The taste of the cherry
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The taste of the cherry |
| Original title | Ta'm-e gīlās / Le Goût de la cerise |
| Country of production |
Iran France |
| original language | Persian |
| Publishing year | 1997 |
| length | 99 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 6 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Abbas Kiarostami |
| script | Abbas Kiarostami |
| production | Abbas Kiarostami |
| camera | Homayoun Payvar |
| cut | Abbas Kiarostami |
| occupation | |
| |
The taste of the cherry ( Persian طعم گيلاس, Ta'm-e gīlās ; French Le Goût de la cerise ) is an Iranian - French feature film from 1997 . Director Abbas Kiarostami tells of a middle-aged man who is looking for a person who would help him with his suicide .
action
Mr Badii drives his car through the outskirts of Tehran and asks several seemingly poor people whether they would do a job for him that would bring in a lot of money within a short time and with little effort. Because he is reluctant or not at all to reveal what kind of work it is, because he wants to find out as much as possible about his counterpart and because he is quite intrusive, people are suspicious and some think he wants to pay them for sexual services . Badii wants to take his own life and has dug a grave in a landscape outside the city. However, someone should cover the grave with earth or, if Badii changes his mind, get him out of the grave.
Badii takes three men with him in his car: a Kurdish soldier who runs away from him when he tells him about his work; an Afghan seminarist who refuses to help him out of religious conviction, as well as the Azerbaijani taxidermist Bagheri, who wants to dissuade him from his plan - he says that he abandoned his own suicide attempt when he ate a cherry -, but finally wants to help him because he needs the money for his sick child.
During the night a thunderstorm comes up and Badii drives to his grave, where he lies down.
At the end, film material recorded with a camcorder is shown that shows the staff working on The Taste of the Cherry during the shoot on the now green landscape near Badii's grave.
style
The minimalist film works with longer than average shots, plan sequences , which give it an “extremely slow narrative rhythm” . For example, most of the first 20 minutes consists of a shot of Badii driving a car. This comes back in the course of the film, for example when Badii takes a man in his car again. Equally recurring are long shots of Badii's car driving across the landscape towards his grave.
The main character is not characterized psychologically. Whether she dies and why she wants to die remains unclear. The “soul life of the protagonist” is reflected “exclusively in the barren landscape” , according to the film service .
Publications
The film premiered in May 1997 at the Cannes International Film Festival , where it was screened in the competition section at the last minute due to problems with censorship in its country of production and efforts by French and other Iranian filmmakers. The jury awarded the film together with Shōhei Imamura's The Aal with the Golden Palm .
The Palme d'Or attracted more attention to the film, which resulted in theatrical releases in numerous countries: in France and Italy it was seen over 160,000 and 115,000 times, respectively, in Germany, where it opened on July 16, 1998, it was seen only about 30,000 times.
In 1999 the film was released on DVD in the United States as part of the prestigious Criterion Collection .
reception
The majority of the critics received the film positively, including the film service . The film presupposes “the willingness of the viewer to participate mentally and emotionally” and reflect “people's freedom of choice” as well as “they are vehemently committed to life” .
Occasionally the film was rated extremely negatively, for example by the prominent film critic Roger Ebert , who described it as "unbearably boring" . At the time of the award of the Golden Palm, Andreas Kilb wrote that Kiarostami already had “more exciting” works such as Where is my friend's house? and “more conclusive” like being shot across the olive grove .
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c The taste of the cherry in the lexicon of international films
- ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from October 20, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original from May 16, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ http://lumiere.obs.coe.int/web/film_info/?id=8432
- ^ Film review by Roger Ebert
- ↑ Andreas Kilb: The Torture of the Eye: Report from the 50th Cannes Film Festival . In: Die Zeit , 1997.
Web links
- Taste of Cherry in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Taste of Cherry atRotten Tomatoes(English)