Taste of Cherry - 1997
Directed by Abbas Kiarostami
Mr. Badii (Homayoun Ershadi) drives around Tehran in hopes of finding someone willing to burry him after he commits suicide. Shot mostly in or around Badii's Range Rover, the story does not reveal why this seemingly rich man wishes to commit suicide. He has little luck finding an accomplice willing to burry him, suicide is forbidden under Islamic law and this is what puts him in this desperate situation. This effort won director Kiarostami the Palme d'Or at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival.
Color, 1 hour 35 minutes, Farsi
Original Title: Taam-e-Guilass
Watch Trailer (English), Watch Scene (Farsi w/English subtitles)
Star Rating
Firouzan Rank # 2
Cast
| Homayoun Ershadi | Mr. Badii |
| Abdolhossein Bagheri | Taxidermist |
| Afshin Bakhtiari | Worker |
| Safar Ali Moradi | Soldier |
| Mir Hossein Nouri | Seminarist |
| Ahmad Ansari | Factory Guard |
| Hamid Massoumi | Man in the Telephone Booth |
| Elham Imani | Woman in front of the Museum |
| Ahmad Jaangeeri | Iron Worker |
| Nasrehollah Amili | Sand and Gravel Worker |
| Cepideh Askari | Passenger in Volkswagen |
| Davoud Firouzanfar | Passenger in Volkswagen |
| Iraj Alidoust | Man in Museum Kiosk |
| Rahman Rezaii | Man in Museum Kiosk |
| Hojatollah Sershki | Man in Museum Kiosk |
Crew
| Writer | Abbas Kiarostami |
| Director | Abbas Kiarostami |
| Producer | Abbas Kiarostami |
| Director of Photography | Homayoun Paivar |
| Sound Recordist | Jahanghir Mirshekari |
| Editor | Abbas Kiarostami |
| Sound Mixer | Mohammad Reza Delpaak |
Pictures
Mr Badii's (Homayoun Ershadi) motivation is never revealed.
The Kurdish conscript.
The winding road to Mr. Badii's tree.
The Afghan seminary student.
Thinking in the dust.
The wise taxidermist.
Watching the sunset.
Final preparations.
Staring at the moon.
A moment of levity - the film concludes with playful footage of Mr. Kiarostami, his cast, and his crew set to jazz music.
DVD
External Reviews
By Stephen Holden The New York Times
For most people the will to live, even in hard times, is more than a determination to survive. It is an unquestioning, ebullient zest for being sensate in the world. This humanistic perception was the rock-bottom insight of the great Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami's last two films, "And Life Goes On..." and "Through the Olive Trees," which were shown in the New York Film Festival in 1992 and '94. Both films portrayed Iranian farmers rolling with the punches of nature and almost cheerfully rebuilding their lives after a devastating earthquake.`
In his exquisite new film, "Taste of Cherry," which the festival is showing tomorrow at 4 P.M., Mr. Kiarostami contrasts the teeming vitality of Iranian working life with the suicidal inclination of a brooding, affluent middle-aged man identified only as Mr. Badii (Homayoun Ershadi). Continued
By Jeffrey M. Anderson Combustible Celluloid
"Taste of Cherry," by veteran Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami, is a most extraordinary movie. I can factually say that I have never seen another movie quite like it; at least not made in the past 3 decades. It has won the Palme D'Or at the Cannes Film Festival (shared with Shohei Imamura's "The Eel"). It has been proclaimed a masterpiece by The New York Times, The New York Daily News, Film Comment and Time Magazine, as well as internationally acclaimed filmmakers Jean-Luc Godard and Akira Kurosawa. It deserves comparison to some of history's most thoughtful and poetic films; Jean-Luc Godard's "Vivre Sa Vie," Akira Kurosawa's "High and Low," Ingmar Bergman's "Persona," and Federico Fellini's "La Dolce Vita." It's now available on a lovely Criterion DVD. Continued
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