Zwei Jahre danach (2002) Online

Agnéz Varda enjoyed making her scavenger film so much she went out with her handi-cam and did it again. The whopping great distribution can't have slowed her down either.

One of the subjects says she shouldn't have been in the first one so much, so she minimises her presence - ineffectively because the winning, quirky first person author is still the star. Detail of the character who lives off garbage and runs in the Paris marathon is particularly intriguing. The insets of the first film, the hand made movie from the early years or the withered heart shape potato that got a mutter of recognition when I saw it, all liven up the film. I liked the second thought ending too.

These films are like spending time in the company of a great raconteur. The fact that she turned out to be possibly the most accomplished Nouvelle Vague director is a bonus. Hope she does another twenty.

Accompanying the original 2000 documentary on this DVD is the 2002 "sequel", "The Gleaners and I: Two Years Later", nearly as good but perhaps a little more repetitive - by the very nature of covering much of the same ground as Varda revisits many of those she documented in the first film. When she catches up to Alain, the Parisian teacher and newspaper seller, he tells her that she showed herself too much in the earlier film, that it wasn't very interesting to him. Can you imagine most directors allowing such a bit? But Varda's modesty wins out and she doesn't focus nearly as much on herself here, until the very end when she movingly tells the story of how she was made aware of parallels between "Gleaners" and "Jacquot", her film on her late husband Jacques Demy. Film-making is a chance operation, even to the filmmakers sometimes.

Taken together these are among the finest essay/documentaries I've seen and in their combination of personal anecdote, politics, true-life stories and analysis of the human condition there aren't many other films like them, or filmmakers working on this level. Most highly recommended to fans of Kiarostami, Makhmalbaf, Marker, Herzog - or anyone interested in life on the margins and the Wasteful Century.

I've separately reviewed "The Gleaners and I" at greater length.

An attitude of aware involvement is what Varda bestows in her sixth decade making movies. It's this attitude being celebrated here, an addendum to her Gleaners film which she liked making so much she took her camcorder and went back a couple of years later.

Two things worth gleaning here, both reflections of that attitude.

One is that the first film stirred so many people, she was flooded with letters of appreciation, handmade postcards and gifts of all kinds. There's quiet joy in being able to share in this outpour. Here too we see gleaning and gleaners of another kind, people touched so much by what they saw, they went out to fashion tokens by what they could find around them. Small gifts, but someone pored over them and made them with their hands, reflected in these we see Varda's own film, itself gathered up in the same loving spirit

One of these senders she visits, a smiling young couple in Nantes. The girl seems to have understood Varda's point behind the first film the best and Varda makes it a point to include this tidbit. It was about people getting by she says brightly, managing in spite of everything.

The other thing to glean is that she revisits many of the subjects she interviewed for the first one. Not the fact that she does but the way and how it gives rise to a way of seeing in a larger way. Some are better off, having found unexpected interest in them or a shelter from the cold, others had their share of trouble since. One professes to have given up alcohol (while stinking of wine says Varda), another seems perhaps pleased with the attention. But Varda is not there in any other way than as someone who knows them and wants to see how they are.

This is what Varda's aware presence bestows in turn. She is simply there to see, listen and nudge in a small way but no more. People are allowed to present themselves as they see fit. When she meets the black man who lives off a van cramped with garbage, she asks can you sleep here, he says he can with a smile, she asks do you have water, he does, she asks do you have anywhere to shower, he says there's a shower in the garage where he works, smiling. That's all.

A view of hardship in other words, but seen through Varda's eyes, no one is victimized or pitied, no one allowed to be the center of self- pitying drama or merely the token of societal neglect. I say in other comments that Varda is a wise woman, a sage in her own right; not because she has a particularly intelligent or vehement answer to a question, but because she knows what questions are worth asking.

I didn't love this film but if you're going to watch "The Gleaners & I" anyway, it might just be included on the DVD as a special feature and it wouldn't hurt to watch it. This isn't a glowing endorsement but this film has the same flaw as the original film--but more so. This is because the first film was ostensibly about waste and how modern pickers make use of things discarded by others--mostly food. This is a WONDERFUL concept and indictment on modern society. But too often the film focused on the filmmaker, Ms. Varda--and here in the follow-up it's even more focused on her.

One part of this follow-up I adored was the interview with her favorite subject of the first film, Alain. She asks him in the film if he liked the documentary and he says he did. However, she then asks if there was anything he didn't like and the very perceptive Alain responded that the film featured too much of HER in it! In other words, she should have kept the focus on modern gleaners picking through garbage to find useful items, such as food. He was 100% right and that's exactly how I felt. But here comes the weird part--Vardas then allowed (or encouraged or set up) some middle- class lady to then attack Alain to tell him he was wrong! First off this WAS his opinion and the filmmaker DID ask. Second, having a proxy who is NOT even a gleaner/picker going after him was completely inappropriate...and weird. And, if you think about it, it PROVES that Alain was right!!

As for the rest, the filmmaker talks a lot about herself, how folks responded to her by mail and then he she visits with a bunch of the other folks from the first film. Not brilliant filmmaking by any stretch but worth a look--especially to revisit Alain.