Taste of Cherry (Iran, 1997)
October 1st, 2007 | by Gautam |
Taste of Cherry is a beautiful tale. Written, produced and directed by Abbas Kiarostami, one of the finest filmmakers in the world today, Taste of Cherry won the prestigious Palme d’Or award at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival. Kiarostami has been long known for his unconventional and simplistic approach to cinema and that is what makes him
Taste of Cherry is a simple story at the core. The story follows a day in the life of Badii, an Iranian man in his late-40s who appears to be quite well off. He drives around the labour market in his car looking through people as they approach him for possible labour jobs. He refuses and drives on as he keeps looking around in some search. He eventually speeds away from the market and approaches a quarry. There he finds a stone carver and asks him if he is up for a well paid job to which the stone carver respectfully threatens to smash his face in. He drives on and finds a garbage collector and asks him the same thing and gets turned down. He drives ahead and finds a young soldier asking for a lift. He lets him in and starts what seems to be a rather idle conversation.
He tells the young soldier about his own time in the army and starts asking him about his life and family, etc. The soldier appears to be very shy and hardly replies. They approach the place where the soldier is to get off but finding that there is still half-hour before he can report the base, Badii offers to drive him around a bit to show him something he wants him to see. He drives him to the top of a hill over the quarry and stops near a cherry tree. He asks him to get out and have a look at what is beside the tree to which the soldier refuses to do oblige. Badii gets out of his car and points at a hole that has been dug next to the tree. He says he dug it up himself to lie in after he is going to commit suicide. He offers a large sum of money for him to come back early the following morning and check if he is dead in the event of which he is to throw in some earth and bury his dead body. In case the attempt is unsuccessful, the young man is to reach out and help Badii climb out of the hole. Even after much insisting, the young man refuses to do the job and runs away.
Badii is clearly disappointed and drives around the quarry in search of someone else. He stops at a guard tower and climbs up to have a casual conversation with the quarry’s security guard. Badii offers him to come with him on a drive around the quarry but the guard refuses stating that he must be at his post. He finds out that his cousin is around the corner and he would be interested in a drive. Badii drives around and picks up the guards cousin and they go on a drive. The guard’s cousin is an afghani man in his early 30s and is on a break from his studies at the university where he studies religion. Badii drives him to the same cherry tree on the top of the hill and makes him the same offer he had made the young soldier. The man refuses the offer and on their way back to the guard’s post, tries to persuade him not to commit suicide using religious principles of life and death as mentioned in Islam. Badii is adamant and dismisses everything the man says with silence.
Eventually, Badii finds an old man who agrees to do the job. On their way back from the hills, the man makes Badii take an alternative route which is longer and according to him, much more ‘beautiful’. Here he starts telling Badii a story from his own life. A few years ago the man had a fight with his wife and decided to hang himself and end his life. He packed a rope and drove to a mulberry tree in a remote spot where no one would disturb him. He tried to throw the rope over a branch but the rope was not catching on. He climbs the tree to tie the rope in place. By the time he is finished tying the knot, he felt hungry and decided to help himself to some mulberries. As he eats he gets so indulged in the taste of mulberries that he decides to eat some more. As he is eating them, he watches the sun come up over the hill majestically shining in the sky. Then some children gather around the tree and ask him to throw down some mulberries for them. In this moment, the man had realised how beautiful life really is and what a mistake he was making to end it. He climbs down and takes home a whole bunch of mulberries for his wife. His troubles did not get solved but he had learnt to live through them and accept them as a part of life. He proudly claims: ‘I set out to kill myself and a mulberry changed my life. A simple, unimportant mulberry!’
Badii though truly moved by the man’s story is still unchanged about his decision to kill himself. He drops the man off at the centre of natural history where he works as a taxidermist. His name he says is Bagheri. Badii turns his car around and drives away and a little way down the street a woman asks him a favour to click a picture of her and another man. Badii clicks the picture, returns the camera and drives off. A few seconds down the road, Badii quickly turns around and drives back. Another motorist is clearly taken aback by Badii’s rash turn and yells “Are you in a hurry to die?”
Badii quickly goes back to the centre of natural history where Bagheri is teaching a class for dissection of Quails. He meets him there and makes sure once again that he will come the following morning and asks him to make sure that he is dead before he buries him. The man obliges and goes back. Badii walks around the campus and sits down to get a view of the sunset over the city as evening falls.
We next see Badii as he prepares himself in his home and drives out in the dark of the night to the cherry tree on the top of the hill. The rain is pouring down as he quietly lies down in the hole. He get a close up of Badii’s face as he fade to black and only the sound of the rain and thunder is heard. What we see next is completely incredible and most unexpected. We see Abbas Kiarostami with his crew and Homayun Ershadi (the actor who plays Badii) as they shoot a scene of marching soldiers over the hill.
This is perhaps Kiarostami’s way of showing the power of cinema. He tells a very touching story where the viewer is engrossed in its emotion and suddenly takes it all away by saying that it is just a film after all.
Taste of Cherry is a slow paced, serene and atmospheric tale about death. The feeling of loneliness felt by Badii is clearly felt by the viewer throughout the film and leaves a lot to ponder over far after the ending credits roll. This is an original idea and it shows a lot of humanity with which Kiarostami handles the story.
Here are some of the most beautiful images from the film:
