In Taste of Cherry, Abbas Kiarostami builds a story that looks simple on the surface: a man drives through the hills outside Tehran looking for someone willing to bury him after his death.
Kiarostami speaks of death to remind us of the taste of life. That sentence may be the best way into a film we have been discussing for years.
The camera explains little and observes much. Frames often leave something out, and that absence creates meaning. Sound tells as much as image—sometimes a distant noise rewrites an entire scene.
The performances are unshowy and exact. No moment is built to display skill; everything serves the people on screen. Perhaps that is why, years later, faces linger longer than lines.
The film doesn’t answer; it sharpens the question. The ending neither ties the knot nor abandons us—it sends us out with a question that walks us home.