Paradise lost: Taming the Garden

ENVIRONMENT: A single man wields enough power to uproot the living artifacts of his country’s collective history and memory. Premiering in the World Cinema Documentary Competition at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, Salomé Jashi’s Taming the Garden is a multi-prism meditation that begins with the simplest (if strangest) of premises and slowly, nearly imperceptibly, expands to become a cautionary tale for all. Through a series of painterly images, the award-winning director, who was born in Tbilisi and whose 2016 doc The Dazzling Light of Sunset nabbed the Main Prize at Visions du Réel’s Regard Neuf Competition, takes us on a fairytale-like journey to the Georgian coast. It’s a magical locale where century-old trees, some the size of small skyscrapers, have stood watch over generations of villagers. But the trees are slowly disappearing – or, more accurately, migrating, being uprooted by force (not unlike the perpetually unstable country’s own citizens). This disturbing disruption isn’t due to climate change or as the result of any existential threat – unless you consider a single wealthy man with a destructively bizarre hobby an omen of things to come.

To read my critique visit Modern Times Review.