Tuesday 10 June 2008

The Taste of Cherry [1997]

Directed by the renowned Iranian New Wave auteur Abbas Kiarostami, Taste of Cherry is a deeply philosophical treatise which dispassionately chronicles a world-weary man’s journey in and around Tehran in his car trying to find a person who would agree to bury his body (in return for good money) below a cherry tree where he would attempt to commit suicide. In the process he encounters people, from various walks of life, who decline to do the job for reasons ranging from morality to religion. At the end, the guy who would most likely be to decline takes the offer for the simple reason that he needs money. Chiefly a slow, somber, dialogue-driven movie, the moments of silence and the lazy, dusty environ of the city, too, play pivotal roles in this slice of life observation on topics ranging from the mundane (hypocrisies, prejudices, money) to the surreal (ideologies, love, friendship) to the abstruse (existence, life, death). In essence this remains a deeply esoteric effort, which viewers not initiated to complex stream-of-consciousness psycho-analytical faux-documentary works of art, would find very difficult to comprehend, leave alone appreciate. 

 

 


 

 

 

 Director: Abbas Kiarostami 

Genre: Drama/Psychological Drama/Road Movie/Slice of Life 

Language: Persian

Country: Iran

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