Amazon.com video review:
Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami won the Palme d'Or at the 1997
Cannes Film Festival for this contemplative film about a Muslim, Mr. Badi
(Homayon Ershadi), who drives around the barren hills outside Tehran,
flagging down passersby and offering good money for a simple job that
he's
hesitant to explain. He's planning his suicide and seeks someone to perform
something of a symbolic eulogy. Most of his subjects refuse (personal
morality aside, suicide is forbidden to Muslims), but he finds an elderly
taxidermist (Abdolrahman Bagheri) who agrees only because he needs the
money
for an ill child. Yet the old man gently pleads with him to choose life, to
embrace the joys of earthly existence, to remember the taste of cherries.
Though initially greeted with critical acclaim, A Taste of Cherry
received poor
distribution in the U.S. The meandering, deliberately paced drama is
composed
of long conversations and long silences, and the camera is locked in the car
for
entire sequences, staring at the protagonists in still closeups with the
dusty landscape rolling past the windows of the Land Rover in the
background. Kiarostami's film is not for everyone, but if you can embrace
the quiet power and grace of his deceptively simple style, the film becomes
a remarkably rich celebration of human dignity and resilience. By the
astonishing conclusion we can see past Badi's age-etched face to the soul
peering out from behind his sad eyes. --Sean Axmaker
