Review by Zach Dennis, Jessica Carr, and Andrew Swafford
Zach: This will be a curious discussion because I don’t think any of us would classify ourselves as particularly well-researched Agnès Varda viewers. Not to say we dislike her, but as for myself, I have only seen a handful of her movies and most of those are just the hits. Varda by Agnès feels like another attempt at a send-off for the director – a label that could also be used to describe her films like Beaches of Agnès or Faces Places – but this was her actual final film, its release following her death in March of this year. There is this bittersweet and moving quality to it, as the director (who really has no pretensions and is very passionate about using her work to connect to others) speaks about her career. I really enjoyed this even if it wasn’t incredibly inventive in style. She has reimagined cinematic form so many times in her career, and this wasn’t the film for it.
Did it move you, Jessica?
Jessica: I definitely felt a spark of inspiration when I left the theater after watching Varda by Agnés. It's clear that Varda made a huge impact not only on female filmmakers, but also female creatives working in all mediums. I guess I didn't realize how involved in the art world Varda was. She created large scale art installations along with her films and various other projects, and it's crazy how she was able to penetrate the art world in so many ways. The most beautiful thing about Varda to me was how she could turn almost any subject matter into something meaningful. From a documentary about couples who collect trains to an art installation featuring heart shaped potatoes, she had an uncanny ability to turn something mundane into something extraordinary.
I agree that the format of the film made it a little less interesting, but it still made me want to watch more Varda films which I think is a good takeaway. What did you think, Andrew?
Andrew: I’ll mostly just cosign all you have said here. It’s a great watchlist generator for the Varda movies I have overlooked up to this point, a firsthand look at a lot of art installations that we would have no access to otherwise, and a poignant send-off for her as a director, especially valuable in the way it brings into clear focus her larger project – which, on one level, is about blurring lines between documentary and fiction storytelling modes.
And speaking of storytelling modes, the visual format of the movie reminded me a lot of current trends in video-essaying (cutting back and forth between Varda talking to the camera and film clips she offers commentary on), which felt weird to watch in an enormous, sold-out theater. However, there are quite a few instances of interesting staging for those addresses from Varda, like one where she speaks to the lead from Vagabond at one of their shooting locations – and another in that same location where she’s talking about that film’s tracking shots while sitting on the same type of platform that she would have used to make them. At moments like this, the monologuing is extremely engaging – and even when it isn’t, the fact that we have a whole film’s worth of Varda speaking directly to her audience at all is a blessing. When the movie started with Varda just addressing a crowd of people, I remember thinking to myself, “I hope she just keeps talking” – and she does.