Hello everyone, thanks for joining me this week! I decided to watch Ta'm e Guilass (Taste of Cherry) by Abbas Kiarostami for this post. I've been waiting to explore Kiarostami's works for a while now, and I'm so glad to start this journey with this movie. Let's give a little background about the film and explore the characters more in-depth. I hope you'll enjoy reading the post!
Ta'm e Guilass is Kiarostami's one of the most successful features ever. It received recognition at the Cannes Film Festival in 1997 and won the grand prize (shared with another film called The Eel) at the end of the festival. The film is about an Iranian man's search for someone who will bury him under a cherry tree after he commits suicide. We follow him throughout his journey as he meets with various people and tries to convince them to do this extraordinary favor to him.
Reading about the making of this film, I encountered one fact that surprised me a lot. It was about that Kiarostami shot each of his actors separately with him either sitting in the driver's or passenger's seat. Then he would instigate conversations and film the responses, so that none of the actors were in the same scene during the shooting. It surprised me a lot because the flow of the conversations seemed very natural to me. I believe using non-actors and no script also helped him to capture this level of naturalism. There are a lot of other interesting facts about this movie as Kiarostami is not a filmmaker that pursues the traditional way. In one of his interviews, he talks about the making of the scene with the soldier in it (who also wasn't a real actor). The soldier had no idea that they were filming the movie while he was having a conversation with Kiarostami. Therefore, every reaction we see on the soldier's face is real, which improves the movie's naturalism.
Let's talk about a few characters of this film. I'd like to start with the character Seminarian, the second passenger our main character (Badii) invites to his car and offers his request. The Seminarian is a religious character, we learn that he studied Theology at university and continued his studies in this direction. The thing I liked about this character was that he didn't lash out (like I expected) to Badii when he heard his request. No matter how awful of a sin it is to commit suicide in Islam, The Seminarian presented his arguments to Badii without giving an extreme reaction. We don't know why Badii chose to ask The Seminarian for this favor because it is almost certain that no religious man would help a person to commit suicide. This brings the question, did Badii really wanted to commit suicide? Why did he ever want to take his own life in the first place? These questions don't get answered in Ta'm e Guilass, but it's better in a way that it urges people to discuss these and keep the film alive.
Let's move forward to our main character, Badii. We know very little about him, but since the story he's telling is familiar to many people, we could connect with this character and understand at least a little bit of what he's going through. As I said before, we don't know what caused Badii to want to commit suicide, all we know about him is that he is wealthy and most probably lonely. One thing I realized was that he's unsure whether to commit suicide. This can be observed with the people he asks favor from. For example, the first one was a shy and kind soldier that would clearly hesitate to kill a person (not technically killing but helping in a way), the second was a religious man that would never accept a person to take his own life, and the third one was a, well, we'll get to him later on. Looking at these characters, we can comment that Badii wasn't determined to take his own life, because if he was then he could just hire one of those laborers we see all throughout the movie. What Badii needed was a reminder of the small pleasures one can get from this life, and he soon got that reminder in the form of Mr. Bagheri later in the movie.
Finally, let's talk about Mr. Bagheri, the only character that agrees to "help" Badii with his wish. Mr. Bagheri is different from the other passengers because he too tried to commit suicide but failed to do so earlier in his life. Mr. Bagheri gives this meaningful monologue to discourage Badii from taking his own life. He says: "No mother can do as much for their children as God does for His creatures. You want to refuse all that? You want to give it all up? You want to give up the taste of cherries? [2]" My favorite character was Mr. Bagheri because I thought he was exactly what Badii needed in his life: a simple reminder of how beautiful life can be.
At the end of the film, we don't know whether Badii killed himself or not, it's up to the audience's imagination. In my opinion, he didn't kill himself, he laid in the hole he dug and fell asleep to the sound of rain. The ending of the movie was controversial among film critics and I enjoyed reading different opinions about it. There was this one article that I highly recommend, it argues that the film's theme was never about the contrast between life and death but about them dissolving into one another. It was a very interesting point of view and I encourage you to read it.
Reaching the end of this post, I'm giving this movie its 8 out of 10. I only wished I could learn more about Badii's background, but the emotions he could transmit to the viewer were brilliant nonetheless. I'd like to thank you for reading this far, and please don't forget to check out my Instagram, Twitter, and Tumblr, all with the same nickname moviesatdawn. You can also comment down below to let me know what you think or send me an email at: moviesatdawn@gmail.com. Thank you again for joining this week and see you later in another post!
MR. BADII: It wouldn't help you to know and I can't talk about it and you wouldn't understand. It's not because you don't understand but you can't feel what I feel. You can sympathize, understand, show commpassion. But feel my pain? No. You suffer and so do I. I understand you. You comprehend my pain, but you can't feel it.
Next post: Atlantique (2019) dir. Mati Diop
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