Abbas: Taste of cherry

Another great film directed by Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami. The taste of the film is hard and bitter at the beginning, but becomes soft and sweet at the end. The wisdom and life-loving is the tastebud. In his fifties, wealthy Mr.Badii had his last journey in his SUV car, to look for someone to help him end his life, offering a very good pay. He looked exhausted, suffering, and downcast. His eyes had no shine at all. Three men, a young kurd soldier, a mid-aged Afghan seminarist, and an old naturalist, entered his car, listened to his request, and had various reactions. No one is willing to accept the weird idea, except that the last old naturalist was open to the possibility to collaborate with him. Actually the old man preferred to save his life to earning the money, and he has the ability to convince Mr.Badii at his old enough age.

To have the ride to his working place, a Natural history Museum, the old man ask Mr.Badii to choose a longer but more beautiful path, and on the way, he led Mr.Badii for every turn. All these are symbolic. In the autumn sunshine, everything is warm colored, the earth, the grass, and the trees... It is fabulous rural scenery in a golden season. In this journey, the old man told the story how a delicious mulberry saved his life when he managed to kill himself by roping under a mulberry tree. Unintentionally he touched something soft in the tree. He ate one. It was succulent. Then a second and third. Suddenly he noticed that the sun was rising over the mountain, and heard the children going to school. The children came to ask him to shake the mulberry tree to drop mulberries for them. Then he gathered some mulberries to take them home, to his wife. Although everything was the same, what changed was his mind. He felt happy. An ordinary, unimportant mulberry saved him.

He told Mr. Badii, “your mind is ill, but there is nothing wrong with you. Change your outlook. The world isn’t the way you see it. Look at things positively”. “have you ever looked at the sky when you wake in the morning? At dawn, don’t you ever want to see the sunrise, the red and yellow of the sun at sunset, don’t you want to see that anymore? Have you seen the moon? Don’t you want to see the stars? The night of the full moon. You want to close your eyes? The people on the other side would like to take a look here, and you want to rush over there? Don’t you ever want to drink water form a spring again? Or wash your face in that water? If you look at four seasons, each season brings fruit. No mother can fill her fridge with such a variety of fruit for her children, as God does for His creatures. You want to refuse all that? You want to give it all up? You want to give up the taste of the cherries? Don’t. I am your friend, I am begging you…” He sung a Turkish song before he got off the car,

“My love, I am flying off, come to me.
I am hounding from my friend’s garden, come to me.
From happy days before, I’ve fallen on hard times, come to me. Tell me, we barely know each other.
You go, I am your friend.
You stay, I am your friend too.”

After the old man went to his job in the museum, to teach the kids of the quails killed, Mr.Badii was put back to the edge to reflection on his plan. Around him are the real people and vivid life. He saw the yellow and red of the sunset, and its last flash on the horizon. In the early next morning, he drove to the pit hole he had prepared for himself. The remote is the city light and the voice of dogs and brids. He laid down inside, opening his eyes. The moon, the thunder, the wind, the rain, the bird, the leaves…the screen becomes dark in the rain….following the sound of a group of army men doing morning exercise, we saw Mr.Badii walked on the hill to the filmmaker Abbas….the movie switched to a documentary of the filmmaking. The army men were dismissed on a hill, playing with flowers. The jazz-like melodious music pops up, and Mr.Badii’s car was driving away the scene.