taste of iran

a few weeks ago i watched "a taste of cherry." it's an iranian movie by a director who has a new movie starring juliet binoche at cannes. or will have it at cannes. i have no idea anymore about when movie festivals are. anyway, this cherry one recieved top prize at cannes in 1997, so that's a recommendation.

the color palette of "a taste of cherry" was this:



almost zero green or red. even the sky was dusty and orangey/yellow.

there's a main character and you find little out about him except that he wants to die, he doesn't want to talk about why, he's dug himself a grave on a hillside near tehran, he plans to climb into the grave and take waaaay too many sleeping pills and die. he is driving around the countryside near tehran hoping to hire someone to bury his body, or, if his plan fails, to help him climb out of the grave.

he picks up three men. the tone is hard to read. i dont' have a lot of experience with middleeasterners or with middleeastern culture, it seems things are more forward and less polite, but maybe it was the translation.

so he picks up a young soldier from kurdistan who won't do it because he's nervous about the morals of society. then, after fighting with a construction worker about having an omelette or tea together, he picks up a young cleric-to-be from afghanistan who won't do it because of god. last he picks up a taxidermist from turkey who will do it, but you find that out only after the taxidermist tells a long story about how a berry from a mulberry tree made him believe life can be worth living when he was a suicidal man in his youth. although predictable, this story was not cheesy because of the "cliche for a reason" clause. mr suicidal drops mr taxidermy off at the natural history musuem after showing him the grave and showing him where his payment will be. he says, call my name twice and if i don't answer, throw dirt on me. then he leaves. but after driving for a few minutes, he turns around again and runs back to the museum to say, call my name six times! so it seems like he might have bought the mulberry song.

you don't see him take any pills but you do see an great shot of him in his apartment, it's one of those shots where the camera doesn't move and the one person in the shot moves all over the space and it's very interesting. he drives to the grave and gets in. it starts to rain and thunder, and that's it, you never know what happens. i fell asleep before he got in the grave so i had to rewind.

it was an okay movie.