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Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami’s minimalist work has been lauded at film festivals around the world. TASTE OF CHERRY won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. This deliberately paced film leaves much up to the imagination of the audience. However, the filmmaker leaves signposts along the way, which lead you to conjure up images of the lonely lead character’s past and present feelings. Mostly filmed inside a car or from a distance as the car winds through desolate dirt roads, this is a film that gripped me with curiosity, had me anxious with anticipation and touched my heart and moved my brain with flashes of visual poetry.

Mr. Badii (Homayoun Ershadi, THE KITE RUNNER) is a middle-aged man on a mission. He drives along the outskirts of Tehran looking for some help with a job. After some strange looks for several men, he picks up a young soldier (Safar Ali Moradi), who quickly becomes uncomfortable with this sad faced man. What is he up to? What is this job? Is it sexual? Is it illegal? Along the way looking for help, Mr. Badii will talk with a vacationing Afghan seminarian (Mir Hossein Noori) and a kind taxidermist named Mr. Bagheri (Abdolrahman Bagheri).

Many of the descriptions of this film tell what Mr. Badii is looking for straight out. However, I think this does a disservice to the dramatic pull. Trying to rid the knowledge out of my mind, I watched the film as Kiarostami lays it out, thinking about how Badii avoiding his real motivations creates an odd uneasiness and foreboding that serves the material well when we finally learn the truth. The director gives us zero outright background on Badii, but we learn that he was in the military and from the glint in his eye can infer that it was a happy time in his time. Watching Badii’s actions and reactions are so key to understanding his state of mind, which is crucial in understanding what Kiarostami is trying to convey. For those wanting to go into this haunting film fresh then skip to the final paragraph instead of reading the next part of the discussion.

SPOILER ALERT

Though the film is universally hailed by many critics, Roger Ebert gave the film one star, finding the film boring and empty, and describing it as an emperor with no clothes. And I believe this could be the opinion of many casual filmgoers. In countering some of Ebert’s objections, I felt the need to go into the heart of Mr. Badii’s mission. He wants to find someone to help with his suicide. He plans to take pills, lie in a hole and wants someone in the morning to either bury him if he is dead or help him out if he fails. Because we know little about the main character, we are left without clues to why he wants to die. But I believe those facts are immaterial to what Kiarostami is trying to accomplish. I honestly believe the film isn’t even about suicide and is truly about depression.

Through his alienating visuals and slowed pacing, the filmmaker captures the mental state of depression. He isn’t interested in the dramatic lows, but the day-to-day numbness of the disease. Badii keeps telling the people he meets that he needs help and that is exactly what he is calling out for. Throughout Badii seems to be arguing his plan with himself as much as he is with the people he tries to get to bury him. Though he doesn’t vocalize it, the help he is really looking for is help in discovering something to live for. Why bring in strangers to your suicide if you are convinced this is what you want? Those who are truly serious about killing themselves are not as worried about what happens to them after they are gone. Mr. Bagheri, a man who makes his living making dead things look alive, is the one who piques interest in a dead soul to continue on. Though Kiarostami leaves the final result open-ended, Badii’s last requests at the museum and some of the closing imagery hint at the true outcome. There’s also the mysterious coda, featuring Kiarostami filming a relaxing group of soldiers. Ebert asks, “why remind us that this is only a film?” I believe it’s Kiarostami saying that his film is like Mr. Bagheri’s tale about the taste of cherries.

For some, this film will be depressing or painful. However for the daring and thoughtful viewer, in presenting tough feelings in an open way, Kiarostami captures his main character’s state of mind through visual metaphors and the emotional language of film. While I will admit, the sequence with the soldier repeats itself and could have been trimmed, it still fits with the overall message. A lonely man is looking for help, but has a hard time expressing exactly what that help is.

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