CDXLIII - a strange path
last night i watched
Ta'm e guilass / A Taste of Cherry
(written and directed by Abbas Kiarostami 1997, DVD-R of a Criterion)
This Iranian flick was pretty good, but at times was almost tedious...Very engaging from the beginning. The film starts with a middle aged man, Mr. Badii, in a range rover driving slowly around a city looking for something, looking for someone.....as he passes groups of out of work men he looks at them all, regards them all and drives on...this goes on for some time until the man finally happens upon a man that he picks up and tries to offer a job to, an extremely high paying job, but the details he won't divulge.
As the film wears on we realize that Badii is wanting to commit suicide and is trying to hire, with all of his earthly wealth, some one to show up after the deed is done to bury his body (as Muslim law requires for one's afterlife to be all squared away).
Once this is realized in the film it started to dawn on me that each person that the man tries to hire is representative of a type of ideology or line of thinking about death and life, about whether one should care about other people or himself, morals, ethics etc, etc. The film covers a lot of this sort of territory without the viewer ever realizing what is happening because all of the emphasis is on whether or not Badii is going to be able to pull it off or not. Super good story and writing.....a pretty clever film....
Ta'm e guilass / A Taste of Cherry
(written and directed by Abbas Kiarostami 1997, DVD-R of a Criterion)
This Iranian flick was pretty good, but at times was almost tedious...Very engaging from the beginning. The film starts with a middle aged man, Mr. Badii, in a range rover driving slowly around a city looking for something, looking for someone.....as he passes groups of out of work men he looks at them all, regards them all and drives on...this goes on for some time until the man finally happens upon a man that he picks up and tries to offer a job to, an extremely high paying job, but the details he won't divulge.
As the film wears on we realize that Badii is wanting to commit suicide and is trying to hire, with all of his earthly wealth, some one to show up after the deed is done to bury his body (as Muslim law requires for one's afterlife to be all squared away).
Once this is realized in the film it started to dawn on me that each person that the man tries to hire is representative of a type of ideology or line of thinking about death and life, about whether one should care about other people or himself, morals, ethics etc, etc. The film covers a lot of this sort of territory without the viewer ever realizing what is happening because all of the emphasis is on whether or not Badii is going to be able to pull it off or not. Super good story and writing.....a pretty clever film....