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Movie Review – Varda by Agnes

Varda by Agnes (2019)
Written and directed by Agnes Varda

Few of us get to depart from life able to talk about what all those years meant. As a filmmaker, Agnes Varda seemed acutely aware of the sands running through the hourglass, and her last twenty years of filmmaking (ages 70-90) seemed to come out of that urgency. The stories she was telling always connected to her, whether flowing out into the lives of others or having their lives bring up long-forgotten memories from her past. This is why her documentaries during this period feel more communal than ever. Varda is a perfect contemporary example of the wise elder, the sage who imparts their experiences from a life spent in intense thought and conversation. In this final film, released just months after her passing, Varda focuses on three key concepts: inspiration, creation, and sharing.

Movie Review – Faces Places

Faces Places (2017)
Written by Agnes Varda
Directed by Agnes Varda & JR

French director Agnes Varda has never hidden her love of the French village. Her filmmaking career began with photographing the people who lived & worked in a working-class seaside town. Her first short film starred a couple who lived in such a place. While Varda’s narrative film work has varied in its subjects and interest, her documentary work has remained fixed on the working & the poor, people who do not get spotlighted much in media or society. That trend continues in her collaboration with street artist & photographer JR. They create giant portraits of people they meet, plastering them onto the facades of buildings and allowing so many “invisible” people to be seen. Along the way, the friendship between Varda and JR blossoms.

Movie Review – The Beaches of Agnes

The Beaches of Agnes (2008)
Written and directed by Agnes Varda

In her 2000 documentary The Gleaners and I, Agnes Varda shared how she had difficulty remembering even recent journeys she had been on. What helped her recall those rich details were the objects & souvenirs she returned with. In The Beaches of Agnes, the director surveys the entirety of her life up to this point, which is quite daunting to remember. To aid in that, she composes a bricolage of items. These trinkets are scattered on various beaches whose locations played a significant role in Varda’s life. The film was made to celebrate the artist’s 80th birthday, and she wonders aloud if this would be her final picture. It would not be, but at this point in her life, each subsequent movie surely felt like the last piece of art she would make.

Movie Review – The Gleaners and I

The Gleaners and I (2000)
Directed by Agnes Varda

There is a tension in art between planning & spontaneity. I feel it when I write fiction. I’m always wrestling with how detailed an outline I give myself. Where is the room left to be surprised? But I also need to ensure the whole piece feels cohesive and connected. Agnes Varda embraces spontaneity in her documentary The Gleaners and I but strikes a good balance. She sets out with an idea of what she wants to explore but allows herself to be open to drift. Varda is so fascinated with people that she won’t hold back if the people she encounters inspire something new in her. I can see how contemporary filmmakers like Nathan Fielder or John Wilson are inspired by Varda’s work, particularly how she engages with strangers.

Movie Review – Vagabond

Vagabond (1985)
Written and directed by Agnes Varda

It seems easy for so many to demonize the vulnerable. That’s one of the most upsetting things about humanity for me, to see & hear people refer to subgroups of their fellow human beings as animals. One group in America that is treated in such a way through legislation & everyday rhetoric is the homeless. There are myriad reasons why a person might end up living on the streets. In the West, we still fail to treat the mentally disabled with respect & dignity. The average worker lives in constant peril that each paycheck might be their last. Queer & trans youth are routinely kicked out of their homes by parents whose brains have been inundated with the most hateful propaganda. When I see videos on TikTok of fellow teachers disparaging young people for being disengaged in what they are being taught, I feel like the speakers are missing the point. This is a society that has no intent of ever helping you and would instead grind us into bone meal. If you do not submit your life wholly to the capitalist game, then the ones who are too frightened to ever break away happily piss on your grave.

Movie Review – One Sings, the Other Doesn’t

One Sings, the Other Doesn’t (1976)
Written and directed by Agnes Varda

Time feels distorted. It didn’t just start with COVID-19 either. Our understanding of even recent history is blurred, with significant historical events from just a decade or two prior feeling like they happened so long ago or disconnected from our point in time. Part of this is the poor perception of the human brain, whose recall & memories have been proven very unreliable. It also emanates from the neoliberal project outlined in Francis Fukyama’s The End of History and The Last Man. The argument made via neoliberalism is that all possible political ideologies have been discovered & developed and that we live in a period in which no more historically significant events will happen. Essentially, human development is now a capitalist machine meant to run forever, powered by the “benevolence of capitalism.”

Movie Review – Le Bonheur

Le Bonheur (1965)
Written and directed by Agnes Varda

Translated into “happiness,” Le Bonheur is a pointed satire about marriage. Like good satire should, it is nuanced & subtle. I think American audiences have come to define satire as “parody” or just broad comedy when it is, in fact, building a case through narrative to support a particular point of view. There’s mockery here, but it’s not the kind that bellows loudly and makes a nuisance of itself. Agnes Varda was a filmmaker with such a strong filmmaking sensibility that she could unfold her story with finesse. It’s a feminist reading of male privilege with the husband as the central character. The female characters are supporting figures, but that makes it all the more damning and brutally hilarious.

Movie Review – Cleo from 5 to 7

Cleo from 5 to 7 (1962)
Written and directed by Agnes Varda

I can’t say I have ever dived deep into the iconic French New Wave movement. In college, I watched some Truffaut and Godard, but I don’t think it clicked with me. I would be interested in revisiting it now, as with some maturity, I can appreciate the work better. This idea has come to me after finding out how much I’ve enjoyed the work of Jacques Demy and now his wife, Agnes Varda. From the opening moments of Cleo From 5 to 7, I knew this would instantly become one of my favorite films.

Movie Review – Pauline at the Beach

Pauline at the Beach (1983)
Written & Directed by Eric Rohmer,

Eric Rohmer was the right age to join his colleagues from the French film magazine Cahiers du Cinema in becoming a filmmaker. Jean Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut, whom he worked alongside as editor of the magazine, became the two most prominent names associated with the French New Wave. He did make movies, but not at the same breakneck pace as the others, and he didn’t receive the same level of acclaim until much later in his career. The filmmaker was very secretive about his private life, including that Eric Rohmer wasn’t his real name but a combination of actor/director Erich von Stroheim and writer Sax Rohmer. Unlike his colleagues, Rohmer outlasted them in terms of career length, finding his most significant acclaim in the 1970s & 80s. It was in the 1980s that he began a thematic series titled “Comedies and Proverbs,” with each film based on common sayings in French culture. One of these was Pauline at the Beach.

PopCult Podcast – A Thousand and One/Return to Seoul

Two women adrift in the world try and make sense of what is happening around them. One is an ex-convict trying to bring order to her life, while the other finds she has a desire to foment chaos as she struggles to reconnect with her roots.