If you venture down the winding road of art house films, past the German expressionism, Italian post-war neorealism, and the French new wave, you will eventually find a man by the name of Abbas Kiarostami. Few people have heard of him, but many of them will attest to the importance of his films. In 1997, Kiarostami released a movie by the name Taste of Cherry. In Taste of Cherry, a man drives around an Iranian land, meeting people and conversing with them over topics that rarely extend beyond the menial. The film would eventually win the prestigious Palme D’or award over other acclaimed movies like Titanic, Perfect Blue, Good Will Hunting, and Boogie Nights.

Taste of Cherry has a very simple story - which some called one-note, but is what makes the movie quite special. The story is that of a man named Mr. Badii, who plans to die by his own hand and wants to hire someone to bury him under a cherry tree. The film follows a non-linear structure, sometimes veering from conversations into an amalgamation of visuals and sounds. The Iranian lands are portrayed in such a way that few details are lost; the hills, cityscapes, shacks, and roads are all filmed for such a long period of time that Kiarostami seems to imitate life. People around Mr. Badii go about their days without paying any mind to him. Mr. Badii could very well be some extra in another movie that Kiarostami filmed.

Kiarostami is neither concerned with the present or the future of his films, only the past. He wants his audience’s minds to drift and to be bored, because the experience of watching a boring film is quite hard to forget. That is not to say that the entire film grows tedious, though - not by a long shot - as it is truly a celebration of life. In the film, Kiarostami attempts - successfully in my experience - to portray some undeniable essence of life. As Mr. Badii stares into the sky and watches the clouds pass over the moon while a thunderstorm starts to build in the background, it’s hard to really imagine that life could ever be a menial thing. It is ironic that Mr. Badii wants to be buried under a cherry tree, and yet is willing to give up on what the fruits of that tree taste like. It is also ironic, then, that he sees the clouds rolling over the moon while he waits to drown in the rain.