Tempi
Moderni


I film
del 1997


COSA DIET A
DENVER QUANDO SEI MORTO

(THINGS TO DO IN DENVER WHEN YOU'RE DEAD)

Regia: Gary Fleder

Sceneggiatura: Scott Rosenberg

Fotografia: Elliot Davis

Scenografia: Nelson Coatesi

Montaggio: Richard Marks

Prodotto da: Cary Woods

(USA, 1995)

Durata: 110'

Distribuzione cinematografica: CECCHI GORI GROUP

Distribuzione home video: CECCHI GORI HOME VIDEO

PERSONAGGI E INTERPRETI

Jimmy "il Santo": Andy Garcia

Il Boss: Christopher Walken

Olden "Pieces" Polymeros: Christopher Lloyd

Dagney: Gabrielle Anwar

Critical Bill: Treat Williams

Mr. Shhh: Steve Buscemi

Franchise Chyser: William Forsythe

Easy Wind: Bill Nunn

Joe Heff: Jack Warden

Jimmy "il Santo" (Andy Garcia) è un ex-gangster che cerca di
sbarcare il lunario con l'"Afterlife Advice", una ditta che si occupa di
videoregistrare annunci di persone in fin di vita da lasciare come guida e testimonianza
ai propri cari. Le sue precarie condizioni economiche lo convincono ad accettare un lavoro
sporco propostogli da un importante boss di Denver (Christopher Walken). Si tratta di
mettere paura ad un ragazzo e, per compiere l'impresa, Jimmy raduna un gruppo di balordi
di sua conoscenza. Pieces (Christopher Lloyd) è il proiezionista di un cinema porno
affetto da lebbra che, lentamente, perde pezzi dal corpo in decomposizione; Critical Bill
(Treat Williams) è uno psicopatico violento che non prende a pugni nessuno da più di un
anno, usando come terapia la boxe contro cadaveri prelevati direttamente dai feretri
dell'impresa funebre "Carlotti"; Earl Denton (Bill Nunn) si occupa del controllo
della peste, mentre Franchise Chyser (William Forsythe) è l'unico a condurre una vita
normale, per quanto ai margini della società, con moglie e figli a carico. Il semplice
compito diverrà un incubo dai risvolti imprevedibili e i cinque uomini dovranno lottare
contro il tempo per fuggire al letale Mr.Shh (Steve Buscemi), un killer pagato per
eliminarli nel modo più doloroso possibile. Sin dalla descrizione dei personaggi il
lettore avrà compreso l'alto grado di ripugnanza dell'insieme che, almeno nella prima
parte dell'opera, contribuisce ad avvicinare lo stile di regia di Gary Fleder a quello di
un David Lynch in stato di dormiveglia.

Le apparenze non
ingannino, "Cosa fare a Denver.." (bellissimo titolo che sintetizza
brillantemente lo spirito del film) è un'opera originale, ben girata e scritta
superbamente che vede la luce nelle sale italiane dopo ben due anni dall'uscita in patria.
Gli accostamenti e i rimandi al noir degli anni '40, riletto secondo l'ottica moderna e
spregiudicata delle grandi-piccole metropoli americane, colmeranno di gioia il cuore del
cinefilo amante del genere, pur lasciando un evidente sentore di manierismo che avvicina
l'opera ad un esercizio di stile tanto superbo quanto spregiudicato. Il film resta
comunque un ottimo biglietto di presentazione, da cui si evince che Fleder (al suo primo
lungometraggio di spessore dopo una lunga militanza nell'underground) sa girare con classe
e Rosenberg (autore della sceneggiatura) scrivere con grinta e lo spettatore, da par suo,
non può che attendere con interesse successive opere che confermino tali confortanti
premesse.

“A wonderfully moving nature
film that is both informative and entertaining.”

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

A wonderfully moving nature film that is both informative and entertaining,
much like a Discovery Channel documentary, following a colony of three-foot-tall
Empire penguins of Antartica (about a thousand) and their survival and
mating during the course of a year (from the end of the Antarctic summer
in February, a time when the sea ice is melted, to the following February)
in a place that is known for having the most inhospitable climate in the
world. The highlight of the film is to watch these winged creatures, who
can’t fly, walk like humans over the icy terrain in temperatures of 80
degrees below zero and in 100-mile-per-hour winds as they are determined
to march together (alone they could not survive the cold, as in a group
they can huddle together to gain some needed warmth) to their nesting ground
as their ancestors have done for thousands of generations (ever since they
chose to remain in Antarctica and not relocate like other creatures when
the area’s climate changed in the distant past).

“March of the Penguins” makes a good companion piece to another French
documentary production “Winged Migration.” Commenting in the English language
version (there’s also a French version) is the mellifluously-voiced Morgan
Freeman, whose witty narration was written by Jordan Roberts. The only
problem I had with the script, was that it unnecessarily allows us to anthropomorphize
the penguins when their survival story was really the incredibly amazing
and grim true story that had to be told. The tacked on love story seemed
too arbitrary, cutesy and manipulative for my taste. But that doesn’t diminish
the great job done by French filmmaker Luc Jacquet, a trained biologist,
who wrote the story about the breeding cycle of the Emperor penguin and
films them without the use of CGI or any of those other gimmicky special
effects. Jacquet lets us see for ourselves the real and majestic penguins
as they march to find a mate, whom they pick in some mysterious way that
is beyond our present understanding, and if successful the female will
pass the single egg (one egg to a couple) onto the male to shelter from
the cold by making a pouch between their claws and belly. If the egg is
exposed even for a short time to the cold, it will not survive. When the
birth is completed in mid-July after a three-month gestation period, Pop
keeps the chick warm while Mom marches the seventy or so miles back to
the sea to get food (all kinds of fish) and then they return to feed the
little ones by regurgitating the food down their throats. Meanwhile dad
survives all this time without putting down a meal since the time they
left the sea, and when the time is ripe all the Pops will march back together
to their home near the sea as they complete their obligation to keep the
species alive and leave the Moms in charge of the parenting. Pop goes sea
diving to get some fish food to relieve his hunger pangs after months of
nearly starving, and when the time becomes right for the young ones to
travel again Mom will bring them home to reunite with Pop. To ensure that
their offspring will recognize them again, the Pops makes sure they each
know what their distinct voices sound like. This crop of youngsters will
wait by the sea for four years before they venture out to go through the
same mating yearly cyle their parents just completed; most will never see
their parents again, because when they become strong they can fend for
themselves. 

In these glacially stunning surroundings, a place that seems impossible
to sustain any form of life, we can see that the penguins are a fascinating
study in the true meaning of family values as they are willing to sacrifice
themselves in caring for their offsprings. Their pains are heartfelt when
we see them losing a chick to the weather or a predator (the leopard seals)
or if the timing is off and Mom doesn’t arrive in time to feed her starving
chick. It seems we humans do indeed have things to learn from our penguin
friends of the north about caring for others, family responsibilities and
being brave when things get tough. In this documentary, we see both wonderful
and grim things about penguins we couldn’t have by just catching them in
a zoo.

from the June 25, 2004 edition

Movie Guide

Information on violence, drugs, alcohol, smoking, sex/nudity, and profanity is compiled by the Monitor panel, which is composed of at least three moviegoers.

STAR RATINGS

Film critic

David Sterritt


Monitor panel


Meaning



Noteworthy

Good

Fair

Poor

The Worst
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By Crystal Allen

THE STRAIGHT DOPE:
By the time the 80’s rolled around the gigantic collaborations of Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski were starting to look like dinosaurs. Even though Fitzcarraldo was released in 1982 it had been in development for years and had more of the feel of earlier triumphs like 1972’s Aguirre: The Wrath of God. That is why it is so shocking that their final collaboration, the bitter and acidic Cobra Verde was released in 1988. For such a monstrous production to have been mounted in the post-Heaven’s Gate era seems unthinkable now. Just ponder the logistics: Kinski, in one of his maddest roles ever plays the bandit Cobra Verde who leaves the hellish Brazilian gold mines to seek out the ocean. He finds work as an overseer to six hundred African slaves on a sugar plantation. After impregnating all three of the plantation owner’s daughters he is sent on an unbelievable suicide mission: To single-handedly reopen the dormant slave trade with a west African king. In Africa he discovers a society as difficult to understand as the one he just left, but through his maniacal dealings manages to get the job done. He eventually discovers that he is being cheated from all sides and decides to help a rebel movement overthrow the mad king in exchange for total control of the slave trade. To do so he trains an army of thousands of women who attack the kings palace in a sea of screams. The film ends with the spent Cobra Verde collapsing on the beach trying to pull a boat into the water to escape the madness he has helped create.

A complex film that deals with huge issues and ends on a somewhat opaque note, Cobra Verde has been derided as the least of the Herzog – Kinski collaborations. While it may not live up to the lyrical depth of Nosferatu or Aguirre it is hardly a clone of the earlier epics. Kinski’s amazing performance is as different from Aguirre or Fitzcarraldo as can be. He may seem like yet another insane tyrant but the demons that drive him here come from a disgust with all those around him, instead of from greed and megalomania (Aguirre) and unachievable vision (Fitzcarraldo).

The larger scenes in Cobra Verde are as astonishing as any big budget film: a line of thousands of Africans relaying a message from one village to another by waving white flags, a endless army of tribal woman training for battle, first as a formless mob, then with total precision. There are scenes of great intimacy as well: Early on Cobra Verde shares a meal with a young cripple by candle-light. The lack of big film lighting makes the scene seem so personal and unusual that when Cobra Verde tells the young man “I’ve never had a friend before,” the gesture is unmistakably real.

Some may consider the film racist for its depiction of the slave trade, but the traders are not spared any criticism. It’s just that this ultimately is not a film about slavery, like Amistad, but rather about one man’s journey for peace and the impossibility of ever finding that. A few moments near the end where Cobra Verde dismisses slavery as a huge crime almost seem out of place, since he has seemed so apolitical to that point. He may glower disapprovingly at a slave owner, but he is also quick to inspect the teeth of his chained slaves as if they were horses.

A powerful early scene keys us into this side of Kinski’s character: When a slave about to be flogged in a Brazilian town square escapes and runs through the crowd Cobra Verde blocks his way and, with piercing eyes, freezes the man in his tracks. He advises him not to run, that running will only ultimately make the persecution worse. The man, stock still, stares back at Kinski, almost as if under a spell. Then, as guards violently seize the man Kinski works the same mind control on them. He tells them to let the man go and that he can find the whipping post by himself, essentially restoring a drop of the slave’s dignity by allowing him to make his own path. This complex moment, which defines a lot about the dynamic of the film, is key in understanding a rich and deep performance by a unique master.

PICTURE:
The picture is amazing. Crystal clear images really help capture the hugeness of the production. It is anamorphic and really shows off some stunning cinematography. The film was filmed entirely on location in Columbia, Brazil, and Ghana and really uses the locations expertly. There is no way to mistake the scenery for a sound-stage. Herzog’s searches for authentic locations are legendary and it’s easy to see why.

AUDIO:
The audio is also quite good. The German track is in Dolby Digital 5.1 and that’s the one to watch. There is also an English 2.0 track and a director’s commentary track. Popol Vuh’s score is subtle to the extreme. There are just touches of music that really help accentuate some key emotional moments.

EXTRAS:
The only notable extra is Herzog’s commentary track. It is presented in interview form, but is scene specific. Herzog is always fascinating to listen to and even though there are some lags in the commentary, his stories about life on location are priceless. By now Herzog has amassed volumes of discussion of his working and personal relationship with Kinski, between his commentary tracks and the documentary Kinski: My Best Fiend. These tales are so fascinating that I could just listen to them all day.

FINAL THOUGHTS:
Cobra Verde is not necessarily for everybody. The characterizations are dark and there is always a palpable air of danger. Kinski’s sneering performance is as effective as ever, but these qualities that I seek out in the films by these men are exactly the qualities that may turn some off. The portrayal of the slave trade is often brutal and may be misinterpreted, but I’m sure they only scratch the surface of a sickening period in world history. Unlike recent Hollywood pap like The Patriot, which practically denies that slavery was all that bad, Cobra Verde pulls no punches.

Other Herzog / Kinski reviews:
Nosferatu
Woyzeck
My Best Fiend

Gil Jawetz is a graphic designer, video director, and t-shirt designer. He lives in Brooklyn.

E-mail Gil at buskerdog@yahoo.com

The story seems all-too familiar: It’s the last heyday of school and the kids are energized by the summer break. They spend the night driving around town, drinking and using drugs, searching for the duration of love, and getting tangled in all types of fracas. Get you seen this kidney of big before? Beyond a, the answer is a resounding “yes.” What’s different about Dazed and Confused? Everything. Writer/director Richard Linklater uses the in keeping pattern and converts it into a fun, insightful picture that works for any delay period.

The film takes place in May 1976 at a reduced Texas burgh where the kids eat little to do but look in place of the next party. The jocks, stoners, geeks, and everyone in between acquire a win together for a crazy night of fun. Mitch Kramer (Wiley Wiggins) and his buddies be suffering with just graduated from younger high mould, and as an installation protocol the record school seniors chivvy them with paddles. The older guys are led by the oafish Fred O’Bannon (Ben Affleck), who seems more concerned with this frat-like vigour than the fact that he flunked his classes. A more kid-pleasant jock is Randall “Pink” Floyd (Jason London), who plays quarterback but hangs with a different crowd. His concentration is focused on a required cut presented by his coach to join the team. It prohibits the typical party activities, and he vehemently refuses to sign it.

These small plot elements only provide a minor portion of this compelling film, which avoids focusing too much on any fixed aspect. None of the characters (even the idiot O’Bannon) are written as one-dimensional, which makes even the possibly creepy characters understandable. Wooderson (Matthew McConaughy) is a much-older bloke who still spends his speedily hanging with the high schoolers. His view is explained in the following cite: “That’s what I love everywhere these high public school girls, gentleman. I get older, they stay the same era.” This peculiarity does seem a bit scary, but he’s played as just another guy in the township who parties with everyone. Fifty-fifty his interest in the intellectual Cynthia (Marissa Ribisi) isn’t synchronize up for any type of fetid payoff. It simply provides a few brief moments within a much-larger palette. With so many characters involved, you might think the stories are difficult to follow. However, the scenes flow incredibly start and continue to gain power everywhere the feature.

The titanic cast includes many actors who would go on to win huge success in Hollywood. Affleck and McConaughy both do a great job and elude their usual over-the-top attempts at charm in late Hollywood comedies. Parker Posey and Joey Lauren Adams both play small parts, and each one would go on to succeed within the burgeoning world of independent film. Wiggins rarely appears in films these days, but his performance as the innocent Mitch is a given of the movie’s best. Other notable faces like Adam Goldberg, Cole Hauser, Nicky Katt, and Milla Jovavich showcase the skills that would fly the coop them household names today. All the actors understand their roles and play them well, which brings authenticity to the overall surroundings.

Linklater (Slacker, Suburbia) is a know inside out at crafting dialogue that feels real without being desensitize, and he weaves together the multiple stories wonderfully. The events do include significant underage drinking and painkiller purchases, but the tone remains enjoyable and reflects the excited times of damsel when the pressures of life barely existed. The characters’ largest worries are decree a put for the party, hooking up, and due having a proficient time. Linklater appears to truly understand the feelings of each character, ranging from Adam Goldberg’s Mike, who wants to “dance” and forget approximately law school, to Rory Cochrane’s Slater and his obsession with marijuana. Nothing feels contrived or supererogatory, which leads to a fascinating and touching savoir faire.

"Gleaning, that's the old way. My mother'd say, 'Pick everything up
so nothing gets wasted.' But sadly we no longer do?"

Perhaps the most important thing Agnes Varda does with this documentary is
blow away the negative connotation its subject carries. The misconception
is that gleaning is something done only by the people that have to, the poor
and destitute. Its connotation is not that of collector, gatherer, or recycler,
but that of garbage picker or scrap eater. Varda does show people that glean
to survive, but more importantly there are several that do so by choice.

A man that gleans at the market mainly to save money shows that gleaners can
be smart educated people. He has a Masters degree in biology and when Varda
asks him if he often eats parsley, he responds, "Sometimes, yes. Parsley's
full of vitamin C & E, beta carotene, zinc, magnesium. It's excellent."
In fact, this guy is not only educated, but also an educator. He spends his
nights teaching French for free, no strings attached, to whatever immigrants
want to show up and learn.

We meet a man that lives almost 100% off trash who reveals two surprising facts
- he has a salary and thus a means to do otherwise and he hasn't been sick
in the 10+ years he's been living off discarded food. "Everybody, rich
or poor, throws away food. Why? Because we are so stupid with food. If we're
past the sell-by date of a yogurt, people go 'Oh my God, I can't eat this!
It'll kill me!' So stupid. It's easy to tell from the smell of it if it's
OK or not." I would add the look to that, and if it passes the first
two tests the taste, but the point is there's nothing to be afraid of. I'm
always surprised by how many people misinterpret the sell by date. There's
no decree from the heavens that the product will be bad after this date;
it's much closer to a guess on when the product will begin to lose optimum
freshness or strength. A few Thursdays ago I had the misfortune of wasting
3 hours in the car and giving the New York Bankee$ ten bucks non refundable
parking so they could skip Jeff Weaver's upcoming start against the New York
Mets by "raining out" the game. This rain out being all the more
ridiculous because it occurred less than 10 minutes after the game was supposed
to start despite it being an afternoon game before their deadly 30 minute
road trip to Shea Stadium the next day, and the rain being nothing more than
a fine mist that disappeared long before we made it home and wound up going
to the park to shoot hoop. Anyway, during this all too brief visit I was
there drinking perfectly good best if used by 6/28/98 fruit punch drink boxes.
I better find some other activity to bring the rest too because after this
shadiness they really might go bad if I wait until I go back to utilize them.

The most surprising revelation may be that the youngest ** chef in France is
a gleaner. He shows that wasting isn't cost effective, pointing out that
using perfectly good spare parts to flavor other meals saves him $70 a day
on herbs alone. But he also gets better stuff by going into the field and
picking it himself. He knows exactly what he's getting rather than wasting
money on some "ripe" stuff that's tossed in a refrigerator until
someone decides its time for it to be shipped.

"The kitchen trash has made it into the art world, where junk is highly
prized and priced," observes Varda. A running theme is comparing art
to gleaning. Throughout the film we see classic works of art that depicted
the old images, like a group of women picking up the vegetables that weren't
harvest. However, we also see contemporary artists that make their art out
of found objects. The artist Louis Pons says, "All these objects around
here are my dictionary, useless things. People think it's a cluster of junk.
I see it as a cluster of possibilities." We see walls of found objects,
mainly dolls, surrounding the house of a brick mason and learn that Varda
can find art in anything from mold to smashed TV screens.

The English translation The Gleaners and I doesn't really do Les Glaneurs
et la glaneuse justice. It's partially a case of a fundamental difference
between the inclusive French language and the exclusive English language.
Literally, the title could be The Gleaners and the Female Gleaner, but I
would suggest I Am One of the Gleaners would be closer to what Varda is going
for. Varda gleans in the traditional sense of taking home chairs that were
thrown out, but her film is about showing that everyone gleans in the broader
definition, collecting little by little with patient effort. This definition
includes gleaning for information, insight, examples, images, impressions,
as well as any hobby where you hand collate a set.

It shouldn't take long to figure out that the reason for gleaning is of no
importance. To glean or not to glean is not an issue of nobility or coolness;
it's one of utility or usefulness. It's one that should be encouraged. What's
important is that it helps someone while hurting no one (as long as the gleaner
is respectful of their surroundings), and in many cases preserves the earth.

Although never attacked head on, quite clearly the enemy of the film is consumerism.
It is designed to produce excess and waste by hoodwinking you into spending
money on things you have no need if not no use for. The promise is the answer
to all your problems, yet the same people making this promise are the ones
that also told you all last year's products and fashions would do the trick,
and the ones paying all the influential media outlets to portray the old
stuff in as uncool a fashion as possible and the new stuff as totally hip
so you'll succumb to their conformist pressure. Well, sometimes the promise
is "merely" an "improvement", which I've decided means
that they will gain your money and you might gain something you didn't really
need that probably doesn't really help and usually comes with a certain amount
of losses and/or problems.

A sometimes friend and sometimes enemy is the law. In the case of gleaning
itself, it is a friend. Although hardly anyone has a clue of the specifics,
even a Bush can't wholly deny their citizen the right to survive. Varda actually
gets a lawyer out in the field to read and interpret the French law. For
America, the USDA, which estimates 130 pounds per person – up to 1/5th of
our food – ends up in landfills each year, has a nice resource online called

A
Citizens Guide To Food Recovery

.

Where the law is the enemy is when it comes to things like certifying and ranking.
Varda shows grapes lost to everyone because there is a limit on the amount
of grapes a vintage wine field can yield per plot. Logic would dictate that
the ranking would be based on how many were actually grown, but instead whatever
they knock down and let dry up and rot doesn't count against their figure.

"When I see all this go to waste and that some people have nothing to
eat, it's really disgraceful," says an unemployed man that joined Charity
Meals to help people rather than do nothing with his time. Stupidity is the
leading cause of waste. Varda talks with potato growers who estimate that
25 tons of their 4,500 ton harvest, and mind you this is just what they actually
do pick, are rejected for not fitting the markets idea that every potato
should be virtually identical. They have to be the right size, shape, firmness,
and whatnot. One begins to wonder if these aren't the same people that are
creating porn freaks. To me, the coolest looking potatoes are the heart-shaped
ones, which I'd never seen before and probably will never see again. These
and the other "rejects" should be donated to places that feed and/or
distribute food to the needy, and how hard would that be when they already
have them all in their dump truck, but instead they are just plopped in some
field. Forget about public service, no announcement of any kind is made.
Thus, the few people that are lucky enough to know when and where the potatoes
are getting dumped get a feast, but the majority of the loot is spoiled before
it's found.

"We're better off working in the field than shoplifting," says one
poor gleaner. How true, but this goes against the growing supermarket mentality
that is so fearful of anyone getting away with not paying full price that
they'd rather just toss the food when it's "no longer fresh enough".
I find it pretty sad that the only way to get day old bakery goods in most
places is to know the baker, who by the way usually overloads his own family
with these foods that "aren't good enough".

This issue brings to mind one thing that seems to hold pretty true, which is
waste policy seeming to be passed down from generation to generation. The
2 star chef gleans because his parents did, I eat day old food because my
grandfather worked in a bakery when my mother was small and my uncle worked
in a bakery around us when I was small, and so on. The most wasteful people
usually grow up getting "only the best", which includes things
like a steady diet of the ever healthy fast food. They are the ones that
let you know that there's a big difference between the brands of jeans, though
they curiously have to look at the tag or ask you before they tell how how
cool or uncool you are. I think at this point it's very hard not to waste
though because we are so deeply immersed in a culture of it. Everything is
disposable so you have to keep buying it, and in most cases even the so called
repair men are people that charge you $50 labor so they can hook your item
up to a computer and find out which board they can toss out and charge you
$100 to replace. Plus most of the current eyesores are made so cheaply that
they just give way or fall apart. I remember when my grandfather took the
insides out of our old wooden TV and made it into a cabinet, which now holds
about 300 of my tapes and serves as a stand for our crappy plastic TV. This
fairly new plastic TV already gets intermittent interference because it's
become essentially incapable of holding the tuner in the right place, a problem
that according to the repair man can't be fixed (he seemed dumbfounded after
he tried replacing the tuner itself).

I was very impressed by the Trash is Beautiful place where kids get to play
with bits of discarded junk. I'd like to see someone guide them through actually
collecting this stuff because it was a bit too clean and easy to expect them
to find their own toys instead of bugging their parents for the latest merchandise
the kids movies are peddling, but at least it begins to show them that most
objects can have some entertainment value if you use your imagination. I
remember getting all kinds of looks and comments from my friends when I'd
rescue some old game from spring cleaning, but of course if I thought it
was good they were the first in line to play. This year instead of anyone
gleaning anything we got rid of (granted it has to be pretty bad for us to
put it out), someone deposited their broken dryer. Anyway, the guy in charge
of Trash is Beautiful does things like transform yogurt cups into flowers.
I'll have to show this to my mom because she would do everything she could
think of with those things from starting tomato plants to using them for
outdoor cups.

I haven't been a big proponent of digital video cameras, but this type of film
is the perfect use for it. It doesn't need to have a pristine image, what
it needs is the intimacy of a non-obstructive tool. Not only does the small
bit of equipment allow this type of film with no guaranteed audience to be
made because the cost is so much less, but better footage can be attained
because it can always be on hand and isn't distancing the interviewees to
near the extent that a bunch of people with big heavy equipment does. Images
can now truly be gleaned.

Varda is known as the grandmother of the new wave because of the members that
started directing before the movement like Alain Resnais and Chris Marker,
she was the only female member (actually I believe she was the only female
member, period). She is probably the director that stayed the closest to
the goal of the Novelle Vague, which was basically to get out in the streets
and make films for the people. Whether fiction or non-fiction, her focus
isn't on getting from point a to point b to point c, but on studying the
character(s) and what makes them tick. These characters tend to be pigeonholed
and/or marginalized in some way whether they are the

Vagabond

,
the manufactured singer in Cleo from 5 to 7, the husband that feels closer
to his wife and kids after he's entered into an adulterous relationship in
Le Bonheur, or the gleaners. And none of them really complain. They accept
their condition; it's others who refuse to accept what they are and/or what
they'd like to be.

I suspect the primary reason this film has been received so well despite being
one of those "unmarketable" essay films is that it's so light hearted,
non-pretentious, and "most importantly" positive. Normally I'd
probably criticize the film for not showing sorrow and suffering, but gleaning
is about people getting things they will use, things that will in some way
help them and sometimes others as well, which regardless of circumstances
is always a good thing. Also, Varda just has such a love for humanity that
radiates throughout the film. It probably goes too far in one instance, where
she calls the homeless people that vandalize a store after they bleach their
garbage her protagonists, as if justifying their juvenile reaction by the
fact that the store began a selfish stingy practice to avoid having their
dumpster overturned.

Getting back to acceptance though, the film is also about Varda dealing with
getting old. She was born in 1928 and saw her husband, director Jacques Demy
who was born 3 years later, die in 1990. She might not like everything she
sees, but she isn't afraid to show how age is affecting her body and mind.
She suggests that art is always a self portrait, which begs the question
why don't more filmmakers make an honest one?

At one point Varda makes light of her forgetfulness by including footage of
her walking around with a camera attached to her that she forgot to turn
off. Probably no other director would let this "dance of the lens cap"
see the light of day, but that's precisely the point. Even though it's at
her own expense, Varda has found use for this footage that would otherwise
be wasted. That the film doesn't further develop its knowledge and discoveries
or build any momentum because Varda simply jumps around to anything she filmed
during her journeys may be the reason the film falls just shy of being a
masterpiece. However, she does a strong job of linking and transitioning
(both smoothly and more often abruptly), and not knowing what she's going
to stick in or what someone might come out with actually makes it a freer
cinema. As Varda's characters Cleo and Mona Bergeron drifted around living
on the fly, she can now be seen filmmaking on the fly. At this point, Varda
is primarily gleaning to remember. Luckily, one thing she hasn't forgotten
is what makes interesting worthwhile cinema.

RATING:

A series of knee-breeches sketches, each filmed in one conclude, dealing with the benevolent condition in all its joy and cares, self confidence and anxiety, greatness and weakness.