TASTE OF CHERRY Movie Review

Ta'm e Guilass
Taste of Cherries

A man drives around the outskirts of Teheran on a bright, airy day, stopping people at random and engaging them in small talk, looking for someone who has the time and the willingness to help him with a project—his own suicide. Well, perhaps his own suicide. If he changes his mind—which he's not ruling out—he'll need that same person to pull him out of the dark hole he's planning to jump into, just in case it doesn't become his grave. In this masterwork from Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami, the specific reason for the man's despair never becomes clear, nor is it particularly important. What does become clear in Taste of Cherry is how unimaginably important simple human interaction can be, and how the continual, relentless march toward death that we're all engaged in has to—at some point—be reckoned with and made sense of. A metaphysical mystery that goes down easily thanks to its slyly seductive, voyeuristic structure, Taste of Cherry is no simple-minded, feel-good, “choose life” message picture. I have a feeling that Taste of Cherry—a work of art as complex and multi-leveled as Kurosawa's Ikiru—will appear to be a very different film at different times in one's life (my guess is that some of the critics who have dissed it are precisely the ones who are going to think of it when they least expect to), and I look forward with great anticipation to finding new riches in it in future years. It won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

NEXT STOP … And Life Goes On, Under the Olive Trees, The Fire Within

1996 95m/C Homayon Ershadi, Abdolrahma Bagheri; D: Abbas Kiarostami; W: Abbas Kiarostami; C: Homayun Payvar. Cannes Film Festival ‘97: Best Film. VHS NYR