Taste of Cherry

Mr. Badii, a middle-aged man with a weary expression, drives his Range Rover through the arid, hilly construction sites surrounding Tehran. He is on a grim quest: to find someone who will agree to a specific job for a high price. He has dug a hole in the ground and intends to commit suicide by taking sleeping pills that night. His request is simple yet horrifying: the person must go to the hole the next morning, call his name, and if he doesn't answer, shovel earth over his body.

Over the course of the film, Badii picks up three passengers from different backgrounds: a young Kurdish soldier, an Afghan seminarist, and an elderly Azeri taxidermist. The first two are frightened or morally opposed to the task, reacting with fear and religious objection. However, the third passenger, Mr. Bagheri, agrees to the job out of financial necessity but uses the drive to share a personal story about how the simple taste of mulberries once saved him from his own suicide attempt, offering Badii a new perspective on the beauty of existence.

The Affirmation of Life Through Death

Taste of Cherry is not a film about the despair of suicide, but rather a contemplation on the choice to live. Kiarostami removes the why of Badii's suicide to focus entirely on the how of his connection to the world. The film suggests that life's meaning is found not in grand narratives, but in immediate sensory experiences—the color of the sky, the warmth of the sun, and the taste of fruit. By juxtaposing Badii's isolation in his car with the expansive, living world outside, the film argues that the beauty of existence is always present, waiting to be tasted, even at the edge of the grave.

The Dream / Purgatory Theory: Some critics interpret the cyclical driving and the barren landscape as a form of purgatory where Badii is already dead or trapped in a loop, seeking a release he cannot find.

The Political Allegory: The interactions with the soldier, the seminarist, and the taxidermist can be read as a commentary on the institutions of Iran—the Military, Religion, and the secular/pragmatic working class—and their inability or ability to address individual suffering.

The Cinema as Life: The ending suggests that 'Mr. Badii' doesn't die because he is a fictional character; the 'resurrection' is the revelation of the actor. This implies that cinema allows us to rehearse death but ultimately returns us to the vitality of life.

Taste of Cherry is a landmark in world cinema, pivotal in bringing Iranian cinema to the global forefront. Its win of the Palme d'Or at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival (shared with The Eel) solidified Abbas Kiarostami's status as a master of minimal, poetic realism. Culturally, it sparked intense debate within Iran due to its non-judgmental depiction of suicide, a subject strictly taboo in Islamic society. Philosophically, it influenced a generation of filmmakers to explore existentialism through a minimalist lens, proving that high drama could be achieved with a car, two actors, and a conversation. It is cited as a prime example of 'slow cinema' that demands active viewer participation.

Critical Acclaim: The film is widely regarded as a masterpiece of 90s cinema, praised for its humanism, visual poetry, and Kiarostami's direction. It holds high ratings on review aggregators like Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic.

Divisive Elements: The pacing is deliberately slow and repetitive, which alienates some mainstream viewers. The ending is the most controversial aspect; Roger Ebert notoriously gave the film a scathing review (1 star), calling it 'excruciatingly boring' and detesting the fourth-wall break, while other critics hailed the ending as a stroke of genius that reframes the entire narrative.

Verdict: A polarized classic—viewers either find it a life-changing meditation or a tedious exercise in frustration.