-1024x778.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/italic-magazine-agnes_varda_2-300x228.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/italic-magazine-agnes_varda_2-768x583.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/italic-magazine-agnes_varda_2.jpg 1207w\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 62.5em) 67vw, 100vw\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-116889\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Agnes Varda.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Today, they tell Varda, harvesting is more efficient because it\u2019s done by machines, leaving less for gleaners to pick up. In her film, Varda interviews present-day <em>gl\u00e2neurs<\/em>; some glean to survive, some out of principle (\u201cSalvaging is a matter of ethics with me,\u201d says a man who\u2019s eaten mostly garbage for ten years), others just for fun. One woman Varda interviews demonstrates how they used to do it: with a sweeping extension of her torso she gathers ears of corn into her apron. It was a social occasion, when all the women in the neighborhood would get together and, afterward, go back to the house for a coffee and a laugh.<\/p>\n<p>Varda enlarges the concept of the <em>gl\u00e2neur<\/em> to include people like the artist Louis Pons, whose work is assembled from trash, from forgotten things, from pens, empty spools, wires, cans, cages, bits of boats, cars, musical instruments: \u201cHe composes,\u201d Varda says, \u201cwith chance.\u201d Or to Bodan Litnianski, the Ukrainian retired brickmason-turned-artist who built his house (which he calls \u201c<em>Le palais id\u00e9al<\/em>\u201d) from scraps he found in dumps\u2014dolls, many dolls, and toy trucks and trains and hoses and baskets and plastic fronds\u2014effectively brickmasoned into place. \u201c<em>C\u2019est solide, eh.\u201d<\/em> Litnianski died in 2005, but there\u2019s a corresponding figure in <em>Faces Places <\/em>who made me sit up in recognition<em>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>All of the gleaners Varda speaks with are appalled at the amount of waste our culture produces\u2014especially food waste. \u201cPeople are so stupid!\u201d says a gleaner who strides around his village in Wellies, going through the garbage for food, freegan-style. \u201cThey see an expiration date and think,\u00a0<em>Oh I mustn\u2019t eat that, I\u2019ll get sick! <\/em>I\u2019ve been eating garbage for\u00a0ten years and I\u2019ve never been sick.\u201d Back in Paris, Varda interviews people who come around after the market\u2019s been through, to save money. \u201cYou should see what they get rid of,\u201d one says. \u201cFruit \u2026 vegetables \u2026 cheese, but that\u2019s rare.\u201d His entire diet, it seems, comes from eating the castoffs from the market and the boulangeries. Varda, intrigued by him, follows him back to the shelter where he lives and volunteers as a French teacher to immigrants.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_116890\" style=\"width: 372px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/eugene_atget_chiffonier_-_getty_museum.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-116890\" class=\"wp-image-116890\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/eugene_atget_chiffonier_-_getty_museum-820x1024.jpg\" width=\"362\" height=\"452\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/eugene_atget_chiffonier_-_getty_museum-820x1024.jpg 820w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/eugene_atget_chiffonier_-_getty_museum-240x300.jpg 240w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/eugene_atget_chiffonier_-_getty_museum-768x959.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 62.5em) 67vw, 100vw\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-116890\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Eug\u00e8ne Atget, <em> Le Chiffonier. <\/em> 1900<\/p><\/div>\n<p>The urban gleaner has often gone by another name: the <em>chiffonnier<\/em>, or rag picker. Until the 1960s, you could still hear his cry in the streets of Paris: \u201c<em>chiiiiiiiiiffonnier<\/em>!\u201d Baudelaire, in <em>Les fleurs du mal<\/em>, sees them \u201cbent under piles of rubbish, jumbled scrap,\u201d collecting \u201cthe dregs that monster Paris vomits up.\u201d The rag picker moves through the city on foot, like the flaneur, collecting what it has cast off. Other cities have long had this tradition\u2014the <em>raddi-wallah<\/em> in India, for instance (which can refer to both the scrap collector or the place where the scraps are brought). In Paris, the <em>chiffonniers<\/em>, like self-employed sanitation workers, went through the trash, separating out what was useful from what was not, collecting rags, rabbit skins, bits of metal, scraps of paper, bones, glass, yarn, fabric, old clothes, all manner of chemical compounds, anything that could be repurposed, reused, repackaged, or transformed into something else. \u201cVery little went to waste, in Baudelaire\u2019s Paris,\u201d notes the scholar Antoine Compagnon in his recent book on the <em>chiffonnier<\/em>. Georges Lacombe\u2019s 1928 short silent film,\u00a0<em>La zone<\/em>,<em>\u00a0<\/em>shows the process of rag picking and what happens to the detritus they collect. They would drag this in bags or in wheelbarrows to a collection point, of which there were many in the city; the rue Mouffetard, on the Left Bank, was the center of this reselling (side note: Varda made a short film about this street, 1958\u2019s <em>Opera Mouffe<\/em>). The metal, of course, would be taken to factories where it was melted down and turned into other things made of metal. How many lives has metal had, how many shapes has it taken? How many more lives does any object have before it eventually finds its way to some landfill?<\/p>\n<p>Today, this canny recycling spirit lives on in the <em>brocantes<\/em>, which you can find around town on any weekend afternoon. In among the real antique dealers, you can find people selling all the bits and bobs of things they don\u2019t want or they found in their basements, laid out on tables or blankets. They are \u201cobjets that can be found nowhere else: old-fashioned, broken, useless, almost incomprehensible, almost perverse,\u201d as Andr\u00e9 Breton writes in <em>Nadja<\/em>, visiting the flea market at Clignancourt. How many different people have made use of the same cast-off calculator, the little porcelain dish, the copy of a minor album by Renaud?<\/p>\n<p>The threat to the environment posed by waste is incredibly pressing; the need to recycle is a question of ethics. If we must consume, let us consume each other\u2019s castoffs. \u201cAll these old things,\u201d Baudelaire noticed back in 1857, \u201chave a moral value.\u201d This is the ethos of <em>The Gleaners<\/em>. Yet it\u2019s difficult to watch the film at times, to be reminded that others are living off what some of us throw away so carelessly, something Varda\u2019s literary kindred spirit, Virginie Despentes, has also managed to do in her recent masterpiece,\u00a0<em>Vernon Subutex<\/em>. But neither Varda nor Despentes sentimentalizes this cycle; the gleaners Varda interviews are gleeful. If there\u2019s anyone to pity here, it\u2019s us, paying retail, paying anything: we\u2019re the suckers. Varda helps us see the hyperactive cycle of our materialism and, through the act of <em>glanage<\/em>, shows us a way to consume less and to engage with our environments more.<\/p>\n<p>Before I watched the film, my suburban ways clung to me. Everything had to be new, of course. I\u2019d never gotten out of the car to pick up some apples from the ground, or brought in a piece of furniture from the street. (I think of Patti Smith in <em>Just Kids<\/em>, scrubbing with baking soda the mattress she and Robert Mapplethorpe found in the street. She had that pluck and resourcefulness.) Even after it, I\u2019m not sure I would go rummaging through the garbage after the market had finished. But Varda helped me see myself as not only a consumer but a participant in some greater cycle of custodianship. As Varda films people recuperating the copper coils from inside television sets that have been abandoned, or finding old refrigerators and repairing them, or turning them into very chic bookshelves, she seems to be asking us not to limit ourselves to accepting products as they\u2019re offered to us commercially but that we take them apart, turn them into other things, that we imagine new uses for them, even, and especially, when they seem to be useless.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>Lauren Elkin is the author of <\/em>Fl\u00e2neuse: Women Walk the City<em>. She lives in Paris.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; \u201cExistence isn\u2019t a solitary matter,\u201d says the shepherd to the wanderer in Agn\u00e8s Varda\u2019s 1985 film,\u00a0Vagabond. This vision of collectivity, the belief that we are all in it together, recurs throughout Varda\u2019s films, from her early, proto\u2013New Wave La Pointe Courte (1954) to her acclaimed Cl\u00e9o from 5 to 7 (1961) to her most [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1044,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1186],"tags":[9116,31157,31162,31155,31161,3338,31154,31160,28082,16240,31158,852,31159,31156,31153],"class_list":["post-116886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-on-film","tag-baudelaire","tag-brocantes","tag-chiffonnier","tag-cleo-from-5-to-7","tag-georges-lacombe","tag-just-kids","tag-la-pointe-courte","tag-la-zone","tag-les-fleurs-du-mal","tag-musee-dorsay","tag-opera-mouffe","tag-patti-smith","tag-rue-mouffetard","tag-the-gleaners-i","tag-vagabond"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Agn\u00e8s Varda&#039;s Ecological Conscience<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"As climate change becomes undeniable and inevitable, \u2018The Gleaners &amp; I\u2019 feels more relevant than ever.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/10\/20\/agnes-vardas-ecological-conscience\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Agn\u00e8s Varda\u2019s Ecological Conscience by Lauren Elkin\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"October 20, 2017 \u2013 &nbsp; \u201cExistence isn\u2019t a solitary matter,\u201d says the shepherd to the wanderer in Agn\u00e8s Varda\u2019s 1985 film,\u00a0Vagabond. 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