Author: Hao Han, Master of Drama, Film and Television School, Communication University of China
Godard, a giant of modern French cinema, once said: "Cinema begins with Griffiths and ends with Abbas. As one of Iran's greatest film directors, Abbas Kiarostami deserves such a compliment. A Taste of Cherries is one of Abbas's greatest works, winning the Palme d'Or at the 50th Cannes Film Festival. As the French existentialist philosopher Camus put it: "There is only one truly serious philosophical problem, suicide." With such a film that shows the long "road to suicide", Abbas explores the ultimate philosophical issues of life/death, self/other, and deeply explores the modernity experience of contemporary Iranian society with a highly allegorical story structure, thinking and questioning this.
Abbas Kiarostami (22.6.1940 - 4.7.2016)
The story of this film is simple and pure, telling the story of the protagonist Buddy driving around the outskirts of Tehran, looking for the buried body after his suicide. The film follows a classic "three-part" literary structure, recounting three people badi has encountered who have different social identities: soldiers, imams, and professors. The three people who symbolize military power, religion, and knowledge as a deep structure are actually metaphors for the historical process of the Islamic world, from jihad to conversion to religion, to hesitation about the modern intellectual discourse in the West.
From the perspective of visual style, the film shows the "Abbasian" film language: a large number of small scenes (medium and close-up) over-the-shoulder shots show the dialogue in the car space, and the simple "positive and negative fight" allows the audience to focus on the content of the character dialogue and identity understanding. At the same time, the long shot of the big view (big vision) shows the movement of the car and the extension of space, and the long shot of the subjective perspective shows what the protagonist sees and knows, laying out a modern Iranian world that is real and subjective, familiar and strange in Abbas's eyes.
Poster of "The Taste of Cherries"
Borrowing the constant flow of the protagonist Buddy in the car, Abbas shows the dilapidation and desolation of the modern Islamic world in the outskirts of Tehran. Whether it is the construction of a large civil city, a huge garbage dump or a smoke-filled factory, the film is intended to show that the modernization process has flooded Iranian society.
There is an impressive passage in the film: Buddy emerges from the car and stands in the roaring quarry of the machine, at which point the camera disappears Buddy as the protagonist, turning to the mechanical rubble like a river and the huge shadow of the machine, and The shadow of Buddy and the image projected by the modern machine are intertwined and entangled in the huge shadow. This passage is a metaphor for the complex relationship between Buddy as an individual life and the machine as the representative of modernity. Abbas intends to show that modernity not only transforms the living/productive space of the Iranian people, but also transforms the psychological space and value orientation of the Iranian people. In addition, western ideologies related to modernity have gradually penetrated into Iranian society and changed the Iranian people's perception of self/other, society/state, and interpersonal relations and social relations have been changed by the logic of capitalist production.
As an Islamic state, religious creeds remain strong in Iranian society. Religion's inhibition of human nature is essentially at odds with modernity at the core of Western Enlightenment. The ideological system established by the Iranian state on the basis of the teachings collapsed in an instant under the strong impact of modernity, thus showing struggle and confusion, that is, the "painful" transition from the so-called "pre-modern subject" to the "modern subject", and this contradictory attitude is deeply reflected in the wandering of the protagonist Buddy in the film when facing "suicide".
Stills from "The Taste of Cherries", pictured is the protagonist Buddy
Buddy's modern act of searching for the buried man/meaning of life (confirming the value of the individual) is contrary to the advice of the three men to him. All three persuaded them to renounce suicide on the basis of their teachings. Buddy's struggle between life and death is a manifestation of the conflict between "modernity" and "pre-modernity" behavior. At the end of the film, Budi realizes the enduring meaning of life, establishes individual values, and shows Abbas's hopes for Iranian society.
Although abbas's embrace of modernity is shown at the end of the film, the epitome of modernity in the film where Buddy looks along the way — factories, quarries, and large machines — is in an extremely desolate environment. This desert-style choice of space is undoubtedly a metaphor for Abbas's fears about the crisis of modernity in Iranian society. In the film, Buddy is blinded by the huge dust raised by the production of "modernity" in the quarry, and at the same time, as a symbol of modernity, it also devours "pre-modern society" and "pre-modern subjects".
Closely related to the Islamic self-modernity and premodernity, the film shows a wariness of Western culture. In the opening part, Buddy drives to the edge of a huge dump, staring at a slow-moving scavenger in the depths of the landscape. The scavenger passes through a huge garbage pit and is summoned to Buddy's side, and the bright red sweatshirt on the scavenger's body contrasts with the yellow garbage pit with a monotonous background. Abbas again uses the dialogue to draw the viewer's attention to the scavenger's clothes, and Buddy asks the scavenger if he knows the English letter "UCLA" (UCLA) on the sweatshirt, and the scavenger says he does not know.
Stills from "The Taste of Cherries"
The intent of this plot is clear: to contrast the old, visually nostalgic land with the new, visually fresh clothes. What catches the eye in the picture is the output of the advanced civilization of the West represented by American culture (UCLA, as the top university in the United States and even the world, can be regarded as a powerful cultural symbol). The practical color of Western culture, that is, through the mouth of the scavenger, confirms the "beauty" of this sweatshirt, but the scavenger can hardly understand the meaning of "UCLA". This represents Abbas's anxiety about the invasion of Western culture, and the Iranian society that blindly pursues modernity is unconsciously caught in a "delicious" but highly paralyzed Western culture, forgetting the memory of traditional civilization. (Hao Han)
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