Product Details

• Actors: Homayoun Ershadi, Abdolrahman Bagheri, Afshin Khorshid Bakhtiari, Safar Ali Moradi, Mir Hossein Noori
• Directors: Abbas Kiarostami
• Writers: Abbas Kiarostami
• Producers: Abbas Kiarostami
• Format: Color, DVD, Letterboxed, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: Persian (Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono)
• Subtitles: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: Unrated
• Studio: Criterion
• DVD Release Date: June 8, 1999
• Run Time: 95 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (63 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6305362688
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #70,830 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "Taste of Cherry (The Criterion Collection)" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

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

Product 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.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

42 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A taste to be savored, February 13, 2000

By 

Robert Stribley (NY, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Taste of Cherry [VHS] (VHS Tape)

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 over-looking 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.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Life! what's it worth?, January 11, 2000

By 

Ashegam (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Taste of Cherry (The Criterion Collection) (DVD)

Is life worth anything? Perhaps this is one of the main questions going through the head of the main actor through out this film. The films first setting carries on for about 10-15 minutes leaving the viewer confused. It's not until half way through the movie that one realizes what the plot is about. Boring? no, but perhaps different and keeping you interested by making you more confused :)
The movie is slow paced but will have you sigh a big "wow" at the end and make you realize why they took it so slow. It will also leave you with questions that only you can asnwer for your self and not a buddy who was watching it with you. Lastely It will make you think twice about the gift of life and how we engorge ourselves in the big picture and overlook the small details.
So take a deep breath and be prepared to think of the unthinkable :)

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The taste of life... the taste of cherry, December 22, 2000

By 

Carlos Figueiredo (Santa Comba Dão, Portugal) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Taste of Cherry (The Criterion Collection) (DVD)

A man drives throughout the slums of Tehran, trying to find a man that agrees to burry him, after his suicide. This is the starting point of this rare movie gem, a masterpiece of auteur cinema and a profound reflection on the Human nature. As a moviemaker, Abbas Kiarostami is well regarded in Europe as one of the great directors from the asian continent, together with the great japanese directors and the indian Satyajit Ray. The Palme D'Or that he received in the Cannes Film Festival is a proof of the profound recongnizement that the europeans have for him. It looks like that in the USA, the first contact with this outstanding moviemaker is becoming rather frutuous,demonstrating that auteur cinema is appreciated everywhere. Without a great budget, Kiarostami managed to create a work that emerges directly from the depths of our soul, placing the problem of suicide before different persons of different religions and cultural roots. The rather harsh atmosphere of the movie, together with the magnificent performance of Homayon Ershadi, the main actor, make this a memmorable work, a piece of fine tapestry in the world of modern filmaking. I can only find simmilarities with Kiarostami, in the works of greek directos Theo Angelopoulos, specialy in his masterpiece "Eternity and a day", both directors that create portrayals of the human soul, their specificities, conflicts and problems.