Agnès Varda’s Exquisite Sensibility

Agnès Varda (Photo by Paul Grandsard)

Alexandra Schwartz, in her “ ‘While I Live, I Remember’: Agnès Varda’s Way of Seeing” (newyorker.com, March 30, 2019), says of Varda’s films, they “celebrate the art of the foraged and the found.” She likens them to “associative essays or poems.” This strikes me as exactly right. Varda, who died last week at age ninety, made one of my all-time favourite movies – The Gleaners and I, a documentary about people in France who survive by scavenging food that others throw away. The “I” in the title is crucial; it’s the key to Varga's art. Richard Brody, in his “What to Stream this Weekend: Seaside Frolics” (newyorker.com, August 18, 2017)], writes, “Shot by shot, line by line, moment by moment, Varda rescues the vitality and the beauty of the incidental, the haphazard, the easily overlooked—because she fills each detail with the ardent energy of her own exquisite sensibility.” And, as long as there are eyes to see, that “exquisite sensibility” will live on in her work, including her wonderful The Gleaners and I.