How to Watch Taming the Garden

Taming the garden is a striking environmental tale. It opens with a tree as tall as a 15-story building floating on a barge across the Black Sea to its destination in a garden countless miles away.

The film traces an anonymous, powerful man’s hobby of uprooting century-old trees from coastal communities and transplanting them to his private garden. This is a process that affects not only the trees but also their surroundings and communities.

How to watch

If you’re a gardener or just love the idea of being in nature, you should take the time to watch this visually striking observational documentary. The film follows the harrowing journey of century-old trees that are transported from their original locations to a wealthy Georgian man’s private park. With a surreal, Herzogian eye for the absurdities of man’s claims over nature, Salome Jashi’s hypnotic doc draws privilege and poverty into the embrace of myth.

The opening shot of Taming the Garden captures a tree as tall as a 15-story building floating on a barge across the Black Sea and destined for the Shekvetili Dendrological Park, a thriving garden of centuries-old trees that surrounds former Georgian Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili’s mansion in Tbilisi. At great expense and inconvenience, these ancient giants are uprooted from their lands to be transplanted into the prime minister’s garden.

In the course of her observational document, Salome Jashi chronicles an ingenious but curious saga that involves a slew of rich and powerful people. One of these people, a billionaire who’s also the country’s former prime minister, takes a bizarre hobby of collecting trees from communities around the Georgian coastline and transporting them by road and sea to his estate.

As a patient documentary that aims to communicate through observation, Taming the Garden is reminiscent of last year’s Sundance hit The Truffle Hunters. But it’s also a reminder of how wealth can bend the structures of anything, even nature, to suit its own needs.

Streaming options

Salome Jashi’s hypnotic documentary tracks the surreal process of a powerful man’s obsession to have century-old trees excavated from communities along the Georgian coastline and transplanted into his private garden. The film is the best of its kind and a must see for any cinema enthusiast.

Taming the garden follows a former Georgian prime minister in his quest to amass a vast botanical collection. He and his team purchase century-old trees, some as tall as 15-floor buildings, and have them transported to their new home. The film shows that the process is not only a technological marvel, but also a social one. While the technology behind it may be impressive, the impact on local villagers is not.

Luckily, taming the garden is available to watch online via Netflix and other video streaming services. The movie is a good way to learn about an important issue in Georgian history while experiencing it from the comfort of your own home. It has been screened in more than a hundred countries worldwide and won 14 awards including the European Film Award for best documentary.

Availability

Taming the Garden has been hailed as one of Georgia's best films and is sure to be a hot topic at the screening on Friday 18 March. It's a slow burner but well worth the wait. We're lucky to have the film to screen thanks to a generous donation from the Davis Center. The aforementioned screening will be followed by a discussion with award winning director Salome Jashi. The program will run from 7pm to 8pm. Tickets are on a sliding scale. The cost of each ticket is $30. The program is a part of the Georgian Studies initiative, sponsored by the Davis Center and the University of Chicago's Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies. The program is designed to foster an appreciation of Georgian culture and history, and to promote research, teaching and learning in the United States and worldwide. We hope you join us! The program will be held in the Davis Center auditorium, located on the third floor of the Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies.

Reviews

Salome Jashi's lyrical documentary ponders an exquisite hobby of Georgia's former prime minister Bidzina Ivanishvili, who collects century-old trees and transports them to his private garden. This is a Fitzcarraldo-like endeavor, one that sees hundreds of these trophies uprooted from their lands and transported through villages, over hills and across the sea.

The process is not only a logistical nightmare but also a bruising social affair, as Ivanishvili pays off locals to surrender their centuries-old trees at a fraction of what it costs him. In addition, the film documents how Ivanishvili's lawyers and contractors pay off villagers to cut down any other tree that could stand in their way of acquiring a "trophy" for his garden.

Ivanishvili's obsession with these trees, some of which are 15-storey-high, makes for a very tense documentary. It's a process that takes place in the midst of rural communities, whose inhabitants are visibly grieving as they watch the giants being uprooted and sent to an otherworldly destination. It's a scene that has been extensively reported on in Georgia, but Taming the Garden is the first feature to bring it into the international spotlight.

It's a fascinating examination of how money is used to bend the laws of nature. It's also a disturbing, eerie and surreal look at power.

What's more, while many of the scenes in this film are beautifully shot, there's no denying that they're very depressing. The film shows the trees being uprooted from their homes and then transported to Ivanishvili's garden, which is a truly strange and surreal place. The film ends with a long-shot that shows Ivanishvili's own garden, which is filled with gorgeous specimens of cypresses, maples and elms.

A lot of the film's shots are so hypnotic that you can't help but be moved by the sight of these massive trees being uprooted and transported. Even if you're not necessarily a fan of Ivanishvili, this is a fascinating and eye-opening film that will leave you wondering about the role of wealth in society.

Though this isn't as compelling as Jessica Kindon's Ascension or Andrea Arnold's Cow, it is still a well-made and aesthetically pleasing film. Its hypnotic visuals are reminiscent of those found in Our Daily Bread and Earth, and it is also unhurriedly edited, which helps keep the film from being too choppy. It's not a film that is going to change your world, but it does make you think about how rich people can bend the structures of nature to their will.