Sublime, austere masterpiece; 1998's best.

There are three or four faces in the history of cinema that I will forever remember. Knowing Renee Maria Falconetti’s face from Carl T. Dreyer’s the Passion of Joan of Arc is to know the face of silent film; perhaps just as memorable are Jean-Pierre Leaud’s in the final shot of Francois Truffaut’s 400 Blows and Gloria Swanson’s in the final shot in Sunset Boulevard. New to this distinct company is Homayon Ershadi’s in Abbas Kiarostami’s new masterpiece, Taste of Cherry.

As I’ve explained, rarely does a single face ingrain itself so strongly in my memory. For Ershadi’s character, Mr. Badii, it’s his desperate, forlorn face that struck me immediately. But it’s not just his face that is the focus of the film; rather, it’s the man’s soul that Kiarostami is exploring and, luckily, he is inviting us along.

The film opens with our attention focused on a wearied man driving a Range Rover through a small settlement, searching for a man to help him. For a good thirty minutes we don’t know what it is he wants from the man; sex, perhaps, or just a helping hand in an odd job. But there are plenty of laborers available, and Badii is picky. He eventually chooses a young soldier, an Afghan seminarian and a taxidermist. For a considerable payment, Badii asks only that the man comes to a designated spot on a hill where he has already dug a grave and, if he is dead, bury him; but if he is alive, help him out of the hole. Since suicide is taboo, Badii has a difficult time hiring help.

It isn’t until Badii picks up the taxidermist that film reaches its lyrical height. The man relates his own attempt at suicide and his epiphany that, no matter our problems, life is worth living. It came about, he tells us, through the taste of mulberries; he ate one, two then three and saw the beauty in them. He asks Badii, “Do you want to give up the taste of cherries?”

We never find out why Badii wants to end his life, or for that matter, anything about his history. Kiarostami invites us to fill in those blanks with our own imagination; he wants to shorten the distance between character and the audience.

He accomplishes this not only through omitting narrative information, but also through camerawork. A good chunk of the film is of Badii driving his Range Rover and the camera is seated in the passenger side of the car; we are his passengers throughout his journey. Through long traveling shots, Kiarostami tracks Badii’s trek; the winding dirt roads are seemingly a maze and at the end of it is Badii’s fate. We get to know Badii as we travel with him: we study his face and through conversation, we study his soul. Occasionally, the camera moves to the bustling, working-class cityscape or the gorgeous sunset that Badii watches from a park bench. Each are beautiful, life affirming images, but then we are brought back to Badii’s desperate face, and thus brought back to the focus of the film.

As his is custom, Kiarostami did not use a script for Taste of Cherry. It produces marvelous results; Ershadi seemingly behaves rather than acts. His frustration at being unable to convince the soldier to help him seems real and when he reaches the verge of tears in explaining to the seminarian that he wouldn’t understand why he wants to kill himself, we are convinced that Ershadi is not acting. What’s even more amazing is that none of the actors actually met during the filming; Kiarostami sat in the passenger seat while filming Badii and drove while filming the passengers.

Some viewers might be upset that the film doesn’t reveal anything about Badii’s history or why he wants to end his life. But Kiarostami wants the viewer to fill in those blanks; maybe Badii is us and we know why we sometimes want to end our lives. Badii seems to be an average, middle-aged man with what are most likely typical life problems. As Jonathan Rosenbaum writes in his review of the film, we are what Taste of Cherry is about.

I had little difficulty coming up with ideas to describe the film, but none of them capture the power of the film as perfectly as Time critic, Richard Corliss’. “As the rest of the world rides the rocket to excess,” Corliss writes, “Kiarostami will listen to a man’s heart until it stops beating, and then listen some more.” Kiarostami listens to the heart of mankind and makes our seemingly meaningless lives epic. Taste of Cherry is a cathartic, invigorating masterwork and I cannot imagine I will see a better movie for a long time.