Taste of Cherry (1997)
"Ta'm e guilass" (original title)

An Iranian man drives his truck in search of someone who will quietly bury him under a cherry tree after he commits suicide.

Director:

Abbas Kiarostami

Writer:

Abbas Kiarostami

Stars:

Homayoun Ershadi, Abdolrahman Bagheri, Afshin Khorshid Bakhtiari

3 wins & 2 nominations.

Cast

Credited cast:
Homayoun Ershadi	...	Mr. Badii
Abdolrahman Bagheri	...	Mr. Bagheri
Afshin Khorshid Bakhtiari	...	Soldier
Safar Ali Moradi	...	The soldier
Mir Hossein Noori	...	The seminarian
Rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Ahmad Ansari

Storyline

Middle-aged Mr.Badii is planning to commit suicide and desperately seeks anyone to assist him - he has already dug out the grave in the mountains, but the assistant will have to bury him when he will do the deed. He asks Kurd soldier, Afghan seminarian, but everyone refuses by some reason. Finally he finds an old Turkish taxidermist, who has a sick son and previously attempted suicide himself, and he agrees to assist Badii.

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Plot Keywords:

suicide | hole | outskirts | automobile | tehran iran | 

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Genres:

Drama

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Certificate:

Not Rated

Details

Official Sites:

Zeitgeist Film [us]

Country:

Iran France

Language:

Persian

Release Date:

26 November 1997 (France)

Also Known As:

Taste of Cherry

Filming Locations:

Tehran, Iran

Box Office

Opening Weekend:

$9,688 (USA) (20 March 1998)

Gross:

$311,873 (USA) (20 November 1998)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Abbas Kiarostami Productions, CiBy 2000, Kanoon

Technical Specs

Runtime:

95 min

Sound Mix:

Stereo

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.66 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The film's coda was to a certain extent unplanned, according to an interview with Kiarostami. After they had filmed preliminary versions of the final scene, they did the final scene proper, but the lab accidentally destroyed these final reels. Kiarostami then decided that the off-focus and colors of the test reels worked, and used those instead.

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Goofs

In the opening scene, as Mr. Badhi is driving past laborers looking for work, the same middle-aged white haired man, wearing a checkered sweater vest, is seen twice.

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Quotes

Mr. Bagheri: If you look at the four seasons, each season brings fruit. In summer, there's fruit, in autumn, too. Winter brings different fruit and spring, too. No mother can fill her fridge with such a variety of fruit for her children. No mother can do as much for her children as God does for His creatures. You want to refuse all that? You want to give it all up? You want to give up the taste of cherries?

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Connections

Referenced in 10 on Ten (2004)

User Reviews

Searching for the Reason to Live

Kiarostami strikes again with another provocative film, very much in the same vein as his others: drawn out films that involve a very introspective soul-searching of all of the character's involved, and in so doing, finding some more meaning to the idea of what life is all about.

From the beginning to the end, Kiarostami gives us a complex script of characters that we come into contact with, and as we learn about each one, we learn more about the idea of life. What makes the film very interesting for a Western viewer is that I find closer to Kiarostami's Iran after each of his films that I watch, and become more informed to it. We learn intimate details about the lives of several Iranians.

Throughout the film I found that, although like many of his films it was quite slow-paced, it contained the extraordinarily rich dialog that is expected of a Kiarostami film. His films advance through their rich dialog while using the dusty Iranian landscape as their backdrop. I found a lot of the cinematography to be terrific, viewing the city from a distance and looking into the dusty foot-hills on the outskirts of Tehran. It is more than poetic to see a man at the end of his rope searching through the dust and faces of Tehran's poor laborers for answers about life and death. In many ways, the film is a large metaphor for the human state of affairs.

The film culminates very well, and we all eventually find our own taste of cherry in the film. I always feel as if Kiarostami's films are a very philosophical experience, and are quite personal. In this sense, Kiarostami's films are amongst the best that I have seen.

However, they are undoubtedly slower paced than other films, and they require the viewer to detach himself from any western stereotypes that he has about film. This would not be a good film for somebody expecting action or a typical Western film, but rather, this would be a film that I would recommend only to those who are in the mood for an insightful, philosophical film that shows an alternative view of life. Overall, it was an emotionally powerful film that will stick out in my memory as all Kiarostami films do.