Taste of Cherry
طعم گیلاس
A middle-aged man drives through the hills outside Tehran, searching for someone willing to assist in his suicide. Winner of the Palme d'Or at Cannes — a minimalist masterpiece about life, death, and the beauty of the ordinary.
Kiarostami won the Palme d'Or for Taste of Cherry, a film about a man (Homayoun Ershadi) driving through the dusty hills outside Tehran in his Range Rover, looking for someone who will help him die. He plans to take an overdose of sleeping pills and needs a person to check on him in the morning — to either bury him or help him up.
The film consists almost entirely of conversations in the car between Mr. Badii and three passengers: a young Kurdish soldier who refuses, an Afghan seminarian who quotes scripture, and an elderly Turkish taxidermist who tells a story about cherries. The taxidermist's monologue — about attempting suicide and being saved by the taste of mulberries — is one of the most moving defenses of life ever committed to film.
The ending is famously ambiguous. Kiarostami breaks the fourth wall, showing the film crew at work. Is Mr. Badii alive or dead? Is the whole thing a construction? The answer — and this is Kiarostami's point — is that life doesn't offer closure. It offers cherries.
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