1) Agnes Varda doesn't care that the quality of her digital camera is low; on the contrary, she loves is and is fascinated by how it captures things like her own hand (which she calls a "horror," which may or may not be a joke), and that love I think transfers to the audience. Anyway, her editing shows that this new digital quality gives more opportunities to capture life and images in exciting, vivid timing.
2) Gleaning isnt as inherently interesting as the people Varda talks to... At least that was my impression at first. And she talks to many of then. And guess what? These people, who vary from being old (and young) professionals to the destitute to old pros at this (even if theyre amateurs, specially if theyre amateurs), are so wholly rich and absorbing to watch that one realizes any filmmaker can make anything interesting so long as the subject matter connects. Varda connects with people, and art and with objects like potatoes and grapes and oysters and of course cats, and you feel that connection in your bones (if you're open to this, and Id fear meeting someone who was bored by this).
3) those rap songs are wondrous.
4) Varda wisely keeps her mistakes in - at one point while in a field she left her camera on and got a "dance" of a lens cap in front of her frame. Hey, why not put in a jazz track for a moment? And why put this in a movie about cleaning? Why not? Varda is all about the chances of life that happen in front of her (even finding a painting with gleaners while looking for something else). In a way this lends itself to what the film might really be about which is how people find joy in what they do. It might be stopping over to get things off the ground (and it may not be in a field, it may be more urban), or it may be filmmaking itself, which happens to be what Varda does (a curious point is when she meets someone whos a descendant of an early pioneer of cinema, ill leave it at that for you to see more).
5) If you are looking for this be about more concrete things, Varda has you covered too as there's the legal matters of gleaning and how it has been, how to say it, kindly outlawed in some parts of France (that is, some farmers dont want to see it gone, but that's the way it is). She even talks to legal officials - one in a field, naturally - and looks at a case of some kids tossing over trash cans. In this film, of course, it's not simply only about the joy or passion or even the compulsion of gleaning off fields, but waste and trash itself: how do we throw things out as a society and are okay with that? Can things that are discarded be reused, as clothes, as food, or even as art?
We may/are all be connected through what we throw out and what can be saved, which is a lot, and the difference is in who finds value in it or not. These people do, and Varda finds empathy, or at least wants us to. So while there's the legal questions, there's the real-world applications too. Theres politics underlying those who glean in rural places and those in the cities, but it's not too explicit. Just showing people picking through trash and leftovers is enough, because... Dont we all do it?
6) I continue to lament how much Varda I haven't seen till now.
