"Straight-laced shoes, box-back coat and a Stetson hat": A Taste of Cherry

I saw Abbas Kiarostami’s 1997 A Taste of Cherry because it received enormous critical acclaim and seemed to be a movie which I simply owed it to myself to experience. Disappointingly, it left me confused at first, and then mildly annoyed, as someone who had been tricked.

Like the contemporaneous Roberto Benigni’s Life Is Beautiful, A Taste of Cherry is one of those films which for some reason, despite not being about contemporary politics, nevertheless generate tremendous acrimony towards dissenters. Comments dismissing those who did not like the movie as shallow, narrow-minded popcorn junkies appear in positive criticism of A Taste of Cherry with a surprising consistency. If I did not like A Taste of Cherry, it’s because I am just not sophisticated enough. If I did not like a movie directed by an Iranian, it is assuredly because the US government, in an unholy alliance with Hollywood, has poisoned my mind. If I complain about the wafer-thin plot, inscrutable characters, and the vacuous mise-en-scène, it must be because I suffer from the typically Western short attention span, lack appreciation for philosophical reflection, and -- hooked on garish visuals by the likes of Quentin Tarantino and Technicolor -- constantly require (like a heroin addict, I suppose) more superficial ostentation in order to be impressed. Of course, all this leaves me with the classical Andersenian dilemma: if an “art” movie has virtually no plot, no meaningful character development and poor visuals, then I must praise it as a masterpiece of philosophical rigor, because it is the only way in which I can establish a reputation for intellectual chastity amid the onslaught of pop culture.

The prejudice which I am criticizing is based to a large extent on the wholly arbitrary assumption often made with respect to cinema and literature created in foreign cultures or very long ago: that such works necessarily reflect the mainstream values, notions and artistic conventions of the society from which their makers hail – as if they were and are created for no other reason than to educate the posterity or the heathens about these things. While wading through IMDB discussion boards, I found it satisfying to come upon a comment from a someone who saw A Taste of Cherry in Iran and reported that a great number of Iranian viewers were disappointed enough to leave the theater in the middle of the showing, and that many felt cheated or were confused by the ending. Auteurs through the centuries and in many cultures created works which do not represent the mainstream. Cultural differences between the director and the viewers, while relevant, should not automatically be considered a dispositive ground for any negative criticism.

A Taste of Cherry is a film about an impending suicide. Its protagonist, “Mr. Badii” (Homayon Ershadi) drives around poor, bleak outskirts of Tehran in search of someone who, in exchange for a generous sum of money, will visit his open grave the next day and either bury Badii if his suicide attempt is successful, or help him out if he is still alive. We are now about twenty minutes or so into this ninety-five minute film, and already, Kiarostami has painted himself into a corner. At this point, it is pretty much a given that Badii’s motives will be kept ambiguous, and the ending, contrary to real life, will not reveal whether he is successful. A Taste of Cherry would not have been an “art” movie otherwise; this is the easiest and least creative way to avoid sliding into a trite melodrama when handling a subject which is inherently emotional. I strongly suspect that Kiarostami simply did not know how to bring his story to a close, and so he escaped by means of a highly disingenuous “ending”, whose sophomoric bizarreness begs critical acknowledgement rather too overtly. (I realize that he was trying to give us the director’s “outside” view of the story, to take the viewer out of the movie’s world as opposed to putting him in. I get it. I’m just not that into it.) The ending serves no purpose for the story itself; it is academic, rather than dramatic.

In the course of the day, Badii picks up three passengers. The first two refuse to help him, but the third one agrees.

The story in A Taste of Cherry is, of course, allegorical. The first man Badii picks up is in his late teens or early twenties, and a poor country boy who has just enlisted in the army; the second is in his early thirties and a seminary student; the third is an elderly taxidermist who works in a museum. The passengers progress from younger to older, from less education to more. The first interaction is mostly Badii’s monologue to the silent soldier; the second is a conversation in which Badii and the seminarist participate more or less equally; the third is mostly Baghiri’s monologue to the now-silent Badii. The story, if nothing else, is wonderfully symmetrical.

All three passengers react differently to Badii’s proposal, in accordance with what each of them symbolizes. The soldier – who represents both the ignorance and the selfishness of youth – is aghast at the idea of “throwing dirt on somebody”, but his solution is to run away. He instinctively believes that if he puts Badii out of sight, then it will be as if the man who has dug his own grave in preparation for suicide does not exist. The seminarist – who represents the book smarts and the intellectual pride of early adulthood – attempts to change Badii’s mind by feeding him the standard Islamic doctrine on suicide. The taxidermist – who represents the wisdom of old age – also attempts to dissuade Badii, but his monologue is tempered by a subtle realization that questioning a person’s motives for killing himself is presumptuous; consequently, instead of prying into Badii’s life or lecturing him on the propriety of suicide, he tries to remind him of the small pleasures of living (i.e., “the taste of cherries”). In addition to demonstrating the differences between the passengers’ reaction to one of the thorniest of human dilemmas, the movie can also serve as a metaphor for one man’s confronting the idea of suicide at different stages of his life.

Parables can be powerful. A truly great movie or work of literature uses allegory in combination with character development and a story. By contrast, pure undiluted allegory is a perilous route for an auteur to take, even if it is not automatically condemned to failure. (See, e.g., Hans Christian Andersen’s The Emperor’s New Clothes, a purely allegorical story about peer pressure; whose lesson, as I have hinted previously, is not wholly irrelevant here.) The danger lies in allegory’s usurpation of the characters for transmission of abstract ideas at the expense of emotion and unpredictability of real human behavior – in other words, that too much allegory renders the characters anticathartic. Characters like Wisdom, Reason, or Compassion can say fascinating things, but one cannot relate to them on a personal level.

Consequently, any auteur who chooses to go down that road is putting all his eggs in the intellectual basket; the depth of his philosophy must be sufficient to compensate for the dryness of the characters and the threadbare plot. His work must be an intellectual tour de force, a stunning display of brilliance and originality. A Taste of Cherry makes one think a little, granted, but it does not awe. At the end of it all, its boring plot and lack of any character development still stick out like sores.

As a bottom line, A Taste of Cherry does not say all that much. It has been suggested that one of the movie’s “deep” aspects is that it leaves it to the viewer – and I am choking on the cliché here – to fill in the blanks. In other words, A Taste of Cherry is a kind of cinematic “do-it-yourself” kit. I wonder if it would render the film even “deeper” if it consisted merely of a screen with the words “Suicide ‘n stuff: what do you think?” on it. Alas, these so-called blanks, the filling of which is to be delegated to the viewer, can only be so vast. Ambiguity is a very useful tool in drama, but it should not be an end in itself. To state otherwise would compel the inference that the movie means something precisely because it says nothing (or little) – and that, of course, would be utter nonsense.

There is, as I mentioned, no character development to speak of. All characters except Badii’s are cameos, and Badii himself reveals nothing of substance. The frustration expressed by certain viewers over not knowing the cause of Badii’s decision seems shallow at first glance, but in fact, it is symptomatic of a very real flaw in the film: Kiarostami’s deliberate distancing of the characters from the viewer (which culminates in the ending). I understand that by effacing his protagonist, and thereby precluding the traditional bond between him and the viewer, Kiarostami is defying some long-standing dramatic conventions. What I can't understand is why. Short of characterizing A Taste of Cherry as a self-important experiment in being different for its own sake, I cannot fathom the answer; and, based on what I read about the film, I don't think anyone else can, either. None of this means that a good piece of drama should be a manipulative tearjerker, but the director must give the viewer something to emphasize with. The ability to identify with the character by way of some recognizable experiences or fears of life is still essential to catharsis. We cannot understand complete strangers; such “blanks” cannot be filled except with our own contrivances.

I saw another movie written by Kiarostami (but directed by Jafar Panahi), Crimson Gold. Although it also had little by way of a plot or suspense, it featured a nuanced portrayal of the characters and a rich, affecting mise-en-scène, which served as a powerful testimony to the daily lives of different groups in Tehran: its rich, its poor, its women, its rebellious teenagers. There are occasional flashes of similar greatness in A Taste of Cherry. It is curious, for example, that Badii, who has come to care so little about life as to resolve to kill himself, nevertheless goes to great lengths to find someone to bury him; in other words, that he still cares about what happens to his body. In a dusty area peppered with construction sites, he digs his own grave under a lone tree – perhaps to remember the spot, but also possibly in order to rest in a place a little more peaceful than its surroundings. Being evidently affluent, he searches for a helper in a remote neighborhood populated by poor workers and immigrants, where he is not known – which indicates that he is still concerned about his reputation (though, granted, I don’t know if Iran imposes punishment on intended suicides). In fact, much of what Badii does – his obsessive search for someone to bury his body, his refusal to talk about himself, his insistence on anonymity – betrays a strong sense of shame, which may be some indication as to the reasons behind Badii’s desire to kill himself. Consequently, Baghiri's monologue about the small everyday joys of living is not necessarily random insight, but may represent an appeal to this, Badii’s continued preoccupation with life’s minor details – that is, the mulberry story is not the ultimate argument against suicide in general, but one most likely to push Badii’s buttons and finally convince him to live.

The dirt roads criss-crossing each other clearly represent life’s choices, but no matter which way Badii turns, it is always the same ugly sand dunes everywhere, meaning – the futility of choice?

The choice of music at the end of the film is also interesting. I don’t know how many viewers in Iran are familiar with the lyrics to “St. James Infirmary”, and especially the older, longer version, predating Louis Armstrong. In the movie, it is performed only instrumentally. Of course, with so many proverbial “blanks” to fill, practically anything is an overinterpretation, but the coincidence is nevertheless uncanny. In the song, a man reports to his drinking buddies that his beloved is dead; then he proceeds to plan, rather elaborately, his own funeral, not hers, suggesting that the death of his mistress is also his death (unless, of course, the mistress-in-the-morgue, "so sweet, so cold, so fair", is Death). Building on the old mystical notion that the death of one represents the death of all, Badii’s suicide reflects, perhaps, the symbolic demise of everyone with whom he comes in contact.

Alas, these are minor intriguing vignettes in a film which is otherwise quite dull. I appreciate the fact that Kiarostami tackled a controversial subject while working in the clutches of an oppressive regime, but the film’s political value is insufficient to compensate for its artistic shortcomings. When all its merits and flaws are weighed, it comes up barely average.

A Taste of Cherry is not without intelligence, but it lacks vision and creativity. Overall, it is a slipshod vehicle for delivering Kiarostami’s superficial musings. I had expected much better.