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Taste of Cherry: A Sincere Understanding of What it Means to be Suicidal

Manasa Veluvali

TW: Suicide, Depression

Taste of Cherry (Ta’am-e-Gīlās) by the Iranian auteur Abbas Kiarostami is a film that grapples with what is an ethically controversial topic in an Islamic country: suicide prompted by depression. 

Film critics are largely divided in their opinion—some think it is a masterpiece, some think it is far from it. For the uninitiated viewer, particularly, the film may seem drone on one, with endless shots of barren Iranian landscapes with a Range Rover winding around hills, enough to lull one to sleep. Long shots with little action in them are quite characteristic of Kiarostami’s cinematic style, but it is not just the the uninitiated viewer who finds it hard to watch such a film; Roger Ebert, one of the most revered film critics, found it ‘excruciatingly boring.’  However, regardless of what happens in the world of film critics, I contend that Taste of Cherry is a precious artefact to clinical psychology. 

Unlike most films about mental illness, Taste of Cherry does not focus on the possible causes of the mental illness, coming to terms with it, seeking help, coping with it, or life after mental illness. In its entirety, this film is about suicidal ideation itself, sans the before and the after. Ruminating over a singular theme for all of 95 minutes can sound extremely morbid, but this film is anything but. It neither demonises nor glorifies suicide, but simply shows us what it must be like. And it does so with minimal elements and neat cinematography that is easy on the eyes; one could even say this film is meditative, in a sense. The brilliance of this film lies in how the cinematic elements lend themselves to the symptoms of suicidal tendencies. 

We encounter Badii, a somewhat wealthy middle-aged man, driving around the Iranian countryside in search of a daily wager; he has a small job to assign, and 200,000 tomans to give away, which is a large sum. It takes a while before the user is given to understand what Badii has planned. It transpires that Badii has a peculiar job for the labourer: he has planned to down several sleeping pills, he has a plot ready for his burial, and all he needs is someone to bury him, for the money in return. Over the course of the film, he encounters six people, each of whom he invites into his car for a ride and a conversation. For a man who seems to have made up his mind, he has another curious request; he asks the labourer to call out his name a few times first, to throw mounds of earth into the grave if no response is heard, but to help Badii out if he does respond. Ambivalence regarding such a decision is common among people who are suicidal (Butcher, Mineka and Hooley, 256). 




Watching this film is an alienating experience in itself, making the viewer experience what it might be like to be in a suicidal state of mind, not in a way that is frantic or violent, but simply reserved and calm, having made peace with their decision, but still helplessly alienated from others, perhaps by their own accord. What is also striking about this strong isolation is that it is never conveyed by dialogue or plot, but only through the the visual frames and sounds in the film. Badii is almost always filmed inside his car, and rarely placed in the world outside it. There is no dialogue that suggests that he might be alienated, but we can see it. This is quite often the case with suicidal patients, a withdrawal from those around them. 

We see the surroundings filmed from inside the car, and the car becomes the physical barrier between himself and the world outside. Every stranger he talks to, he invites for a ride, again placing the characters inside the car, but hardly outside. Badii does not interact with the world outside unless absolutely necessary. Moreover, the film heightens the isolation by placing only one character in the frame in almost all scenes, with the exception of the initial and final scenes. Even when conversing with others, Badii is never seen in the same frame as them. Visually, one can only imagine Badii alone. 


The complete lack of information regarding Badii makes the film all the more poignant—it does not prioritise a cause of depression, or a way to be suicidal. The depiction of Badii makes it universally understandable, regardless of why one feels depressed and suicidal, or whether they want to commit to such a decision. The ending of this film is ambiguous, but I do not think it is required to make sense of what precedes it. Here is an artistic representation of how suicidal behaviour manifests; it is not preachy, it doesn’t seek to cure, but it makes the state of suicidal ideation something that can be understood like any other phenomenon, without the grief and shame associated with it. 



Works Mentioned

Abbas Kiarostami (dir). Taste of Cherry. 1997. 

Butcher, J., Mineka, S., and Hooley, J. Abnormal Psychology. 15th Edition. Pearson Education. 


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