Saturday, 10 November 2012

Glaneurs et la Glaneuse
[Gleaners and I]
(2001)

RATING:60%
FORMAT:DVD

Aptly-rambling, albeit somewhat self-indulgent, documentary about gleaning; that is, making the best use of what some consider waste. Something of an oblique critique of Western culture's extreme wastefulness and an explicit treatise on the value of recycling.

Gleaning, here, is seen more as salvaging rather than a way to make ends meet. The West consumes so much that it inevitably produces the largest waste piles. That this is an issue that needs to be dealt with is not at issue, yet it would be nice if it were discussed without the implied misanthropy and Western guilt shown here. Above all else, human beings are far more important than the waste they wantonly produce, no matter how anti-communal the critics of such waste wish to be.

This brought back many pleasant childhood memories of familial seafood gleaning.


Copyright © 2012 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

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