A
Taste To Be Savored, February 13, 2000
If you're going to make a film
which largely consists of a man driving his Range Rover along
dusty Iranian roads, soliciting various men for their assistance,
you'd sure better make an engaging film. For the philosophically
inclined, Abbas Kiarostami has done just that. Though most of
the film takes place on a few dirt roads overlooking Tehran, you
could still see it as a road movie, albeit a sophisticated, intellectually
engaging one.
Homayon Ershadi plays Badii, the
driver of the Range Rover, as a strong yet depleted man, a man
with resignation etched into his face in every frame. Mr. Badii
is trying to find someone to help him with his suicide. The job
is simple: come to cover his body if he's successful; rescue him
if he is not. He's willing to give a tremendous amount of money
for only a little work. Each man he picks up reacts to his offer
in a different way--each of them conveys the belief that Badii's
taking his own life would be wrong, but each of them gives different
a reason for his inability to help. The only man willing to help
Badii is another who once attempted suicide. Even he tries to
convince him to remain, to remember the taste of cherry.
The end of the movie has been misunderstood
by some reviewers; it's not a trick, the movie is not a sham.
The ending simply provides a jolting coda, reminding us that no
matter how barren life may seem, there is a reality uncolored
by emotion and mental disease, and in that reality there are others
leading joyful lives.
Not only has Kiarostami given us
food for thought, he reveals gritty, dusty Tehran to be a city
of haunting golden beauty. Another filmaker would have taken us
to Eden to prove his point, but Kiarostami shows us there is beauty
wherever you are, even in a land seemingly drained of color and
steeped in binding tradition.
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