TASTE of CHERRY

TASTE of CHERRY Mr Badii (Homayon Ershadi ), a middle-aged man, drives through Tehran looking for someone to do a job for him, and he offers a large amount of money in return. During his drives with prospective candidates, Badii reveals that he plans to kill himself and has already dug the grave. He needs someone to throw earth on his body, after his death. He does not discuss why he wants to commit suicide. His first recruit is a young, shy Kurdish soldier, who refuses to do the job and flees from Badii's car. His second recruit is an Afghan seminarist , who also declines because he has religious objections against suicide. The third is an Azeri taxidermist. He is willing to help Badii because he needs the money for his sick child, but tries to talk him Directed by: Abbas Kiarostami out of it; he reveals that he too Produced by: Abbas Kiarostami wanted to commit suicide a long Written by: Abbas Kiarostami time ago but chose to live when Starring: Homayon Ershadi , Abdolrahman Bagheri , Afshin Khorshid he tasted mulberries . Bakhtiari , Safar Ali Moradi The Azeri promises to throw earth Cinematography: Homayun Payvar on Badii if he finds him dead in Distributed by: Zeitgeist Films the morning. That night, Badii lies Release date(s): May, 1997 (Cannes), September 28, 1997 in his grave while a thunderstorm (NYFF), January 30, 1998, June 5, 1998 begins. After a long blackout, the Running time: 95 minutes film ends with camcorder footage Country: Iran of Kiarostami and the film crew Language: Persian filming Taste of Cherry. Taste of Cherry was awarded the Palme d'Or at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival in the year of its release,[1] tied with Shohei Imamura 's The Eel . When the film was released in the United States, however, it met with a split reaction amongst critics and audiences, and a minor controversy erupted when noted film critic Roger Ebert wrote a scathing review in theChicago Sun-Times , awarding the film a mere 1 out of 4 stars. Ebert dismissed the film as "excuriatingly boring" and added, "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." [2] In his own review of Kiarostami's film, critic Jonathan Rosenbaum of the Chicago Reader awarded it a total of 4 out of 4 stars, and hailed it as a masterpiece. Responding to Ebert's criticisms, Rosenbaum wrote, "A colleague who finds Taste of Cherry “excruciatingly boring” objects in particular to the fact that we don’t know anything about Badii, to what he sees as the distracting suggestion that Badii might be a homosexual looking for sex, and to what he sees as the tired “distancing strategy” of reminding us at the end that we’re seeing a movie. From the perspective of the history of commercial Western cinema, he has a point on all three counts. But Kiarostami couldn’t care less about conforming to that perspective, and given what he can do, I can’t think of any reason he should care... the most important thing about the joyful finale is that it’s the precise opposite of a “distancing effect.” It does invite us into the laboratory from which the film sprang and places us on an equal footing with the filmmaker, yet it does this in a spirit of collective euphoria, suddenly liberating us from the oppressive solitude and darkness of Badii alone in his grave. Shifting to the soldiers reminds us of the happiest part of Badii’s life, and a tree in full bloom reminds us of the Turkish taxidermist’s epiphany — though the soldiers also signify the wars that made both the Kurdish soldier and the Afghan seminarian refugees, and a tree is where the Turk almost hung himself. Kiarostami is representing life in all its rich complexity, reconfiguring elements from the preceding 80-odd minutes in video to clarify what’s real and what’s concocted. (The “army” is under Kiarostami’s command, but it is Ershadi — an architect friend of the filmmaker in real life — who passes Kiarostami a cigarette.) Far from affirming that Taste of Cherry is “only” a movie, this wonderful ending is saying, among other things, that it’s also a movie. And we don’t have to remember all of the lyrics of “St. James Infirmary” to know that death is waiting for us around the corner." [3] The Criterion Collection entered Taste of Cherry into their exclusive film collection on June 1, 1999. .

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