05/10/2002 Entry:
"A Taste Of Cherry"

After I watched A Taste Of Cherry on the train, I knew that it hadn't gotten its due. The combination of ambient noise and getting cut in the middle sucked the life out of it. So I held onto it and gave it another viewing, much to my great pleasure.

This slow, quiet film from Abbas Kiarostami is a wonder of masterful filmmaking. As opposed to a film like Donnie Darko, which takes its energy from a really visceral directing style, A Taste Of Cherry is based in a certain calm which forces us to think and contemplate the scenes unfolding before us. I have never seen a movie so slowly paced which moves along so quickly.

One of the things Kiarostami does in this movie is almost completely isolate the main character, Badii, from everyone else around him. He is always shot alone in single shots with two exceptions (briefly he is shown in frame with the security guard, and then later he has a more extended scene with Bagheri, the taxidermist.) The fact that he almost never reveals anything about himself in any of his long rambling conversations with the various people he encounters further isolates him from the viewer. The one exception to this is when he is discussing his time in the army with the soldier he picks up, something I'll expand on later.

We also get a lot of point of view shots, although they generally aren't from Badii's point of view. For instance, when he brings the soldier to see his hole and lays out his whole plan, Badii is shot through the windshield and window of the car, putting us in the soldier's shoes inside the car looking out. In another extended scene, the security guard is making tea for Badii as Badii walks back and forth trying to feel out the guard to see if he is an appropriate candidate. Kiarostami forces the guard's point of view so heavily that we are put inside a house while Badii is put outside (we view and hear him through a glass window.) As he waks back and forth, his voice gets more and more distant the further and further he walks from us. The fact that he is talking about loneliness and being alone in this conversation just continues the same threads. He asks how the guard can stand the loneliness, implying that he himself couldn't stand it. By never putting us into Badii's point of view, we are further isolated from him, and we further feel the isolation he obviously feels. His whole quest is a demonstration of this isolation, after all if he wasn't completely isolated (or at least if he didn't feel completely isolated) he wouldn't need to enlist the help of strangers at all.

However, for someone so alone, he seems to have plenty of people wanting to help him in various ways, although usually not in the way he wishes. When he drives off the road, a band of strangers come and help him pull his car back to safety. The seminarian tries to talk to him, to get him to come in for a meal. Bagheri, even after he agrees to help, continues to try and talk Badii out of it.

The only time we ever get put into Badii's shoes is when we are looking out from his seat in the car to whoever he's talking to. However even in the car, we are often taken out of either point of view and given these distant shots of the car slowly making its way through the winding roads of the Iranian landscape. Many times these shots seem to represent the winding convoluted conversations Badii spins as he tries to get to the point or convince his passenger that what he is doing is just. However, when he actually finds his helper in Bagheri, we get some very long shots as he drives Bagheri back to work wherein Bagheri directs Badii where to go, just as Bagheri is trying to direct Badii to think about what he is doing in committing suicide.

The use of earth moving equipment at various points in the story seems an obvious parallel to the fact that Badii is trying to find someone to bury him. All these dumptrucks dumping dirt everywhere, sorting it, pushing it around, and he can't even find someone to throw 20 spadefuls of dirt on him. This is particularly noteworthy after he drops off the seminarian and sits down in the middle of a construction site. His third attempt to find someone help him has failed, he already feels desperate and alone, and he sits down with this dirt falling all around him. When a worker comes up to him to get him to move his car, he doesn't hear him, staring into space, until finally getting up to continue on. A very effective scene, the acting by Badii is wonderful.

Despite the fact that Badii spends the whole film attempting to find someone to help him die, there are various points where we question his resolve. When the seminarian asks him to come up and have an omelette, he says no because eggs are bad for him. He doesn't really consider himelf dead yet. Also, he says the soldier should call his name twice, and if he answers the soldier should pull him out. If he really wanted to die, why would he need to be pulled out? The whole concept of someone coming to bury him or pull him out is almost like an attempt for him to figure out a way to commit suicide or back out at the last minute if he wants. Then later in the scene with Bagheri, he adds on the proviso about throwing the stone at him because he might just be asleep. His desperation in this scene is palpable, but desperation for what? To die or to live? Is this whole exercise the proverbial cry for help? Perhaps because he is so alone, he feels there is nobody to cry to except for strangers. However if so, why does he then shut down the seminarian when the seminarian tries to talk to him about god and invites him in for a meal with his friend the security guard? Maybe it is only after someone agrees to help him that he realizes what he is about to do and begins to consider it seriously. Certainly Bagheri is the only one he lets talk to him about him about reconsidering his actions in the extended scene where Badii drives Bagheri back to work.

The only time Badii ever really reveals anything about himself as a person, is in the scene where he picks up the soldier. He talks about his time in the army, about how he was never happier than when he was in the army. When he felt a part of something, he was happy. Now he's alone, and he's desperate to die. He would march around with the others counting off, he tries to get the soldier to count but the soldier seems ill at ease. Kiarostami shot this scene (and some others, although I don't know which) himself, driving the car. He actually picked up the soldier, who is not an actor but an actual soldier, and drove him around, talking to him. Whether he actually put forth the story about himself wanting to die, I don't know, however given the soldier's reactions I can only assume so. When the soldier runs off, it is because he actually did get freaked and run. The scenes with Badii were shot later and edited in, which is why you never see him and the soldier in the same shot. The soldier obviously seems really nervous, which makes sense because he really was.

After the soldier runs off, Badii is about to drive away and he sees a company of soldiers marching and counting, and Badii just barely smiles to himself. This is the only emotion besides desperation and sadness we get out of Badii throughout the whole film. Even lying in his grave, his face is empty of emotion. He shows no peace, no worry, no anything. Eventually he closes his eyes. Is he satisfied? Saddened? Asleep? Dying? We never find out. Which finally leads us to the film's ending. I, like everyone else I'm sure, was simply taken abck by the ending when I saw the film the first time, and I didn't know what to make of it. It hearkens back to Close Up in a way, the introduction of a film into real life and real life into a film. The questioning of where one begins and where one ends. This is felt in a more subtle way in other scenes, mostly in sound design where lines of dialog are often completely obliterated or hard to hear because of surrounding events (or perhaps intentionally introduced as in the mike problems at the end of Close Up.) The ending coda is shot on video, which sets it off from everything preceding in a very jarring way.

But does this piece hold more significance? Many seem to write it off as Kiarostami simply saying "this is just a movie, don't take it seriously" which I believe is way too simplistic a way of looking at it. You could, I suppose, use this code to bolster an argument that Badii chooses to live or that he chooses to die, that this is what he sees after he closes his eyes - heaven, a dream, whetever. I definitely don't buy that either. Its too obvious and easy.

To me, the most noteworthy thing about this segment is that it shows the film crew working with the marching company of soldiers. When he sees this company of soldiers early in the film, Badii smiles and seems something other than desperate and alone. Kiarostami probably could have chosen video of any scene in the film for the ending piece if all he wanted was to blur the lines between film or reality. So why did he choose this segment? To me, by bringing that company of soldiers back for the end, Kiarostami is telling us that whatever happened to Badii, whether he lived or died, whether Bhageri pulled him out of the hole or threw 20 spadefuls of Earth on him, Badii was at peace with the result. That somehow through this journey of his, he got what he desired. I could parallel this to Limbo, another film with an "ambiguous" ending. Many would argue that by not showing what happened when the plane landed in that film, the audience is cheated from a true conclusion. However, this assumes that the movie was about them getting kidnapped and stranded. Obviously it wasn't, it was about them coming together and forming a family. Looking at it that way, there's nothing at all ambiguous about the ending of Limbo. The family standing on the beach with their arms around each other facing whatever comes couldn't be more on the nose. This is also true of A Taste Of Cherry. The film is not about whether Badii chooses to live or die, but about Badii's quest from inner turmoil to inner peace.

Sitting here writing this I just want to get A Taste Of Cherry and see it yet again. It should be noted that I haven't talked a lot about camera work and lighting or whatever. The film is shot perfectly, the color is gorgeous, but its not about how its shot. Its about something more. Sitting here comparing this film to say, Donnie Darko, is enlightening. Donnie Darko, being more visceral and in your face, is a fun film which I enjoyed quite a bit. But A Taste Of Cherry is a much more meaningful and personal experience which I'm sure I will remember for a much longer time. The film is so thought provoking, it sticks with you for days after you see it. It provokes arguments between people about interpretation, it is ambiguous and complex, and it ultimately leaves its mark on you in a permanent way. To me, that is the ultimate test of a great film.