Updated 6 December 2006
English 212, Section 3: World Cinema
Week 15: 4 December 2006
Professor: Don Larsson
6:00-6:20 Quiz 8 (South America, Africa)
6:20-7:00 Backgrounds to Iranian film
7:00-8:40 View Taste of Cherry
8:40-8:50 Break
8:50-9:30 Discuss A Taste of Cherry
FINAL EXAM:
§ Same time, same place
§ 30 questions (3 points each), taken from readings in A History of Film and class notes
§ One essay question (from several choices, 30 points), dealing with
o General trends in particular national or regional cinemas
o Defining features of particular film movements
o Common elements in a director’s work
o Specific elements of narrative, meaning and style in individual films
Iranian Culture and History: An Overview
Strong sense of national identity and pride stretching back to ancient empires:
559-330 BCE: Persian (Achaemenid) Empire
220 BCE-226 CE: Parthian Empire
226-651 CE: Sassinad Empire
674: Islamic Arabs complete conquest of Persia
Area maintains Persian (Farsi) language instead of Arabic
Middle Ages: Includes invasions from Central Asia
Seljuk Turks
Mongols under Tamerlane
1501-1736: Safavid Empire
Establishment of Shi’a Islam as state religion
17th-20th Centuries: Iran focus of interest for European powers,
especially Britain and Russia,
but never
colonized
1921: Army officer Reza Khan takes power in coup, proclaims
new Pahlavi Dynasty as Shah (King)
1953: Reza Khan’s son, Shah Reza Pahlavi, forced into exile by
Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh
Mossadegh overthrown in coup backed by U.S. C.I.A.,
Shah reinstalled in power
1979: Revolution forces Shah from power, Ayatollah Kohmeni
becomes head of new Islamic Republic, American
embassy seized by demonstrators and workers held
hostage for over a year
1980-1990s: War with Iraq
2005: Moderate political forces defeated in presidential
election
of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
Shi’a Islam:
§ Begins after death of Prophet Mohammed
§ Sunni Muslims support successor from community of leaders
§ Shi’ite Muslims support successor from Mohammed and cousin/son-in-law Ali (“shi’a” from “shi’at Ali”—“Party of Ali”)
§ Shi’ites live in most Muslim countries but as minorities
§ 90% of population in Iran
§ Authority comes through the “12 Imams” who descended from the Prophet
Koran
The holy book of Islam, believed to have been revealed to
have been revealed to Mohammed by the angel Gabriel
Hadith
“Sayings” of the Prophet, second in importance only to
the Koran itself
Iranian Film
§ Tradition of state sponsorship of filmmakers, dating from 1930s
§ Lack of training institutes and facilities
§ Competition with films from West, Muslim proscriptions against making of images, etc.
1960s: Shah encourages
filmmaking as part of movement toward
modernization but also practices heavy censorship
1969: The Cow, directed by Dariush Mehrjui, becomes first major film of Iranian “New Wave”
1972: Shah establishes Tehran International Film Festival
1979: Shah overthrown, many filmmakers leave Iran
But new Islamic Republic also establishes Farabi Cinema
Foundation to support filmmaking that does not oppose Islamic values (Ayatollah Khomeni: “We are not against cinema; we are against prostitution”
Iranian films deal with social issues through some direct portrayals but also through allegory, putting issues in children’s films and fantasies
Major Directors:
§ Moshen Makhmalbaf: The Cyclist; The Peddler; Once upon a Time, Cinema; Salaam, Cinema; Gabbeh
§ Jafar Panahi: The Key, The White Balloon
§ Samira Makhmalbaf (Moshen’s daughter): The Apple; Blackboards; At Five in the Afternoon
§ Marzieh Meshkini (Moshen’s wife): The Day I Became a Woman
§ Rakhshan Bani-Etimad: May Lady
Abbas Kiarostami
§ Began as editor and screenwriter
§ Many films produced for Center for Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults
§ Neorealist in use of locations, nonprofessionals, etc., but also favors long takes, little dialogue
§ Later films become self-reflexive—movies about moviemaking
o 1987: Where is the Friend’s Home?
o 1989: Close-Up
o 1991: Life and Nothing More
o 1993: Through the Olive Trees
o 1997: Taste of Cherry (banned until won Palm d’Or at Cannes)
o 1999: The Wind Will Carry Us
§ Has stated that purpose of films is to “raise questions”
TASTE OF CHERRY (Iran, 1997)
Director: Abbas Kiarostami; Screenplay: Kiarostami; Cinematography: Homayun Payvar; Editing: Kiarostami
Cast: Homayon Ershadi (Mr. Badii); Afshin Khorshid Bakhtiari (young Kurdish soldier); Mir Hossein Noori (Afghani seminarian); Abdolrahman Bagheri (Mr. Bagheri, the Turkish taxidermist)
Summary: Mr. Badii, a middle-aged man, is looking for someone to help him fulfill his desire to kill himself. He wants that person to check in the morning, and—if he is dead—to bury him or—if he is alive—to help him out of the shallow grave that he has dug for himself. He approaches one man but is chased away before he can explain himself. A young Kurdish soldier runs away from him, and a young Muslim seminary student attempts to persuade him to change his mind. An older Turkish man (actually from the ethnic Turkish-speaking region of Azerbaijan), Mr. Bagheri, finally agrees to help him because he needs the money for his ill daughter, but he also tries to convince Badii that life is worth living. At the end, Badii lies down at night in his grave, but we do not learn whether he dies or survives. The film ends with a video outtake from a scene of the film being shot.
Questions for Discussion:
1. Why does Mr. Badii want someone to help him commit suicide—or is that what he is really after?
2. In a structure like a fairy tale, Mr. Badii asks 3 men to assist him. How does each respond and why?
3. What is the significance of the long takes of Mr. Badii driving his car?
4. What is the real ending of the film and what does it suggest?
DISCUSSION SUMMARY
From an
interview with Kiarostami
http://www.iranian.com/Arts/Aug98/Kiarostami/index.html :
Happiness and sadness are intricately tied. Beneath any layer of despair, there is hope and a reach out for happiness.At the same time, beneath any kind of happiness there is a layer of anxiety and despair. So I see this as a cycle of life, happiness and despair go with one another and not as separate. . . . Realities generate their own opposite and this must be viewed in a dialectical way. At the depth of sadness one seeks for happiness and at the height of happiness one has to court the reality of sadness.
Taste of Cherry presents us with a series of questions like those mentioned above, but it does not answer them in a definitive way. In this, the film carries on the Modernist tradition of European art cinema that we saw with Bergman’s Persona. Unlike Bergman’s film, though, the questions raised are not so much about what actually happens in the film as why they happen. In particular, Mr. Badii’s desire to die is never really explained. We are only told that he is afraid that he will take out his own pain on others close to him. Otherwise, we know very little about him except that he seems relatively well-off, having money to pay anyone who will help him, and he was once in the army. Otherwise, we do not know if his motive for suicide comes from depression, from work, from family, from illness, from political motives, or from any other cause.
That lack of specific knowledge brings to the forefront the basic issue that Kiarostami wishes us to confront: Is it better to live in (emotional or physical) pain, or simply to end it all? Suicide is strictly forbidden in Islam, as in Christianity and Judaism (the film does not address the issue of death in the service of religion, which motivates some of the suicide bombers who call themselves Muslims today), but modern writers and thinkers have engaged this issue for a long time. The question of whether it is better to live or die under certain circumstances is the central point of the famous “To be or not to be” soliloquy in Hamlet. Sigmund Freud claimed that the “life instinct” that drives most human activities (especially through sexual desire) was countered by a “death instinct” that desires pain, sensation, action and movement to cease. The French philosopher Albert Camus claimed (in The Myth of Sissyphus) that suicide was “the only true philosophical problem.” Kiarostami uses Mr. Badii’s situation to bring us back to that most basic problem.
At the same time, from the beginning Mr. Badii is a bit like Hamlet himself, unable or unwilling simply to act. He wants to guarantee that he will be either alive or dead by having someone check on him in the morning after he takes an overdose of sleeping pills and lies down in his own grave. He seems thoroughly committed to his course of action, but we can’t be certain if he really does wish to die. When invited to eat an omlet, he complains that eggs “are bad” for him, and he seems to be afraid of a rickety ladder that he climbs. Still, he seems almost hypnotized when he stops by a construction site to watch dirt and rocks pouring down, filmed so that they engulf his own shadow, seeming to enact the burial that he wants.
Each of the people he approaches for help is reluctant to help him. The worker that he first reaches out to seems to regard him as a sexual pervert or something similar and threatens him. The young solider that he picks up does not want to get involved in the scheme and winds up running away. The young Muslim cleric that he also takes for a ride objects on religious grounds, even though Badii points out that he would not be aiding the suicide itself and that he has not yet finished his religious training. Finally, the old Turkish/Azerbaijani man accepts Badii’s offer because he needs the money, but even he tries to change Badii’s mind. Mr. Bahgeri had once considered suicide himself, but he was stopped when accidentally ate some mulberries off the tree where he was going to hang himself. The taste, along with the rising sun, and school children asking for berries themselves all stopped him and made him reconsider the goodness of life.
The film follows an almost fairy-tale like structure, with each encounter leading Mr. Badii closer to his action but mounting stronger and stronger arguments against it. The young cleric invites Badii to a meal, to enjoy the goodness of a simple omlet. Mr. Bagheri takes the point further. Those on the “other side” (of Death), he says, will envy the living. (The American poet Wallace Stevens suggested something similar when he said that the non-physical dead will “observe/ The green corn gleaming and experience/ The minor of what we feel.”) And Mr. Bagheri’s statement seems to have an effect. Mr. Badii comes back to him. Before, he had asked his possible helpers simply to call his name softly twice before they buried him. Now he asks Bagheri also to toss pebbles at him and even to shake him to make sure that he is dead or alive.
Many viewers and critics have taken that as the final message of the film—that something as simple as the taste of cherry can make life worthwhile. And the film does not disprove that, but it does not prove it either. We seem Badii go out in the dark of the night and lie down in the grave. He watches the moon through the clouds, and we hear the sound of thunder and rain (usually symbols of life and renewal), and Badii closes his eyes. Does he ever open them? We never know.
What we do know is that we have been watching a film. The movie ends with video footage shot on location while the film itself was being made. We watch the actor who plays Badii smoke a cigarette and talk to Kiarostami and crew members. We see extras playing soldiers taking a break. We have gone from life to possible death to “real” life representing these life-and-death issues as a film. But the very last thing that we see is Mr. Badii’s Ranger Rover off in the distance going around a turn in the road. Is he driving away? Or is he continuing to search for someone to help his pain, or to help him die? If the journey of life continues, we all know that the journey for each of us will end sooner or later. The final music that we hear is the old blues standard “St. James Infirmary” as recorded by Louis Armstrong. Kiarostami has explained his “second” ending this way:
I was afraid that if I ended the movie where Mr. Badie laid down on his grave the spectator would be left with a great deal of sadness. Even though I didn't think the scene was really that sad, I was afraid that it would come out as such. For that reason I decided to have the next episode where we have the camera running as Mr. Badie was walking around. I wanted to remind spectators that this was really a film and that they shouldn't think about this as a reality. They should not become involved emotionally. This is much like some of our grandmothers who told us stories, some with happy and some with sad endings. But they always at the end would have a Persian saying which went like this "but after all it is just a story!"
“St. James Infirmary Blues”
I went down to St. James
Infirmary and saw my baby there.
She was stretched out on a long white table – so sweet, so cold, so fair.
Let her go, let her go, God bless her, wherever she may be:
She can look the whole wide world over and never find a sweet man like me.
Now, when I die, bury me in my straight-leg britches, box-back coat and a
stetson hat
Put a $20 gold piece on my watch chain, so the boys'll know I died standing
pat.”
As one final point, it is interesting that the three men who ride in Badii’s car and whom he tries to hire are all members of ethnic minorities in Iran. The Kurds are the largest ethnic group in the world without their own homeland, divided mainly between regions of Iran, Iraq, and Turkey. “Kurds are a brave people. You must be brave!” Badii says, but the young soldier is shy and softspoken and ultimately afraid of this man’s outlandish request. The Afghan cleric seems to be a man who has found his own peace through religion despite the hardships that his country had endured for centuries, mostly recently in the war that drove occupying Russian forces out of the country (setting the stage for the Taliban to take power—but that too is not an issue in his film). He does not harangue Badii for his decision but tries to convince him to talk his problems out, to let others help him live rather than die. And the old Azerbaijan/Turk looks like a world-weary man, one who has seen and experienced too much. He agrees to do the job—but he argues forcefully for life—but it turns out that he is a taxidermist who kills and stuffs birds for a nature center. In the midst of the garden-like atmosphere of his workplace, he is still involved in death.
In short, Kiarsostami leaves us with no easy answers. Every time he seems to come to a solution, or even an end to his film, he pulls it away from us and gives us something else to think about. That is an effect of the “distancing” that the director says he wants. Unlike other films made to entertain by catching up our sensations and emotions, Kiarostami wants to view events (like that Range Rover going around the curve) from a distance, with dispassion—not boredom but an ability to consider what the film is trying to say and what’s it meaning for us is.
One final point: As with filmmakers in Africa, Latin America and elsewhere who have had to make their films have an “allegorical” level of meaning to get around government restrictions, it might be possible to regard Taste of Cherry as doing the same thing in Iran under the rules of the Islamic Republic. Kiarostami has hinted at that in the same interview cited elsewhere here:
. . . for us as artists and filmmakers what we are dealing with are the realities of restrictions and I like to approach it from that angle. . . .We have to always live within certain boundaries. Life is the combination and movement between restriction and freedom -- the field of action is limited, the field of power is limited, when we were kids we were always told what we could do and what we couldn't and how far we could go in doing things we could. . . . Most of the time we seek an excuse for running away from the responsibility. Restrictions give us this kind of excuse. Therefore, unfortunately, we seek energy from these boundaries set for us. I don't want to imply that these limitation are good and should be there, but we have been brought up with these and it is in our mentality. This is not limited to my profession -- it's in every profession, creativity is a necessity and limitation makes people more creative. I have a friend who is an architect. He tells me that he is at his best professionally when he designs structures for odd lots because these lands do not fit into the normal patten and he has to work within a great deal of limitations. So, he must be creative and he enjoys this. It is these restrictions that provide an opportunity for people to be creative.