List Price: $29.95You Pay Only: $26.99 You Save: $2.96 (10%)Prices subject to change.
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Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1
Audience Rating: Unrated
Binding: DVD
EAN: 9786305362685
Format: Color, DVD-Video, Letterboxed, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
ISBN: 6305362688
Label: Criterion
Manufacturer: Criterion
Number Of Items: 1
Picture Format: Letterbox
Publisher: Criterion
Region Code: 1
Release Date: June 08, 1999
Running Time: 95 minutes
Sales Rank: 16244
Studio: Criterion
Theatrical Release Date: January 30, 1998
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Editorial Review:
Description:
Winner of the Palme d'Or at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival, Iranian auteur Abbas Kiarostami's Taste of Cherry is an emotionally complex meditation on life and death. Middle-aged Mr. Badii (Homayoun Ershadi) drives through the hilly outskirts of Tehran-searching for someone to rescue or bury him. Criterion is proud to present the DVD premiere of Taste of Cherry in a beautiful widescreen transfer.
Amazon.com:
Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami won the Palme d'Or at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival for this contemplative film about a Muslim, Mr. Badi (Homayon Ershadi), who drives around the barren hills outside Tehran, flagging down passersby and offering good money for a simple job that he's hesitant to explain. He's planning his suicide and seeks someone to perform something of a symbolic eulogy. Most of his subjects refuse (personal morality aside, suicide is forbidden to Muslims), but he finds an elderly taxidermist (Abdolrahman Bagheri) who agrees only because he needs the money for an ill child. Yet the old man gently pleads with him to choose life, to embrace the joys of earthly existence, to remember the taste of cherries. Though initially greeted with critical acclaim, A Taste of Cherry received poor distribution in the U.S. The meandering, deliberately paced drama is composed of long conversations and long silences, and the camera is locked in the car for entire sequences, staring at the protagonists in still closeups with the dusty landscape rolling past the windows of the Land Rover in the background. Kiarostami's film is not for everyone, but if you can embrace the quiet power and grace of his deceptively simple style, the film becomes a remarkably rich celebration of human dignity and resilience. By the astonishing conclusion we can see past Badi's age-etched face to the soul peering out from behind his sad eyes. --Sean Axmaker
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating: - Good
There is the old, and often neglected, nostrum about `gilding the lily.' I was reminded of this watching Abbas Kiarostami's acclaimed 1997 film Taste Of Cherry (Ta'm E Guilass), co-winner of the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, for while it comes close to being a great film for the bulk of its running time of 99 minutes (not the oft-claimed 95 minutes), its much discussed ending, of breaking the fourth wall (ala Ingmar Bergman, circa the 1960s) to reveal what has just been witnessed is all a film, is one of the worst endings for a film of quality I've seen; perhaps even worse than the tacked on uplifting ending to Akira Kurosawa's otherwise stellar Rashomon. The basic problem with the ending is that, unlike in Bergman's run of self-conscious films (Persona, Hour Of The Wolf, Shame), the big `revelation' that the film is a film comes after we've sat through it; assuming that even such a fourth wall braking could surprise one in these times. Even worse is that it undermines the penultimate scene, which is a better- if not great ending, but one which would arguably qualify Taste Of Cherry as a great film overall. And it is an all Kiarostami film, good or bad, as he produced, wrote, and edited, as well as directed it.
Critics, pro and con, have prattled on about Kiarostami's meaning or intent, in regard to the videotaped, not filmed, ending of verdant hills (contrasting with the rest of the film's ruddy barren rock landscapes), but always seem to miss the result, which is that it emotionally ... Read More
Rating:  - A unique piece of cinema...beautifully filmed, one of Kiarostami's (and Iranian cinema's) best films....
This was my introduction to Iranian cinema, and it's a fine introduction. This film is one of Abbas Kiarostami's best films, and the first film from Iran to win the Palme d'Or at Cannes. It's a hypnotic, fascinating, and intelligent film, which deals with many complex issues. The film concerns itself with a man driving around Tehran looking for somebody either to kill him or rescue him. It's really striking the way Kiarostami films things, as there is much driving, many long takes (which are all beautifully filmed), and sometimes Kiarostami lets his camera linger on one of the characters of the shot while never showing the other character. There is a long conversation at a construction site with the watchman of the site, and during a 2 1/2 minute unbroken take, you only see the main character while listening to the other character. These directorial decisions never feel forced, but very natural and beautiful. The cinematography (and terrain) around Tehran is visually stunning, and the performances are top notch here. The film is also very ambiguous, and never really provides a solid conclusion. This is one of Kiarostami's finest achievements (even though I like The Wind Will Carry Us more than this film), and it's a great introduction to the poetic, deeply artistic Iranian cinema.
Rating: - Lives up to the hype.
A Taste of Cherry (Abbas Kiarostami, 1997)
Given everything I've read about Abbas Kiarostami's methods of filmmaking, I had come to the (obviously, in hindsight) erroneous conclusion that A Taste of Cherry was going to put me in mind of Bela Tarr or the French New Wave; that is certainly not the case. If any of you who obsessively read film criticism have been staying away from Kiarostami because it sounds, when people talk about his stuff, like it's not really about anything, let me lay that specter to rest right now. A Taste of Cherry is most definitely about something.
Mr. Badii (Homayoun Ershadi) is the central character, and for the first twenty minutes or so of the movie, we follow him around while he tries to get someone to do something for him. We don't know what, and the dialogue cleverly conceals it-- is Badii a homosexual looking for a tryst? (Given the ubiquity of this interpretation, I'm assuming that was Kiarostami's intention.) Eventually, however, we find out (and this isn't a spoiler, as it's in the box copy) Mr. Badii wants to kill himself, and he's looking for someone to come make sure he's done the job properly the next morning. We keep following him, but now the film has taken on an entirely new quality, given that we know what he's after; the other ends of the conversations suddenly make a great deal more sense.
I'm not familiar enough with Iranian culture to grasp the cultural allegories I'm sure run through this movie, but that doesn't stop ... Read More
Rating:  - There are good foreign films....and then there is Taste of Cherry
Kiarostami's "Taste of Cherry" has definite potential as a moral drama, but in the end this is a film which, even to one accustomed to slow-paced foreign films, bored me to no ends.
There was absolutely no character development in the entire 95 minutes. We learn not one thing about why he wants to take his life, or why life has no meaning to him. I am not a film expert by any means, but in a movie which spends every minute highlighting someone looking to commit suicide, wouldn't the reasons behind such despair be a critical component? In this film they are missing altogether! If I made a film like this for a film class, I am sure I would be given a failing grade for failing to at least cover this aspect of his life in some way. Yet this film won awards at the Cannes film festival! I must be missing something.
And the ending is simply insulting to anyone who sat through this film looking to see what the ultimate outcome of this man's life would in fact be. I suppose the Cannes film dilettantes thought it was clever. I merely found it to be an easy way to end a film without really tying up the loose ends and answering questions I am sure all viewers had.
Pretentious has been a word used by many reviewers here regarding this film, and I don't think I have ever seen a word more aptly used.
Avoid this film; or if you must see it, rent it before shelling out the current ridiculous price of $26. Trust me- You will be thanking me later.
Rating: - A Taste of Cherry
Kiarostami's obliquely moral tale about a seemingly average man who, for some unknown reason, wishes to end his life- plays out a huge taboo in Muslim society. Using a unique mix of long exterior shots showing Badii's car snaking through the hills, trolling for a passenger who will assist him, and more intimate point-of-view shots from within the vehicle, Kiarostami's film subtly coaxes us to consider the divide between inner life and the outer world of societal constraints. "Cherry" is also a strong meditation on the meaning of life, enhanced by the appearance of a Turkish taxidermist (Bagheri) who, fighting his own self-interest, challenges Badii to reconsider. An enigmatic yet cumulatively powerful film from Iran's preeminent director.
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