“A welcome reminder that no matter what horrors we expose the world to, nature is and will always be there, moving to its own rhythm.”

“That’s just the way it is. Some things’ll never change
That’s just the way it is. Ah, but don’t you believe them”
The Way It Is – Bruce Hornsby and the Range

The seasons move to the rhythm of nature, and our lives move to the rhythm of the seasons. To use the seasons as a framing device in cinema is nothing new, but to use them as a core element of the point you are trying to make through cinema isn’t all that common. Yet this is exactly what Ivan Boiko does in his sensorial, and dare I say pastoral 16-month snapshot of life in the Caucasus, where indeed everything moves with the seasons. ‘Pastoral’, because while the film follows large flocks of sheep from mighty mountain passes to verdant valleys, the title of Boiko’s film also refers to a Bible verse, John 3:8, which says, “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.” The wind as a shepherd, perhaps?

The wind definitely blows when The Wind Blows Wherever It Wants opens to a black screen that slowly becomes an image of the sun. It doesn’t take long before the first sheep take over the screen, in a scene of birth, fitting for a film that deals with the circle of life. In this case it is the life of shepherds and their flocks in Tusheti, a remote region in North-Eastern Georgia. Each year, once the snow starts closing the mountain passes, they move from pastures high in the mountains, through the valleys to the steppes of Vashlovani, near the Azerbaijani border, where the sheep birth their lambs in arid conditions. Once the seasons change again and the little ones are strong enough, the long trek home begins.

Tushetian shepherds have been following this rhythm for as long as people can remember, and longer. As Boiko follows them up and down the slopes, his 16mm Bolex registers the passage of time and the history of the region. Crumbling forts, desolate churches, and windswept monasteries, long abandoned, testimony of a human presence in these mountains in ages gone by; prehistoric rock drawings are markings of a history even older than that. Old tombstones overgrown with lichen are riddled with bullet holes, suggesting that life wasn’t always as peaceful as it seems now. But through all those years, centuries, millennia, people have tended to their flocks, following the same rhythm as the men Boiko portrays do now. Life hasn’t changed much in this region. The people have lived here for ages; they’ve become one with it, and have become accustomed to its severity.

Yet slowly signs of modernity start to creep into the image. Satellite dishes on mountain ridges, large trucks and smaller cars making their way on the abysmal roads. Will the simplicity of life that has guided the people of this region for so long outlive this modernity too? Or will ancient traditions succumb? Traditions that are older than the Bible, highlighting that John 3:8 is really a universal guidance, not specific to the biblical shepherd figure; the wind is eternal, and will keep on blowing long after we are gone as a species. In that sense, the film’s title shows that nature doesn’t care about traditions, yet its connection to the Bible also shows that if we simply adhere to its universal guidance and follow it like a shepherd (divine or not), we will outlast those that think they can master nature.

Boiko documents this journey in his own rhythm, letting the majesty of the mountains and the simplicity of life in the foothills speak for themselves at their own pace. This leaves time to contemplate as you watch the sheep turn into white dots across a meadow, like an army of ants or a flight of swallows knowing exactly where to go. Fog and rain can lead to spooky images and show nature’s relentlessness, but the trek goes on. The rhythm must be respected. Rustem Imamiev’s score, a mix of ambient sound and a hint of acoustic guitar, is a perfect accompaniment to this journey; it captures the awe but avoids tying the film to a specific time and place, and also adds to the poetic tone of the film. The only words spoken in the film (or subtitled at least) are lines of poetry, mysterious and cryptic as whispers on the wind. All taken together, these elements turn The Wind Blows Wherever It Wants into a transcendental and oddly relaxing experience, a welcome reminder that no matter what horrors we expose the world to, nature is and will always be there, moving to its own rhythm.