A man in his car drives through an ochre, dry and dusty city somewhere in Iran. His gaze scrutinizes passers-by, looking for someone or something. Great stripping to evoke the theme of death and suicide among the Iranian people.
The earth is yellow, the grass is yellow, the trees are yellow, the dust is yellow. The Taste of Cherry, by Abbas Kiarostami, is a yellow film. We knew from the Misfits, by John Huston, that despair was on Marilyn, in a white dress printed with black cherries. Today despair plays on all the nuances of yellow to the one of the Golden palm.
Not that The
Taste of Cherry is a "difficult" film; on the contrary, it is crystal
clear. A handsome man in his forties, who we know nothing about other than that
he can afford a Range Rover, prowls between construction sites, in the middle
of diggers and scree, in search of a volunteer for the next morning 6 am. It
offers 200,000 tomans, for two simple things. First, go to a certain valley
where he dug a pit. It will be extended there. Second, we should call him by
name: Mr. Badii, Thrice. If he answers, we will help him out of his pit. If he
does not respond, we will be kind enough to throw a few shovels of earth onto
his body.
In brief, it
seems that this man is considering a suicide with confidence but intends that
certain rites are respected. It is not innocent that Mr. Badii asked for a few
shovels in a place where bulldozers stir up tons of soil. It offers the market
to a soldier (young and Kurdish), to a seminarian (Afghan, Islamist and
bearded), to a taxidermist (Turkish, therefore mustachioed). One flees, the
second condemns this suicide in the name of religion, the third, who holds in
his satchel many corpses of quail and partridge intended for the stuffing,
accepts while praising to Mr. Badii the beauties of life and flavor of fruit. With
a sadness less feigned than his temper.
And the
spectator? He is intrigued. Why does Mr. Badii want to die? We will ignore it
until the end, and that's fine. Very well, this decision taken to end it and
which we would describe as obstinate hesitation. He also admires. The beauty of
Kiarostami's images. His cracked and yellowed Iran. The loneliness of the hero
in his car which serves as a hermitage on wheels. Frames that never show Mr.
Badii with his interlocutor, even during conversations (beyond the dialogue).
Mr. Badii is always more than alone, isolated. And this roaming and wandering
isolation (doesn't the car turn in circles in this building site without limits
or landmarks?) Creates a sweet spell.
While
developing an unprecedented cinematographic grammar, Kiarostami films the end
of the day both as chronic depression and a renewed epiphany. He makes the
question of suicide legitimate and at the end of the confrontations of points
of view, breaks away from his character to return, in an unexpected epilogue,
to a homage to the draft, to the attempt. In the green paradise of a shaky
video image, the filmmaker and his team appear in scouting, flashbacks to the
creation process, the only sequence accompanied by additional music. It is with
the breath of Louis Armstrong that the Iranian master confides to us his
position: it is worth a try.
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