Taming the Garden review – languorous Georgian doc is hypnotically mournful

Arriving in UK cinemas hot on the heels of Jessica Kindon’s Ascension and Andrea Arnold’s Cow, Salome Jashi’s Taming the Garden is the latest in this wave of near-wordless documentaries, more interested in capturing fascinating imagery than imparting information in the traditional documentary manner. Though Taming the Garden is not quite as compelling as either of its recent contemporaries, it still manages to craft some hypnotic visuals as it chronicles the process of moving old, gorgeous trees across Georgia.

This process is at the behest of billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, who seeks to fill his garden with Georgia’s most beautiful and ancient trees, paying off entire villages to let him take these precious landmarks for himself. Jashi captures the conflicted feelings of the residents – happy with their new cash (and sometimes even new infrastructure), but also suffering seller’s remorse, as if a piece of the local populace’s soul has departed with the tree. It’s particularly moving to see the elderly residents lament the loss of this shared natural history, some wondering if they’ll be dead before their garden has shade again, others simply breaking down in tears.

There are a few too many of these scenes, though, and Taming the Garden moves incredibly slowly, even at only 90 minutes long. It makes for a neat mirror to the arduous and precise process of the tree-moving, but you might find yourself checking the time at certain points. Luckily, there are some amazing images once the movers actually get down to work, from a midnight drive with the tree balanced upon two massive trucks to the moment in which the tree is transported by boat across the sea, in a sort of reverse-Fitzcarraldo situation.

Taming the Garden is a mournful film, with a sparsely used and sometimes overly discordant score, and, despite the lack of obvious thrills, the permanence of the destruction wrought by Ivanishvili’s selfish project will linger in the mind.

Taming the Garden is now showing in UK cinemas and on select streaming platforms.