Taste of Cherry (1997)

Year: 1997
Country: Iran
Director: Abbas Kiarostami
Writer: Abbas Kiarostami 
Stars: Homayoun Ershadi, Abdolrahman Bagheri & Afshin Khorshid Bakhitari

"I know that suicide is one of the deadly sins but being unhappy is a great sin too.

When you're unhappy you hurt other people Isn't that a sin too?" - Mr. Badii

There are certain pieces of art that effect you in ways that you can't quite verbalise as thoroughly as you wish the could.  Things that resonate so deeply and personally that it seems that it was made just for you for to experience. My personal outlet in life is films. Whether it pertains to escapism, seeing the world in different ways through different artistic voices, or just simple entertainment. Films keep me going, whether it's on the hunt for another film that makes me happy, that makes me think or that makes me see people or the world in a different way.  

Throughout times of hardship and mental strain, there are films that I will return to. Jacques Tati's 'PlayTime' because of its endless wonder, imagination and joy. Stanley Kubrick's 'The Shining' because it's my favourite film, and because I love getting wrangled into Kubrick's mysterious and enigmatic labyrinth of madness and macabre. And then there is Abbas Kiarostami's 'Taste of Cherry'.

There have been periods in my life where I have been mentally drained and have turned to Kiarostami's film for some sense of understanding. Something that will show me a semblance of a way forward. Kiarostami's films have always been that way for me. His use of realism and blurring the lines between fact and fiction have always made his films feel almost transcendent of the medium for me. 'Taste of Cherry' is narratively bare-bones but rich in subtext. Simply put, it's the story of a man who wants to commit suicide and his discussion with three different people about whether they will help him or not. 

Mr Badii is the man in question. He drives through the Tehran streets and into its desert. Picking up a young soldier along the way, making small talk before arriving at a cherry tree in the hills. This is where he makes his intentions known. He wants to die, and he wants someone to bury him. If they do so, he will leave them a hefty sum of money. Badii implores the young man to do him this favour. He speaks of it as a business transaction, devoid of any sentiment or emotion ("I don't want to give you a gun to kill me. I'm giving you a spade, a spade") The soldier flees and a dejected Badii hits the road again. 

His second drive is with a studying Seminarist. This is one of the most impactful sequences of all the film because it's the only time that Badii lets his guard down. After a brief questioning of the Seminarist about the moral conflicts of suicide and whether it's ethical to live unhappily, Baddi decides to open up as much as he can.

"I've decided to free myself from this life. What for? It wouldn't help you to know and I can't talk about it. And you wouldn't understand. It's not because you don't understand but you can't feel what I feel. You can sympathise, understand show compassion. But feel my pain? No. You suffer and so do I. I understand you. You comprehend my pain but you can't feel it."

Badii says these words with a lip quiver and tears in his eyes and it's the first time that we as an audience can sense his inner turmoil and pain. He isn't talking about the burial arrangement as a business transaction but almost as a plea. We don't know why he feels like this is his only option but we "comprehend" his pain. 

"That's why I ask you to be a true Moslem and help me. Can you?

"Yes, I understand you. But suicide is wrong."

As the Seminarist utters these words, you can see the crushing blow that it is to Badii. He let his guard down and now the Seminarist is seeing him through the lense of his religion and less as a person. Although he means well, he can't "comprehend his pain". 

We join his final conversation after the details have been sorted and he has found someone to assist him. The man is Mr Bagheri, an older Taxidermist, who is need of money for his sick child. This interaction has the starkest of differences to the other two. Badii is nearly silent through all of it while Bagheri gives him his own experiences with suicide and how life is worth living. This is the most inspiring sequence of the film as Bagheri tells Badii a tale of his attempted suicide. He went out one morning to hang himself from a mulberry tree, it failed and he got a new perspective ("I had left to kill myself and I came back with mulberries. A mulberry saved my life"). 

Mr Bagheri does his best to plead with Badii to change his outlook on life, recounting a Turkish joke about a man who hurt everywhere he touched only for a doctor to tell him he had a broken finger. He tells of life's simplicities that will be gone with an act of finality. ("Have you seen the moon? Don't you want to see the stars? The night of the full moon, don't you want to see it again?") He mentions the four seasons and how each brings fruit ("You want to give up the taste of cherries?") and when Badii finally drops him at the National History Museum, where he works, he even sings a song in Turkish ("From happy days before. I've fallen on hard times.") and tells him...

"You go, I'm your friend."

"You stay, I'm your friend."

Badii remains unwavering in his plan and gets Mr Bagheri to go over the plans again just to be sure. Even to the point where he enters the museum to confirm one last minor detail with Mr Bagheri, who assures him he will do his part ("Even if they behead me, I'll keep my word"). Badii takes a seat on a nearby bench and watches the sunset, a simple pleasure and one that Mr Bagheri mentioned that Badii will be giving up if he chooses not to go on.   

'Taste of Cherry' won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1997, and while it has gained a favourable legacy over the years, as has been the case with a lot of Kiarostami's work, it has had its detractors. Film critic Roger Ebert famously gave the film a scathing one-star review calling the film "excruciatingly boring" and added to his list of most hated films. I can understand the film's minimalist style and Kiarostami's refusal to give definitive answers, but his style works perfectly for me. He was a visual poet who used his films as pensive mosaics on life, death, morality and human nature. He was fearless in his cinematic experiments and challenging the form. He was a meta filmmaker ahead of his time, as evidenced by the film's final moments (also in the 'Koker' trilogy and 'Close-Up').

'Taste of Cherry' is not a film about answers but about feelings. As far as why Badii is preparing for his death, I think it can be summed up by what he tells the Seminarist "It wouldn't help you to know." Something is burdening the man to a point of such pain where he feels that this is his only option. We can empathise with him, and we can see the pain in his face and that pain is universal. We may feel like we're in Badii's breaking point at times in our lives, but we just have to find the things that keep us going, no matter how small, even something like the taste of cherries.

5/5