Beautiful, interesting, incredible cinema.
Georgia’s former prime minister has found a unique hobby. He collects century-old trees, some as tall as 15-floor buildings, from communities along the Georgian coast. At a great expense and inconvenience, these ancient giants are uprooted from their lands to be transplanted in his private garden.
With a surreal, Herzogian eye for the absurdities of man’s claims over nature, Salomé Jashi’s hypnotic documentary draws privilege and poverty into the embrace of myth. A folkloric allegory told in breathtaking images, Taming the Garden contemplates an ecological monument to flamboyance and folly.