Taste of Cherry Ending

Hey Folks,

I searched for this but couldn’t find anything.

So, what’s up with the ending of Taste of Cherry by Kiarostami? I watched the film a couple nights ago and fell in love with it. Wow…

Then the ending. I have no problem with it. None at all.

So my question is what you all think about it in terms of Kiarostami’s decision to include it? And if you have some quotes by him regarding the ending, that would be sweet.

Peace,
Christopher

taste of cherry ending is great and i think anything else make it half-baked and imperfect

I’m not sure. Rebirth? To property understand this film I think you have to be able to get close to Kiarostami’s ideas of Islam (generally positive, I believe) and his ideas of westernization (more negative). His films convince me that it is folly for westerners to pretend the understand Iranian culture. Ain’t so easy as just slapping our half baked ideas of “freedom” on the world.

From this interview

“I understand how difficulty you have comprehending the last scene of this movie. I sympathize with you. But this has been deliberate on my part. In “Taste of Cherry” I have tried to keep a distance between my spectator and the protagonist. I didn’t want spectators emotionally involved in this film. In this film, I tell you very little about Mr. Badie, I tell you very little about what his life is about, why he wanted to commit suicide, what his story is I didn’t want the spectators get engaged in those aspects of his life. For that purpose I had to keep Mr. Badie away from the audience. So he is a distant actor in a way. First I thought to end the movie at the point when he laid down on his grave but later I changed my mind. I was uncomfortable to end it at that point because I was very concerned, and am always concerned, about my spectators. I do not want to take them hostage. I do not want to take their emotions hostage. It is very easy for a flim-maker to control the emotions of spectators but I do not like that. I do not want to see my audience as innocent children whose emotions are easily manipulable.

I was afraid that if I ended the movie where Mr. Badie laid down on his grave the spectator would be left with a great deal of sadness. Even though I didn’t think the scene was really that sad, I was afraid that it would come out as such. For that reason I decided to have the next episode where we have the camera running as Mr. Badie was walking around. I wanted to remind spectators that this was really a film and that they shouldn’t think about this as a reality. They should not become involved emotionally. This is much like some of our grandmothers who told us stories, some with happy and some with sad endings. But they always at the end would have a Persian saying which went like this "but after all it is just a story! . . . The very last episode reminds me of the continuation of life, that life goes on, and here the audience is confronted with the reality they had hoped that Mr. Badie would be alive and there he is a part of nature and nature still continues and life goes on even without Mr. Badie. And if one could really think about being or not being present in life, or if one thinks about it in terms of the real implication of such presence, one might not in fact engage in committing suicide at all. The person committing suicide might think that s/he is taking revenge from the society, nature, life, powers to be, and so on. But s/he don’t realize that after a suicide life still goes on and things stay the way they are. I could interpret this in a different way. If my audience is as creative as I imagine them to be, they can take this in a variety of interpretations and I can sit here and every time make a different interpretation of it, as every time one can creatively reinterpret the reality. "

Thanks for sharing, Matt! That’s exactly what I was looking for. I’ll read the entire interview soon….

Jodorowsky did it first in “The Holy Mountain.” It was a sly trick ending, but far from original and inventive.

Ugh… Really? We’re doing this now? It is not brand new and is therefore not good? Seriously? What utter bullshit.

How many novels and plays had self-referential endings and content decades, if not centuries before even the first film? Hundreds? Thousands? An uncountable number? Are we then to say any film that every film that contains a self-referential ending isn’t original and is just using it as a “trick”? No, because that would be stupid. As is saying one film did it before Taste of Cherry so the film should be dismissed as a trick, and unoriginal.

Absurdity.

I can also say that Jodorowsky was no innovator himself.

Seconding Colonel’s post.

‘sly’, ‘trick’, ‘original’, ‘inventive’?

The Holy Mountain?

Who cares?

Let’s go easy on Nathan W, since this is nonverbal communication and we don’t know the tone of his comment.

On the other hand, no one said it was “original and inventive,” so your comment is a bit critical, Nathan.

I simply wanted to discuss it in and of itself, independent of film history. As Col. Dax and Law suggest, it’s all about the effective use in technique, whether original or conventional.

Peace….

Jodorowky was no innovator? Are you fucking kidding me? That’s absurd to say the least.

He without a doubt created some of the most mind blowing films ever created.

He was an innovator to say the least. He revolutionized the medium. There are very few who ever achieved what he did, and Taste of Cherry certainly doesn’t get close to the pinnacles of Jodorwosky’s acheivement.

Nathan, do you not agree that the self-referential ending had been used before The Holy Mountain?

And regarding the merits of The Holy Mountain, they are truly debatable. To flatly state that The Holy Mountain is objectively better than Taste of Cherry is fallacious.

I’m not sure if the ending was used before the Holy Mountain, but I could be wrong. I have’nt heard any other movie that used the same technique.

I personally don’t believe Taste of Cherry has too much merit. I agree with Ebert in that the film is torture.

Now The Holy mountain on the other hand is amazing, but…. I’ll save that for a different more appropriate threat.

I believe that there are many novels and plays that use self-reference, an example being Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera.

Novels and plays are not films. And specifically they did not have the ending of having the camera crew exposed to the audience.

It’s still the same idea though, don’t you think? Brecht’s distancing effect has had a large influence on quite a number of filmmakers.

Long shots of vans driving around barren hills.

Close-up shots of guys driving around inside a van.

This is what happens in his movies.

Getting back to the ending, the characters the protagonist talked to throughout the film tried to convince him why life is worth living, and the style of the film itself provides an answer. Yes, it’s very slow, but life sometimes is slow. If you can just stop and enjoy the things that are around you, life becomes worth living. At the end of the film, the actor is, if memory serves, playing with a flower, just enjoying himself.

The point is to say: Forget about “What does this mean? What is the purpose?” Just enjoy it!

That’s just my opinion. It’s been a while since I’ve actually seen it.

Sound effects include tires on a gravel road.

Jason: Are you saying films aren’t allowed to have that?

Also, watch Close-Up

Wow, I’m so surprised that Nathan and Jason didn’t like this film. So surprised.

I watched this crap on youtube.

I was considered buying “The Wind Will Carry Us”. It has a great title. I go to youtube to check it out, and its like the sequel to Taste of Cherry.

“I watched this crap on youtube.”

*sound of toilet flushing

Has anyone seen my respect for Jason Trochesset? It was here a minute ago…

Just watched Taste of Cherry… At first it was good. I liked It got into the idea and concept… But it went downhill and turned into crap.
I read Kiarostami interview on his ending about how he wanted to remind people that it’s just a film but what the hell that’s why I watched it to see a film. I want death and depth not some bullshit ending reminding me that I just watched some man driving around for the past hour in an un-scenic land scape with a poor script. Anyway that’s just my take on it.

Haha. Jason, yes the sound effects! Ground breaking stuff.

“I’m not sure if the ending was used before the Holy Mountain, but I could be wrong. I have’nt heard any other movie that used the same technique.”

Right… so, the entire decade previous The Holy Mountain with films by Nagisa Oshima, Jean Luc-Godard, and a bevy of other young, new filmmakers all making use of Brecht’s use of alienation and, specifically, self-referential content somehow happened after the Jodorowsky film? Check out The Man Who Left His Will on Film (1970) and then tell me The Holy Mountain (1973) was the first film to use self-referential content.

Also, decades before any serious art-house film made use of self-referential material comedic films (and many of the Warner Bros. cartoons) constantly made reference to their own profilmic events.

Again, Jodorowsky wasn’t an innovator. The content of his work is in novels, plays, and cinema made years before him. Luis Bunuel, Man Ray, and many of the French Surrealists of the 1920’s-30’s made use of his style of storytelling (as well as many of the avant-garde filmmakers in the U.S. in the 40’s (i.e. Maya Deren)) years before him and his form of self-reference had already been a part of film history when he began using it.

Even if one argues Jodorowsky is a great filmmaker one can easily argue that no filmmaker has been all that innovative in the art realm. The theories and ideas present in film have been present in the art world before even the first film was ever shot. But again innovation doesn’t mean it’s good, it just means it was first. To devalue a film simply because it had predecessors is to devalue the entirety of any and all art for the last few centuries, which is stupid.

Duck Amuck is far more “mind-blowing” than Holy Mountain:

Can we go back to talking about Taste of Cherry now?

Personally, as a viewer I liked “Cherry” and its pace and tone…with the exception of the ending.
Both in terms of narrative disruption and visual ugliness, the end scenes took me out of the film entirely.

I found the fade-out at the grave to be perfect. It was the fulfillment (however dark) of Mr. Badie’s wishes, accompanied by the rain gently falling as he lay down, as if the sky was both weeping and singing a song for him at the end. Then again, that is the straight narrative, and something Mr. K evidently didn’t want.

Kiarostami is an interesting filmmaker and seems a very smart man based on interviews, so I can’t carp about his choices for his own works as he has his reasons for them. It is a case of where I just didn’t feel it or ‘get into it’ when it came around, and not for lack of trying.
I did like the film enough that I was tempted to do the “bad thing” and simply shut it off at the fadeout at a second vieweing, but I didn’t fall that far…:-)

Love this film! Question though: I remember someone whispering behind me at a screening that the music at the end was “St. James Infirmary”…but I don’t think it is. Anyone know?

Paul:

It is. It’s Louis Armstrong’s recording of it.

The pacing was perfect, and I actually found the ending to be beautiful. To discredit the film for “originality” is one of the more ridiculous things I have ever heard, and instead of being bogged down by just arguing about self-referential moments, there are many other things (as we know)-stylistically or thematically- that can be copied, but this really doesn’t matter. What Kiarostami said about distancing the viewer from Mr. Badii, however, didn’t resonate with me. As said in the film, we all have had problems, and likely, most of us at some point or another have contemplated suicide: For this reason, as equals of the human condition, I automatically related to and associated with Mr. Badii. “In this film, I tell you very little about Mr. Badii, I tell you very little about what his life is about, why he wanted to commit suicide, what his story is. I didn’t want the spectators get engaged in those aspects of his life.” To become too attached with why and how would be unnecessary, so the brilliance in the film came from its simplicity, and what I thought, was our ability to form some sort of connection to both the character and the land.

The ending detached from the film thematically, and displayed beauty for the viewer in just watching people run in the distance, and in the simplicity of sitting around on the grass. It was necessary to add this in for the viewer to be able to appreciate beauty, not only in the story, but in actuality as well. The art itself becomes an entity, belonging to the object of thought rather than to the thinking subject. People seem to need a medium to translate, and the ending was breaking that wall. People can see a photograph of something they pass by everyday and become raptured by it, but when they are actually living in the moment, do not notice it. For Kiarostami to put the end scene in, to me was not a “reminder” that we are just watching a film, but the simple reality of life outside of the film and it’s beauty. We didn’t need to see the environment through the lens used throughout the film to appreciate it. The landscape itself did not change, just the external factor, so to see the beauty in the landscape but only through the lens that was used throughout the film, is seeing beauty in the object—the camera. Mr. Bagheri himself, in a way, became a victim of his environment, and it was only until he tasted the mulberries that he realized that beauty, happiness, and fulfillment can come from such a simple thing. This is what he was all about, appreciating the earth and all that it provides for you. He told Mr. Badii to take the longer but more beautiful route on their drive, and this was metaphorical for life.

Another great aspect of what I thought the film exposed was the kind of society that we live in, and this was similar in Close-Up as well, exposing what it’s like “to live in a society which citizens are walking lies, because they can’t follow their dreams, and when they want to be themselves, they are perceived as liars.” Both films have protagonists who are mis-understood. The first two men Mr. Badii met, as said, could sympathize with him, but not understand his pain. They tried to convince him that suicide was not the best route by imposing their beliefs. Mr. Bagheri, on the other hand, could understand his pain, but did not feel sympathy for him. He was going to follow through with the act if Mr. Badii did commit suicide, but wasn’t going to try to stop him, because nothing could be done.. Mr. Bagheri, through experience, could only offer his advice, but did not judge.

of course, the ending is to be interpreted how you wish.. Mr. Kiarostami said this himself, so this is what I’ve extracted from it, and why I love the film.