The Palme D'Or was shared in 1997 between The Taste of Cherries, and Shohei Imammura's The Eel. The two films are in many ways negatives of each other; Eel chronicles a rebirth in many ways while, Cherries narrates the slow progression of an ending. The award is evidence of Kiarrostami's continued popularity with Western critics. This has been a double edged sword for the filmmaker; although widespread interest in his films has been generated, it has often resulted in reductionist readings of them that avoid discussions of Persian and Middle Eastern culture.
One of the most marked aspects of the film is its simplicity. Working form an extremely spare premise and limited number of set-pieces, Kiarrostami speaks volumes about the human condition in general and Iranian society in particular. The triad of encounters that the main charater has serve to clearly delineate positions from the state (the soldier) religion (the religious student) and science (The taxidermist). There is no trickery, no artifice, no manipulation, virtually no story and no pretense whatsoever. Kiarrostami has stated that the era of cinema as a storytelling medium has ended and that responsible cinema today must pose questions. This certainly the case with his latest effort which leaves the viewer contemplating a number of philosophical contradictions.
The tone of the film is as persistent and stubborn as its protagonist. There is a refusal not to continuously challenge the viewer to question any assumption. For instance, Kiarrostami spends the first twenty minutes virtually without a piece of dialogue and no expository information about the main character. This opening sequence invites the viewer to exhaust every possible cultural stereotype that comes to mind concerning this man's motives before finally revealing his true intentions. This patience and willingness to engage the viewer are trademarks of the Iranian director's style.
The ending of the film has been read in a number of ways and is bound to frustrate some viewers. In some ways Kiarrostammi plays a similiar trick as Araki in Nowhere. The endings of both films sabotage the narrative in ways that may appeal to a commercial audience (for cursory reasons) but that leave a final dilemma for a more active spectator. All of these considerations lead to a major film for 1997 and one that we can be shocked, and greatful, even found its way to Ottawa.
-Omar Odeh geocities.com/Hollywood/Theater/3920
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews