Taste of Cherry - Criterion Collection

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(4 stars) - brilliant, but hard to watch
I have a favorable opinion of this movie, though it was tough to watch, and I probably will never watch it again.

Most of this movie consists of close-up shots of a guy driving around a quarry near Tehran trying to find somebody who will help him kill himself.

There are so many touches of this movie that reveal the hand of a master. It's almost like watching that LandRover drive interminably around that dusty quarry for an hour and a half will have you mulling over suicide yourself! And the fact that the man's reasons are never offered was brilliant, brilliant.

Yes, the premise is brilliant, but I think it worked a lot better as a script idea than a finished product. It is still more than watchable, however.

In other news:

1. This movie has got to feature the most unexpected, mind-bending ending I've ever seen in a film! The second you see it, you'll bound off to the internet to ascertain if there is a physical problem with your DVD.

2. Whoever did the subtitles: good job. They're literate, and the translations are spot-on. Seems like this isn't very common with Iranian films that make it to the West.

(5 stars) - A movie that comes close to meditation
This movie changed my thoughts about what cinema can do. It is as close to a mindfullness meditation - vipassana- as as movie can be. It is a very long, at times frustrating movie, but the rewards of watching are very rich are long lasting.
Strongly urge anyone with a meditative bent of mind to view it.

(4 stars) - Good
There is the old, and often neglected, nostrum about `gilding the lily.' I was reminded of this watching Abbas Kiarostami's acclaimed 1997 film Taste Of Cherry (Ta'm E Guilass), co-winner of the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, for while it comes close to being a great film for the bulk of its running time of 99 minutes (not the oft-claimed 95 minutes), its much discussed ending, of breaking the fourth wall (ala Ingmar Bergman, circa the 1960s) to reveal what has just been witnessed is all a film, is one of the worst endings for a film of quality I've seen; perhaps even worse than the tacked on uplifting ending to Akira Kurosawa's otherwise stellar Rashomon. The basic problem with the ending is that, unlike in Bergman's run of self-conscious films (Persona, Hour Of The Wolf, Shame), the big `revelation' that the film is a film comes after we've sat through it; assuming that even such a fourth wall braking could surprise one in these times. Even worse is that it undermines the penultimate scene, which is a better- if not great ending, but one which would arguably qualify Taste Of Cherry as a great film overall. And it is an all Kiarostami film, good or bad, as he produced, wrote, and edited, as well as directed it.
Critics, pro and con, have prattled on about Kiarostami's meaning or intent, in regard to the videotaped, not filmed, ending of verdant hills (contrasting with the rest of the film's ruddy barren rock landscapes), but always seem to miss the result, which is that it emotionally deflates the whole story. They claim things such as Kiarostami's abnegation of preachiness, a disdain for tearjerking, some psychological reason why the reveal of the film's fictive nature, at its end, is profound, or his desire to make indeterminacy the film's major motif. Yet, before the ending of the film, it is not preachy, jerks no tears, is clearly fictive, and the penultimate scene spells out indeterminacy far more powerfully and cogently than the ending does. When confronted by such realities as this it is always amusing to watch fans of an artist alibi for failure when the simplest answer is simply failure- that Kiarostami did not believe enough in his film to let it end at its best point. And what the filmmaker desired to achieve, if any aside from himself could divine such a thing, is immaterial to the viewer.
Taste Of Cherry has moments of rapturous almost pure cinema, where the visuals alone can sustain the film and indeed do last longer than the lesser parts of the film, but, ultimately, that quality and its often clever script, are undone by the ending. It does not ruin the film, in terms of making it a bad film, but it does keep it from the elusive goal of greatness, for it plays out as an attempt at innovation when, in reality, it was already decades passé (as well as being inappropriate to end the film). Kiarostami's film views the human from a telescopic and microscopic position, and which is the more revealing is debatable. That such an innovative approach is substantially ruined by the poor ending is a shame, even if as human as the dilemma it traces.

(5 stars) - A unique piece of cinema...beautifully filmed, one of Kiarostami's (and Iranian cinema's) best films....
This was my introduction to Iranian cinema, and it's a fine introduction. This film is one of Abbas Kiarostami's best films, and the first film from Iran to win the Palme d'Or at Cannes. It's a hypnotic, fascinating, and intelligent film, which deals with many complex issues. The film concerns itself with a man driving around Tehran looking for somebody either to kill him or rescue him. It's really striking the way Kiarostami films things, as there is much driving, many long takes (which are all beautifully filmed), and sometimes Kiarostami lets his camera linger on one of the characters of the shot while never showing the other character. There is a long conversation at a construction site with the watchman of the site, and during a 2 1/2 minute unbroken take, you only see the main character while listening to the other character. These directorial decisions never feel forced, but very natural and beautiful. The cinematography (and terrain) around Tehran is visually stunning, and the performances are top notch here. The film is also very ambiguous, and never really provides a solid conclusion. This is one of Kiarostami's finest achievements (even though I like The Wind Will Carry Us more than this film), and it's a great introduction to the poetic, deeply artistic Iranian cinema.

(4 stars) - Lives up to the hype.
A Taste of Cherry (Abbas Kiarostami, 1997)

Given everything I've read about Abbas Kiarostami's methods of filmmaking, I had come to the (obviously, in hindsight) erroneous conclusion that A Taste of Cherry was going to put me in mind of Bela Tarr or the French New Wave; that is certainly not the case. If any of you who obsessively read film criticism have been staying away from Kiarostami because it sounds, when people talk about his stuff, like it's not really about anything, let me lay that specter to rest right now. A Taste of Cherry is most definitely about something.

Mr. Badii (Homayoun Ershadi) is the central character, and for the first twenty minutes or so of the movie, we follow him around while he tries to get someone to do something for him. We don't know what, and the dialogue cleverly conceals it-- is Badii a homosexual looking for a tryst? (Given the ubiquity of this interpretation, I'm assuming that was Kiarostami's intention.) Eventually, however, we find out (and this isn't a spoiler, as it's in the box copy) Mr. Badii wants to kill himself, and he's looking for someone to come make sure he's done the job properly the next morning. We keep following him, but now the film has taken on an entirely new quality, given that we know what he's after; the other ends of the conversations suddenly make a great deal more sense.

I'm not familiar enough with Iranian culture to grasp the cultural allegories I'm sure run through this movie, but that doesn't stop me from enjoying the story for the story's sake. Essentially, it's a feature-length discussion about the value of life, and whether one man's valuation of life is as valid as any other man's. Kiarostami pulls it off because Ershadi is completely believable in his role, and so is everyone with whom he comes in contact (I often felt the minor characters weren't actors at all, and that Ershadi had simply driven up to them and started talking in order to get reactions). There is, as you can probably tell from the synopsis, not a great deal of action to be found here, but the story is just as gripping as any action movie I've seen in recent years. A very, very good film, well worth watching. ****

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