Taste of Cherry
BY NICK MARSHALL, GILBERT, USA - Saw TASTE OF CHERRY. An Iranian film, winner of the Palme d'Or in '98. Picked it up on a whim for $4; VHS cover with a Pacino look-a-like, those haunting eyes and somber mouth. Numerous words of congratulatory accomplishments along side four (4) stars and "A Masterpiece" made me think, "How bad can it possibly be?"
A dialogue driven movie, driven being kind of a pun, since almost the whole of the movie takes place in a car. Mr. Badii drives around looking for something or someone. He comes across a man, alone, and asks him to take a ride with him. He'll pay him lots of money to come with him and do something for him. The guy isn't having any of it and threatens Mr. Badii. Mr. Badii searches on. He comes across a young solider, just a boy really, and offers him a ride. Mr. Badii says he's going to take the kid somewhere. The kid becomes nervous. Finally when they reach a top of a mesa, Mr. Badii gets out of the car and tells the boy to get out and look at a hole in the ground. The kid won't get out. Mr. Badii says all the kid has to do is come to this spot tomorrow morning at six and call out "Mr. Badii, Mr. Badii." If there's an answer, help the man out of the hole. If there isn't, fill in the hole with dirt. The kid is nervous and says he won't do it and fed up with the boy's refusal, Mr. Badii gets back in the car. As he gets in the kid bolts, racing down the hill and out of sight.
Skip some and he picks up a Afghani seminarian. The seminarian tries to convince the man not to commit suicide, that it's a sin and against God's will. 
Mr. Badii says if he wanted a sermon he would have picked someone older. The seminarian also is dropped off eventually and Mr. Badii drives off with no one to aid him. He picks up an older man who is a taxidermist and talks about how he too wanted to kill himself once. He told Mr. Badii that he had gone to a mulberry tree one late night to hang himself. He threw the rope over a branch and it didn't get catch. Several attempts to no avail, he climbed the tree and tied the rope tight. While up there he decided to eat one of the mulberries. It was delicious. He ate another. And another. Kids came by and told him to shake the tree so they could eat the berries. He took pocketfuls and returned home to find his wife still asleep and when she woke up they ate mulberries together. Mr. Badii said, "So you ate mulberries and suddenly your life of okay." The taxidermist said no. But it changed his perspective. Something as simple as the taste of a mulberry or a cherry can just change your perspective on things and how things can get better. He finally asks the taxidermist to do his deed the next morning. The taxidermist says he will.
The man goes home, takes a bottle of pills and goes to the grave he dug. He takes the pills and lays down in the grave as a nimbus cloud moves overhead, blocking the moon and hiding as rain casts down and thunder cracks and lightning alighting his calm face. Blackness.
All rather existential. But very interesting. It almost seemed like a life cycle of philosophy in one day. At least the characters and their conversations. The solider, timid about death, unsure of what he believes, curious but afraid of the unknown. The seminarian a little older but still a student. He believes in an afterlife and is purposeful, confident. And the taxidermist, an older man, accepting death as a physical thing. Even dealing with it in his profession.
So, "A masterpiece?” Maybe a little slow for that, but I did keep coming back to it and thinking about it. Waxing philosophical in my head about death and the "big questions." The movie involves more than I've written but that's the general idea of the movie.
So which character am I? At times all of them. They each reside in my brain somewhere, taking turns tearing the megaphone out of each other's hands and yelling their views into my tired head. I just try to absorb all the information I can and try and figure it all out as I go.
It doesn't take too long to figure out that life isn't a bowl of cherries, as the cliche goes. I wish I had some cherries right now.