TASTE OF CHERRY (75)

Directed by: Abbas Kiarostami

Starring: Homayon Ershadi, Abdolrahman Bageri, Afshin Khorshid Bakhtiari

The Pitch: A man roams the outskirts of Tehran, looking for someone to help him kill himself.

Theo Sez: Strange how most of the acclaimed arthouse films nowadays seem to be based around stillness (an aesthetic choice, or just a reaction to the clamour of Hollywood?) ; much of the power in this prizewinner seems derived, quite consciously, from stasis, things unshown or unspoken, and even the sound feels muffled and distant, as if the action were behind a wall somewhere (the result, presumably, of recording with a single fixed mike). The implication somehow is that what's being invoked (or at least evoked) is the stillness at the centre of the universe, the great hidden Oneness underlying everything we see - and of course simplifying it, reducing it all to different parts of the same cosmic whole. Simplicity is at the heart of the film, both in form and content - both in Kiarostami's neo-neo-realist style and in his story of a man who wants (as implied by the recurring shots of barren hillsides and churning earth) to return, quite literally, to the soil, to leave his life behind and become one with something both greater and less complicated, less individual (why he's doing it is unknown and irrelevant - what he's running from isn't important, only what he's running to). It's tempting to make the analogy with film critics running from the ceaseless, exasperating life of Hollywood movies to the sere simplicity of Kiarostami's eternal verities, but it would be misleading - and not just because it suggests a kind of cinematic suicide : admittedly the diffidence is a little overdone here (you miss the complex reality-and-illusion games of CLOSE-UP and the trilogy), but it would be wrong to see the film as siding with its hero, or endorsing a withdrawal from Life. It's actually a superb balancing-act, setting out a (rather crude) life-affirming message - all the "taste of cherries" stuff - while also admitting, in its every serene moment and unadorned frame, the terrible nobility of its hero's death-wish : only at the end, by "revealing" the suicide as a fiction - only a movie - can it finally reject the peace it brings and resolve the tension in favour of Life, despite (though of course because of) the latter's grit and graininess. It's a perfect congruence of style and themes ; though I for one hope Kiarostami can get back to the complex games in time for the follow-up.