- Actors: Homayoun Ershadi, Abdolrahman Bagheri, Afshin Khorshid Bakhtiari, Safar Ali Moradi, Mir Hossein Noori
- Directors: Abbas Kiarostami
- Writers: Abbas Kiarostami
- Producers: Abbas Kiarostami
- Format: PAL
- Language Farsi
- Subtitles: English
- Region: Region 2 (This DVD may not be viewable outside Europe. Read more about DVD formats.)
- Number of discs: 1
- Classification: PG
- Studio: AV Channel
- DVD Release Date: 19 Dec 2005
- Run Time: 95 minutes
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- ASIN: B000CCUCCW
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 124,834 in Film & TV (See Top 100 in Film & TV)
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Australia released, PAL/Region 0 DVD: LANGUAGES: Farsi ( Dolby Digital 2.0 ), English ( Subtitles ), ANAMORPHIC WIDESCREEN (1.85:1), SPECIAL FEATURES: Interactive Menu, Scene Access, Trailer(s), SYNOPSIS: Co-winner of the Palme d'Or at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival, The Taste of Cherry is the venerable Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami's examination of life, death and the small miracles in between. Homayoun Ershadi stars as Mr. Badii, a middle-aged man wishing to kill himself; driving his Range Rover across the arid outskirts of Tehran, he searches for someone to aid him in his final hours, someone who will agree to bury his body if he succeeds in his mission -- a planned overdose of sleeping pills -- or rescue him if he fails. Offering a large sum of money in exchange for services rendered, he first picks up a Kurdish soldier who ultimately flees in fear upon learning of Badii's plan; the next passenger, an Afghani seminary student, instead attempts to convince him of the sanctity of human life. Finally, Badii picks up a Turkish taxidermist who reluctantly agrees to check the body for signs of life; having long ago contemplated suicide himself, the taxidermist also tries to dissuade Badii from ending it all, accepting the offer only because he needs the money to care for his sick daughter. Kiarostami's refusal to answer the film's two most obvious questions -- exactly why does Mr. Badii wish to end his life, and does he successfully carry out his plan? -- invites viewers to share in his protagonist's plight by triggering their own powers of imagination. SCREENED/AWARDED AT: Cannes Film Festival, ...A Taste of Cherry ( Ta'm e guilass ) ( Le Goût de la cerise )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
The 1998 Palmed or winner at Cannes is a philosophical treatise about mortality and a cinematic discussion about the role of politics and religion in everyday life by a very enlightened mind called ABBAS KIAROSTAMI ,a righteously celebrated cinematic magician who weaves wisdom out of vast empty frames of the iranian vistas in the suburban dusty hills of Teheran .
We proceed on a cruise in a Range Rover in the arid sinister suburbs of Teheran with BIDAI [ARSHADI ],He is intent on recruiting an accomplice who can help him commit suicide which he wants to label as an unintentional death to escape his own responsibility in the moral dilemma .
The idea is menacing and ingenious and it forms the crux of his conversations with the three men he picks up as he cruises around his future grave and propositions them with a tempting fiscal offer to be an accomplice .
The Islamic ideology of suicide being totally forbidden is discussed here in context to what rights does a human being possess,if your ego is not satisfied with your existence itself then what justification arises for juxtaposing a wasted negative existence over the rest of humanity .
Abbas has dealt with the crucial universal eternal dilemma and theosophical discussion immaculately as he throws his three protagonists into an abyss filled with dusty roads and earthen mountains being metaphorically shifted by huge man made cranes -the three other characters who constitute the would be accomplices are picked randomly from the fringes of a suffering social milieu where humanity is both absolved of its sins and yet the spirit is redeemed in its glory of painful existence .
The ideology as to whatever the torment and turmoil ,the human existence is not an easy disposition and everyone has their share of the burden to carry so does a man possess the right to ask help in an act of self.
The rest needs to be seen as Abbas has evolved a beautiful conclusion to his most intelligible debate about the human condition .
The movie is not a moral monologue or a parade of individuals to judge humanity but a discussion about human rights and the rights of the divine existence as defined by Islam .
I have never seen such a celestially ethereal celebration of divinity as established by Islam with respect to the rights of an individual and his relationship with faith itself .
Abbas has shot this in an earthy ,diffuse light in an obscure landscape with scant vegetation and a vast construction site where bulldozers shift piles of earth in metaphorical existentialism and also the idea is borne out that everything we have comes from the earth and goes back to IT.
We proceed on a cruise in a Range Rover in the arid sinister suburbs of Teheran with BIDAI [ARSHADI ],He is intent on recruiting an accomplice who can help him commit suicide which he wants to label as an unintentional death to escape his own responsibility in the moral dilemma .
The idea is menacing and ingenious and it forms the crux of his conversations with the three men he picks up as he cruises around his future grave and propositions them with a tempting fiscal offer to be an accomplice .
The Islamic ideology of suicide being totally forbidden is discussed here in context to what rights does a human being possess,if your ego is not satisfied with your existence itself then what justification arises for juxtaposing a wasted negative existence over the rest of humanity .
Abbas has dealt with the crucial universal eternal dilemma and theosophical discussion immaculately as he throws his three protagonists into an abyss filled with dusty roads and earthen mountains being metaphorically shifted by huge man made cranes -the three other characters who constitute the would be accomplices are picked randomly from the fringes of a suffering social milieu where humanity is both absolved of its sins and yet the spirit is redeemed in its glory of painful existence .
The ideology as to whatever the torment and turmoil ,the human existence is not an easy disposition and everyone has their share of the burden to carry so does a man possess the right to ask help in an act of self.
The rest needs to be seen as Abbas has evolved a beautiful conclusion to his most intelligible debate about the human condition .
The movie is not a moral monologue or a parade of individuals to judge humanity but a discussion about human rights and the rights of the divine existence as defined by Islam .
I have never seen such a celestially ethereal celebration of divinity as established by Islam with respect to the rights of an individual and his relationship with faith itself .
Abbas has shot this in an earthy ,diffuse light in an obscure landscape with scant vegetation and a vast construction site where bulldozers shift piles of earth in metaphorical existentialism and also the idea is borne out that everything we have comes from the earth and goes back to IT.
2 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:VHS Tape
This is film at its simplest: pure cinema. And then he pulls out the rug from underneath you. The director removes the event from the film, in doing so calls attention not to what the protagonist's action will be, but rather the reason for the action. Nor does he make the reason specific, though the concerns are human, universal, which transcends the specific. Foremost this film is about cinema, cinema and the what it means to be, to exist.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
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63 reviews
42 of 46 people found the following review helpful
A taste to be savored
14 Feb 2000
If you're going to make a film which largely consists of a man driving his Range Rover along dusty Iranian roads, soliciting various men for their assistance, you'd sure better make an engaging film. For the philosophically inclined, Abbas Kiarostami has done just that.
Though most of the film takes place on a few dirt roads over-looking Tehran, you could still see it as a road movie, albeit a sophisticated, intellectually engaging one.
Homayon Ershadi plays Badii, the driver of the Range Rover, as a strong yet depleted man, a man with resignation etched into his face in every frame. Mr. Badii is trying to find someone to help him with his suicide. The job is simple: come to cover his body if he's successful; rescue him if he is not. He's willing to give a tremendous amount of money for only a little work. Each man he picks up reacts to his offer in a different way--each of them conveys the belief that Badii's taking his own life would be wrong, but each of them gives different a reason for his inability to help. The only man willing to help Badii is another who once attempted suicide. Even he tries to convince him to remain, to remember the taste of cherry.
The end of the movie has been misunderstood by some reviewers; it's not a trick, the movie is not a sham. The ending simply provides a jolting coda, reminding us that no matter how barren life may seem, there is a reality uncolored by emotion and mental disease, and in that reality there are others leading joyful lives.
Not only has Kiarostami given us food for thought, he reveals gritty, dusty Tehran to be a city of haunting golden beauty. Another filmaker would have taken us to Eden to prove his point, but Kiarostami shows us there is beauty wherever you are, even in a land seemingly drained of color and steeped in binding tradition.
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Life! what's it worth?
12 Jan 2000
Format:DVD
Is life worth anything? Perhaps this is one of the main questions going through the head of the main actor through out this film. The films first setting carries on for about 10-15 minutes leaving the viewer confused. It's not until half way through the movie that one realizes what the plot is about. Boring? no, but perhaps different and keeping you interested by making you more confused :)
The movie is slow paced but will have you sigh a big "wow" at the end and make you realize why they took it so slow. It will also leave you with questions that only you can asnwer for your self and not a buddy who was watching it with you. Lastely It will make you think twice about the gift of life and how we engorge ourselves in the big picture and overlook the small details.
So take a deep breath and be prepared to think of the unthinkable :)
The movie is slow paced but will have you sigh a big "wow" at the end and make you realize why they took it so slow. It will also leave you with questions that only you can asnwer for your self and not a buddy who was watching it with you. Lastely It will make you think twice about the gift of life and how we engorge ourselves in the big picture and overlook the small details.
So take a deep breath and be prepared to think of the unthinkable :)
13 of 15 people found the following review helpful
The taste of life... the taste of cherry
22 Dec 2000
Format:DVD
A man drives throughout the slums of Tehran, trying to find a man that agrees to burry him, after his suicide. This is the starting point of this rare movie gem, a masterpiece of auteur cinema and a profound reflection on the Human nature. As a moviemaker, Abbas Kiarostami is well regarded in Europe as one of the great directors from the asian continent, together with the great japanese directors and the indian Satyajit Ray. The Palme D'Or that he received in the Cannes Film Festival is a proof of the profound recongnizement that the europeans have for him. It looks like that in the USA, the first contact with this outstanding moviemaker is becoming rather frutuous,demonstrating that auteur cinema is appreciated everywhere. Without a great budget, Kiarostami managed to create a work that emerges directly from the depths of our soul, placing the problem of suicide before different persons of different religions and cultural roots. The rather harsh atmosphere of the movie, together with the magnificent performance of Homayon Ershadi, the main actor, make this a memmorable work, a piece of fine tapestry in the world of modern filmaking. I can only find simmilarities with Kiarostami, in the works of greek directos Theo Angelopoulos, specialy in his masterpiece "Eternity and a day", both directors that create portrayals of the human soul, their specificities, conflicts and problems.
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