Taste of Cherry

MOVIE #1,079 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 07.26.23 This is the very first Iranian movie I’ve reviewed which is slightly shocking after this many. I thought it was very funny how annoyed Ebert got in his 1-star (!) review… I understand intellectually what Kiarostami is doing. I am not impatiently asking for action or incident. What I do feel, however, is that Kiarostami's style here is an affectation; the subject matter does not make it necessary, and is not benefited by it. If we're to feel sympathy for Badhi, wouldn't it help to know more about him? To know, in fact, anything at all about him? What purpose does it serve to suggest at first he may be a homosexual? (Not what purpose for the audience--what purpose for Badhi himself? Surely he must be aware his intentions are being misinterpreted.) And why must we see Kiarostami's camera crew--a tiresome distancing strategy to remind us we are seeing a movie? If there is one thing "Taste of Cherry" does not need, it is such a reminder: The film is such a lifeless drone that we experience it only as a movie.

This is an exercise in patience to some degree (whether you understand “what” the director is doing or not). I think it primarily works because of Homayoun Ershadi’s performance in the lead. I felt like you got to know him pretty well. You don’t always have to do the five "W" questions for that to happen.

And I dug the ending. Not to make this a review of Ebert’s review, but there seems to be a prevalent attitude amongst the old guard of criticism which constantly circles back to some idea of realism being the thing which matters most (unless the film is explicitly trying to be surreal). The pullback is short, subtle and unexpected. I found it to be of great service in place of the ambiguous. It makes you realize just how bizarre the entire setup/conceit actually was from the very start. The movie is philosophical and also metaphorically surreal (people don’t often go around looking to pay randos to bury them after they’ve committed suicide) but presented as the opposite visually: stark static shots of people talking set against an unforgiving, arid landscape. So it’s playing a trick on you without you ever really noticing it. And the finale is an apology of sorts. The movie meant no harm.

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Taste of Cherry (Persian: طعم گیلاس..., Ta’m-e gīlās...) is a 1997 Iranian minimalist drama film written, produced, edited and directed by Abbas Kiarostami, and starring Homayoun Ershadi as a middle-aged Tehran man, who drives through a city suburb, in search of someone willing to carry out the task of burying him after he commits suicide. The film won the Palme d'Or at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival, which it shared with The Eel. It was released on May 16, 1997.