The Gleaners and I: Two Years Later
(2002)
The Gleaners and I: Two Years Later Blu-ray offers solid video and great audio in this enjoyable Blu-ray release
Agnès Varda returns to the people she met in her 2000 documentary on gleaning and meets some new people who were inspired by her first film.
For more about
The Gleaners and I: Two Years Later and the The Gleaners and I: Two Years Later Blu-ray release, see the
The Gleaners and I: Two Years Later Blu-ray Review published by Jeffrey Kauffman on July 31, 2020 where this Blu-ray release scored
3.0 out of
5.
Director:
Agnès Varda
»
See full cast & crew
The Gleaners and I: Two Years Later Blu-ray Review
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, July 31, 2020
Note: This film is available as part of
The Complete Films of Agnès Varda.
In the wake (figurative or otherwise) of Agnès Varda's death last year at the age of 90, quite a bit has rightfully been written about this iconic force
in
both
French and global cinema. Varda's output includes well over fifty credits as a director (including some television entries as detailed by the
IMDb), and aside from listing some of her better known triumphs,
many obituaries and/or eulogies about Varda mentioned any number of other biographical data points, including her rather unique position as a
woman in France's
nouvelle vague movement, her own feminism which was featured none too subtly in some of her films, and her
frequently provocative experimental style. But you know what one of the things that kind of fascinates me personally most about Varda? That she
was married for 28 years to Jacques Demy, from 1962 until Demy's death in 1990. That Varda, often a purveyor of
verité infused
"realism",
whether that be in outright documentaries or at least ostensibly more "fictional" outings, and Demy, a director whose candy colored, dreamlike and
at least relatively "Hollywoodized" musicals with
Michel Legrand brought a new luster and gloss to French cinema, managed to make a marital go of it for so long is certainly testament to the
maxim
that "opposites attract", even if those oppositional forces in this instance played out at least in part in terms of what kinds of films the two were
often
best remembered for. If Varda's long marriage to Demy is more than enough reason to celebrate her personal life, her professional life is
beautifully
feted in this rather astounding new set from Criterion, which aggregates an amazing 39 films (albeit some running as short as a few minutes) to
provide what is arguably one of the most insightful
overviews of Varda's cinematic
oeuvre. Perhaps unavoidably, but also undeniably movingly, these personal and professional sides of
Varda
merge in at least some of the films in this set, including
The
Young
Girls Turn 25,
The World of Jacques
Demy,
Jacquot de Nantes, and
The Beaches of Agnès.
Perhaps unexpectedly given its rather strange subject matter,
The Gleaners and I became a rather sizable hit for Agnès Varda, to the point that she decided to do this "follow up" a couple of years
later. In this often sweet piece, Varda revisits some of the people she profiled in the first documentary, getting a bit more into their personal stories,
while also exploring some new folks as well as the general response to the first film. While
The Gleaners and I: Two Years Later certainly is
able to be understood and enjoyed as its own standalone piece, it's probably best appreciated after having seen the first documentary. For fans of
Varda's homages to her husband Jacques Demy, as in some of the films linked to above in the opening paragraph of this review, there's some
unexpected but totally charming "gleaning" that Varda herself does in terms of Demy's early work.
The Gleaners and I: Two Years Later Blu-ray, Video Quality
The Gleaners and I: Two Years Later is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of The Criterion Collection with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.32.
This is another short, like
The Gleaners and I, which
kind of curiously and perhaps tellingly features no prefatory text about the transfer, and in this case (unlike with
The Gleaners and I), the
IMDb doesn't provide any help. That said, I'm assuming Varda and her team used minicams again, as this has more of a digital capture appearance
than that of film, but that said, the resolution in this follow up is considerably better than in the first film. There are sharper detail levels throughout,
and less of the processed, slightly digital look that beset the first film. The palette is generally very well suffused throughout.
The Gleaners and I: Two Years Later Blu-ray, Overall Score and Recommendation
As a standalone documentary
The Gleaners and I: Two Years Later probably won't resonate for many, despite any of its abundant charms.
Seen in tandem with
The Gleaners and I, though, it's another riff on Varda's "reunion" films, with a few newcomers thrown into the mix. Video
is better than in the first film but probably not at the general level seen in many of the other films in this set, but audio is fine.
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