Taste of Cherry (1997) Abbas Kiarostami
Updated: Jun 15
I remember when I watched Taste of Cherry 1997 Directed by Abbas Kiarostami for the first time, people would describe the film's plot as a man who is suicidal and looking for someone to bury him and the whole film revolves around that at a slow pace of deliberate inactivity.
But I think people are missing out on the main argument, it's about having a choice a sense of control over the outcome; he dug a hole in the ground and he planned how he will end his life but his only issue is that the grave will be exposed and he seeks a proper burying.
He is going to pay a guy to come around at 6 a.m. and call down to him. "If I answer, pull me out. If I don't, throw in 20 shovels of the earth to bury me."
As we view it we have to allow ourselves to understand Kiarostami's time sense, if we open ourselves to the existential dilemma of the main character, there is no action or incident it all goes like a regular day in the life; like his choice of death or life will change nothing only a hole dug will be closed and the sun will raise the other day.
Our whole world dies with us quietly like it never was there, how big of a sensation death must be? a closing, a final curtain to the masquerade that no one experience in its entirety but us, us alone this whole time.
Mr. Badii: I've decided to free myself from this life.
The seminarian: What for?
Mr. Badii: It wouldn't help you to know and I can't talk about it and you wouldn't understand. It's not because you don't understand but you can't feel what I feel. You can sympathize, understand, show compassion. But feel my pain? No. You suffer and so do I. I understand you.
You comprehend my pain, but you can't feel it
Yes, you know the pain but not in the way we experience it. You associate your past experiences with how you perceive them to be and in that, there is a scary thought that even though emotions are unified we never experience them the same, and even with the sense of hope and hopelessness we can never predict that path of low to high, we can not convince others to see the light when they are in the midst of the dark.
We endure the low because we are as sure as the sun, that in life the only constant is change and a postponed choice that is solely ours on how should we continue, the earth is as wide as the sky and we might seek an alternate horizon to start again or to dig a hole looking helplessly for someone to close it once and for all.
But
Do you want to refuse all that?
Do you want to give it all up?
You want to give up the taste of cherries?
Do you?