Gosto de Cereja

If you are offended because you think they are the best thing in the world, let me assure you, this was not meant to offend you. It is about the international title the movie has received and one of the things that came up in the movie (dialog wise). Now I'm not sure if that was scripted, but very likely it wasn't.

At least not in the traditional sense. If you watch the behind the scenes and making of stuff, you'll know that the movie had a premise and pretty much everything else was "improvised" or taken from rehearsals and conversations with real people. Driving around trying to cast someone ... it's almost meta considering what the movie is about. And then the political background in Iran and what filmmakers were allowed and not allowed to do ... there are quite a few layers here ... which you either acknowledge and take into account or dismiss and just view this is as annoying/boring. Which is a fair thing to say if you feel that way.

It is also fair for others to feel this is a masterpiece and the best thing to happen to movies since ... ok that may be an exaggeration. Still the somber and low key attitude of our main character/actor and what he tries to achieve on his (last?) journey is quite something ... the pacing is as slow as you'd expect it ... and as with many low budget films of this nature you are able to interpret many things into the story and the actions of the characters ... or not.

This is a little more interesting when you know that most of it was improvised with Kiarostami sitting in the driver's seat talking to the other actors. But like most purely improvised films, there's a rather low ratio of insights to the amount of screen time spent struggling to come up with something interesting. (Actually, only one of the characters really manages to be interesting at all.) Likewise, some of the shots of Mr. Badii driving around aimlessly have a certain Antonioniesque hypnotic effect, but most of them look no more interesting than random video you might have shot yourself in the industrial part of town.

There are critics who call this kind of untouched-by-art realism genius, who say that Kiarostami is making us think, reconsider the very nature of cinema, and so on. To my mind, the message of the film-- the taste of cherry makes life worth living-- is no more or less profound than, say, Woody Allen rattling off a few of the things that make life worth living in Manhattan, or the epiphany the kid in American Beauty gets from a plastic bag. (Likewise the message that it's all only a movie. Never woulda guessed.) And critics who find such a message shallow in a piece of slick entertainment, but deep when it's in a deliberately unentertaining art film, need to reexamine their critical principles, or lighten up a little-- or at least go see again the work of real art Kiarostami alludes to in his title, Wild Strawberries, which has more depth of characterization and emotional richness in any five minutes than this manages to scrounge up in an hour and a half.

My first taste of Kiarostami, whom I've read about for years. I was

worried that, as a filmmaker, Kiarostami would be as inaccessible

as Godard in the 80s. I was pleasantly surprised by A TASTE OF

CHERRY. It's a linear narrative, and the film's early ambiguity

concerning the driver's quest kept me guessing (I knew nothing

about this film going in, which was a real plus). The film's unusual

visual style, particularly the long unedited takes, works surprisingly

well for this type of story. I can understand why traditional

American filmgoers would be bored to tears by A TASTE OF

CHERRY, but for fans of independent and foreign film, it's a

worthwhile investment of your time. It probably works better with

an older audience that can identify with the world-weary

characters.

I watched the Criterion DVD a few days ago and I thought this film was incredible. It's amazing to me that such an incredible film could be made without the use of tracking shots, multiple camera angles, tilts, pans, and all the other camera techniques that most countries use in their films.

Iran has a very young film industry that doesn't have the money or resources that many other film industries have. For what the Iranian film industry has at its disposal, this film is an exceptional achievement!

This film is a great example of how the expression of human beings' feelings and ideas cannot be held back by censorship. Kudos to Kiarostami for creating a very heartfelt commentary on the effects of oppression on the human soul.

This is film at its simplest: pure cinema. And then he pulls out the rug from underneath you. The director removes the event from the film, in doing so calls attention not to what the protagonist's action will be, but rather the reason for the action. Nor does he make the reason specific, though the concerns are human, universal, which transcends the specific. Foremost this film is about cinema, cinema and the what it means to be, to exist.