Pink Asparagus

9/10

Every problem has its solution. But if you don’t talk, no one can help you.

Taste of Cherry is a beautiful slow-moving drama that follows the pallid Mr. Badii as he drives through Tehran looking for a laborer willing to take on an unusual high paying task. The movie highlights the vastness of Iran, and the world. At every turn we hear the ambient noise of the city, jokes, orders, other cars, the dirt under Mr. Badii’s wheels, the differences between being a child and having a child, and everything else you would hear if you were there with him driving towards a mysterious end. He asks three people, of varying ages and occupations, to carry out this task, but only the third has the courage to agree.

I had left to kill myself, and I came back with mulberries. A mulberry saved my life.

This is an ideal watch if you’re looking for something contemplative but not intrusive or overwhelming. Maybe heavy thoughts are easier to explore when the person sharing them is driving down the same road and landscape again and again. I wish that in my four years of taking university philosophy classes, I had been shown this at least once. Camus is no match for Kiarostami. All of these ramblings mean to say that I have so little to write because the movie has left me with so much to think about…

If you’re not sold on watching the film, at the very least watch this clip…