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Taste of Cherry

Directed by abbas kiarostami, Taste of cherry has a simple story with complex

overtones. Its about life and death, about the choice of a man to commit suicide despite

the very many reasoning of the people around who try to convince him otherwise.

Badii, played by homayoun Ershadi, is a middle aged, mid-upper class Iranian

man from Tehran. He drives a Range Rover. He is anguished and has decided to kill

himself and he is very decisive in his choice. He has dug up a hole in the ground on a hill

next to a tree, and he is going to take many sleeping pills at once and then climb down the

hole. And now he is looking for someone to do him a favor, to come and meet him at six

in the morning the next day and to check if he was alive; If not cover him with 20

spadefuls of dirt.

He is driving around to find someone to do him this favor. First he talks to a

laborer who seems to be mad and impatient. Next he talks to a young guy who collects

garbage,dried bread and plastic bag. He offers him a job with a lot of money but the guy

rejects considering it. Next, during a longer conversation, he tries to convince a young

soldier to do him the favor he has in return for some money equivalent to a six-months

pay. However the soldier is afraid and rejects the offer saying that he is not a gravedigger.

Next he meets with an afghani guard who has left Afghanistan due to the war

there. He tries to convince him to come with him for a ride, but he says that he cant

leave the site. Then he meets with a friend of that afghani guard who is a seminary

student. Badii explains his plan and offers him the money in return for doing the favor.

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However the seminary student apathetically starts giving him a lecture on how Islam

condemns suicide and that life is a gift from one. Then in a sharp turn of events we see an

old man named Bagheri to have accepted his offer. He is a simple taxidermy technician

with sweet Turkish accent who needs the money.

Here Bagheri talks about his own experience, that he had decided to finish it all

sometime in the past, but somehow the delicious taste of mulberries, the laughing

children and beauty of a sunset and taste of a cherry had changed his mind. He tells Badii

repeatedly that all these merits of life is what to live for.

He then tells Badii an interesting joke, to which no critic I found to make a

reference at all! In his joke, a man goes to a doctor complaining that he feels sore all over

his body, that he has got pain when he touches anywhere on his body, his head, his leg,

his arm. Then the doctor tells him that theres nothing wrong with his body, but rather his

finger. His finger is sore and thats why he feels pain whenever he touches his head or leg

etc. Basically Bagheri is trying to say that suicide is not a solution, that one has to change

his point of view, that the problem lies somewhere else and that if everyone chose the

same solution there would be no one left.

Although his words are simple, his honesty and his being non-judgmental or

overtly pushy makes one contemplate on his words.

Towards the end, we see Badii going into the hole. There is no mention of what

happened to him later, something left to the viewer.

Taste of cherry is a movie full of ambiguity and symbolisms. The three main

characters that he talked to, the soldier, the seminary student and Bagheri were of

different ages, young, middle aged, old. They were of different occupations, representing

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the three different pillars in a society: army, religion and science. They each responded

differently to Badiis offer: one afraid, the other one indifferent and apathetic yet of

complete different viewpoint, and Badii thought not quite in agreement with Badii,

agreed to help him in his plan. But one thing common in all of them was that they were

pour and of lower classes of society. It seems to me as if Kiarostami was trying to say

that these classes of society accept the problems and difficulties of life and therefore they

go on living.

Another interesting symbolism in my opinion was the juxtaposition of contrasting

elements. On one hand Badii mentions that his happiest days have been in the army, yet

army in itself is a killing machine. Or Bagheri, who was preaching life, was a taxidermy

technician, one who deals with death on a daily basis. In one scene we see Badii climbing

a ladder and he is worried that he is going to fall since the ladder was not secured, yet we

know that he is ready to die! Or also in another scene he tells the afghani guard that egg

is not good for him! To me the movie shows some sort of hesitation in Badii. He seemed

decisive, he had no facial expressions when he was talking about his death, yet his

actions proved differently in my opinion. When he dropped Bagheri off at his work place,

he returned to him one more time and in a very worried voice asked Bagheri to bring two

stones with him and throw the stones at him, since he may not be dead and just asleep. Or

before driving to the hill at night, he meticulously turns of all the lights in his apartment.

Why would a man ready to die care for the lights left on?

To sum up, this complex movie is one that would undoubtedly make one to

contemplate on the matters of life and death. A movie that doesnt end when you walk

out of the movie theatre, in facts thats when it starts leaving its effects on you. Its kind of

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a movie that Kiarostami is famous for, one that is ambiguous enough not to be

distinguished what is real and what is fiction in the movie.