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Author: Professor Minghui Peng, Tsinghua University
Link: http://mhperng.blogspot.tw/2011/06/blog-post_29.html
Source: Author Blog
foreword
Taste of Cherry is a 1997 work by Abbas Kiarostami. People who have seen it say that this is a movie that discusses the issue of "suicide". The focus of the debate is: Did the protagonist commit suicide in the end?
Many people said that the protagonist did not commit suicide in the end, some people said that the film did not give any hints about this, and some people said that the film did not provide any reason enough for the protagonist not to commit suicide. [1] And the director Abbas said: "At the end of the film, when the protagonist dies, you see cherry blossoms and many beautiful things, this ending conveys a message: He has opened a door to heaven. He What is done does not lead to hell, but to heaven.”[2]
What is surprising is not that the protagonist died, but that the death of the protagonist could help him open a door to heaven. Is Abbas trying to encourage us to commit suicide? However, if you think about it carefully, the teachings of Christianity hold that physical death is not to be feared, but the existence of the spirit or soul is important. The teaching of Islam is probably the same, but the secular view is just the opposite: try to continue the life of the body, and not care about the death of the spiritual life. Does Abbas want to use this film to guide us to think about the difference and value of these two lives?
Most people like to understand this movie as: the taste of life is as sweet as a cherry, making people reluctant to die. However, it is true that life is more painful than joy, and people who want to commit suicide often do so because they cannot find the meaning of life. To understand life in terms of "the taste of life is so sweet that people are reluctant to commit suicide", will life be too beautified? Is this argument convincing enough to overcome the desolation, loneliness, and no way out of life posed by meaninglessness? Is it really effective to use such a shorthand to save people who want to commit suicide?
I don't believe that Abbas' message through this film is a cheap optimism: "The taste of life is too sweet to kill oneself". Because I know Abbas far more deeply than Hollywood directors. Moreover, what I can feel in this film is more of another message.
Abbas's cinematic world always seems desolate and lonely, not cherry-sweet. The same is true in "The Taste of Cherry": even after the appearance of the old Turk, the scene on the screen does obviously become more beautiful, but there is always a layer of sadness, loneliness and sorrow in that beauty. .
Secondly, although Abbas' film world is often filled with loneliness and loneliness, it is not uncomfortable at all; however, "The Taste of Cherry" is full of barren mounds, and even filled with garbage and dust for a long time. , and the noise of bulldozers and various instruments is even more unbearable.
Before the old Turk appeared, the whole movie was boring. The degree of boredom seriously violated Abbas's film aesthetics: bored to the point of not feeling any poetry, bored to the point of lifelessness. Abbas even gave up his usual long shot and used a close-up shot to stick the entire face of the hero onto the screen, filling the audience's field of vision and making it difficult to see the space outside the car. That sense of oppression made the audience unable to breathe, and even many professional film critics couldn't stand the dullness and boredom of this film. [3]
Abbas said: "My films are often a development of minimalism, omitting everything that can be omitted."[4] That feeling of suffocation should be deliberately managed. However, why do you deliberately manage this unpoetic feeling?
In the face of such a boring movie, in the face of the real situation in life where there is no way out and no idea how to go on, "the taste of life is as sweet as a cherry" is simply a lie, this is what Abbas called "" My Movies Don't Lie"?
What is even more controversial is that after the story of the male protagonist Buddy ended, the screen was darkened for a short period of time, and then Abbas and the staff ran to the screen, and came to an ending with a poor image quality. Most of the professional film critics were outraged at the unintelligible ending of this segment. A typical comment is: Everyone knows that they are watching a movie, and there is no need to use this ending to remind the audience: "What you have seen before is just a movie". [5] Some critics even find the soundtrack's funeral allusions extremely unbearable, as it seems to remind the audience that we are all going to die sooner or later. [6] However, even knowing that critics and audiences were extremely disgusted with the ending, and that the version without the ending was very good when it was piloted in two Italian towns, Abbas still insisted on keeping the ending. How should this be understood?
After watching this movie, I had more questions than I got from the movie. I can only choose one of two possibilities: either Abbas's film is a sham and full of flaws; or Abbas didn't finish his words in the movie and deliberately left clues for the audience to think about.
As he described his films: "Poetic films are like puzzle pieces, and sometimes you just can't put all the pieces together. At this time, you can reassemble in the way you like. It (fragments in the film). Contrary to what the general audience is used to, a poetic film does not give you a clear ending at the end of the credits, nor does it give you any advice.”[7]
Talking about the relationship between the director, the production and the audience, Abbas said: "Different people have different ideas. I hope the audience doesn't mentally complete the film in exactly the same way - it's like solving anagrams, whether it's Whoever solves it, the answer is the same. . . I leave blanks in the film, not waiting for the audience to fill in the answer I want, but expecting them to fill in what they want according to their own thinking.”[8] "I've seen some movies that didn't appeal to me and didn't mean anything to me, but there were still moments and clips that opened up a window for me and inspired my imagination. I often only see half of it when I watch a movie. Just leave because I've seen the end credits that belong to me. My own feeling is full and full, and if I don't leave that feeling will be ruined because it will continue to talk to me and force me to judge who is the good guy , who is the bad guy and what should happen. I would rather end a movie (what I watch) in my own way.”[9]
Therefore, Abbas' films are not places for the audience to have ready answers, but rather a starting point for their imagination. The audience must rely on their own strength to complete their own imagination, and the director and the film's actions are extremely limited. Or a movie is like an airport runway, providing the speed and power we need before imagining takeoff. Therefore, carefully understanding the clues provided by the film still has its value and significance.
However, before discussing the movie, we must first clarify the theme of the movie: suicide. Because, there are two kinds of suicide, which cannot be confused with each other. The reason why there are two kinds of suicide is because people have two completely different lives: the physical life and the spiritual life. The anger of many professional film critics is largely due to the inability to tell the difference between the two suicides.
1. Philosophical suicide and the death of spiritual life
"The taste of life is as sweet as a cherry", this simplistic, light-hearted, sweet, and wishful thinking, was born in the world of Hollywood cinema, which likes to talk about a kind of light-hearted and false suicide and deliberately conflate two different kinds of suicide: Philosophy Sexual suicide, and dramatic suicide.
Drama-style suicides arise from a specific situation or predicament in life (lack of money, loss of a loved one, lovelorn), and it is emotionally difficult for a while, so the idea of whether or not to commit suicide arises. This kind of suicidal impulse, as long as you endure it for a while, often will rain over the sky. It doesn't need a reason to live, it doesn't even need any reason to live, at most a beautiful slogan, or a line full of literary adornment that has nothing to do with real life. Hollywood loves this kind of suicide because it can be packaged in any plot, and it can be used to create all kinds of dramatic climaxes, making the protagonist want to die and live without any serious reason at all--even No reason is required. What's more, it's entertaining, and there's no danger at all—the audience leaves the theater completely satisfied, never thinking about the dangerous question of "Why do people live?"
Philosophical suicide is a universal, persistent question: Is life worth living? Why should we choose to live in the face of desolation, loneliness, and even pain and meaninglessness in our lives? A typical philosophical suicide is as Camus said: "There is only one serious philosophical question: whether to commit suicide or not." Such suicidal motives have nothing to do with temporary emotions or situations, so it is difficult to use specific events (lovelorn, bereavement) As a motive for suicide, it is difficult to use traditional realistic film techniques as a clear story to tell. If it must be said that it has a motive, a source, then that motive or source is the awareness of "meaninglessness": the awareness that there is no serious reason to bear all the misery, hardship, and desolation in life.
Philosophical suicide is a dangerous subject, once provoked, it can never be forgotten, and it continues in agony for a serious and credible answer. It needs a serious and sufficient reason to live, so that people are willing to endure the loneliness, desolation, lack of dignity, and even absurdity and meaninglessness in life.
What philosophical suicide ends with is spiritual survival: announcing the meaninglessness of life, but also a declaration of spiritual death; when the spirit is sentenced to death, it doesn't really matter whether the body continues to survive. As for situational suicide, what it wants to end is the survival of the body: through the end of the physical life, to avoid the current situation; as for the spiritual life of the person concerned, it may have died long ago, or it may have never been born.
In The Taste of Cherries, before the film begins, Abbas writes in bold Arabic: "In the name of God", clearly marking its own attributes: Theology A philosophical, spiritual adventure story.
Then, in the prologue before the feature film begins, Abbas first shows the audience a bunch of people looking for odd jobs on the street. It seems that even just making ends meet is not an easy task in Iran. But is it worth living just to make ends meet and endure all kinds of human suffering (war, separation, even emotional emptiness)? Or do these people have a reason to live that is more valuable, more dignified, and more worthy of life than living? Soon after the protagonist left the street, there was the sound of hammering iron. Although the camera didn't tell us what the hammer-wielding man was doing, he never worked hard for a living. Then, the car completely left the city, and the camera brought the familiar Abbas scene to the audience: the desolate hills that were almost barren. At this time, the voice from the phone booth was still distressed about making a living. This person was so distressed that he ignored the protagonist's good intentions (helping him solve financial problems). Going down to the bottom of the hill, a junk picker uses the most boring and least bothersome way to make money to help his family, and has absolutely no desire to try any other way (bringing a family, surviving). He didn't want to get married, and probably never had any dreams, desires, or expectations about life.
If it's just this kind of physical survival, does it matter that you live? From the point of view of Islamic belief, does Allah forbid suicide simply because the body is to continue to exist?
If life is sacred and cannot be desecrated by suicide, what kind of life is that? Physical? Spirit?
Before the feature film begins, Abbas gives us this prologue to introduce the background of the story, and it is clear that he wants to lure the sharp-minded audience into thinking about philosophical suicide. Philosophical suicide has nothing to do with specific external events, so the protagonist commits suicide for only one reason: the pervasive pain, desolation and meaninglessness of life.
In fact, in this film, until the appearance of the old man in Turkey, all the dialogues, images and sounds are telling us that the hero Buddy can't find a reason to live.
2. No reason to live
Many people are asking: Why did the protagonist Buddy commit suicide? He seemed like a well-educated and thoughtful intellectual, well-off and well-off. Many people even feel that any character that appears in the movie has a more difficult and humble life than the male protagonist, with no way out and no future, and it is not his turn to talk about suicide.
One thing to clear up: Throughout the film, Buddy never says he "has decided to kill himself." He had told the theologian to swallow all his sleeping pills, but what he really entrusted to someone else was to get to the pit where he lay at six in the morning, call him twice, and pull him out if he responded. , and if he doesn't respond, help him cover it with dirt. Therefore, Buddy has already dug a hole, but he has not decided whether to live the next day or not. He may kill himself, he may not kill himself, he has a serious decision to make.
In a 2000 interview with David Sterritt, a professor at Long Island University in New York, Abbas referred to the ending of "The Taste of a Cherry": "It's not about suicide, it's about our right to choose our lives. [10] In the same interview, Abbas added: "Iran's electrical inspection service accepts a fact about this film - it is not about suicide, but about our right to choose our lives: we can End it at a time of our choosing. There is a door that we can open at any time, but we choose to stay in this world. And we have this choice, I think, because of God's goodwill: He gave us this He chose to show his mercy. The people at the Censorship Office were satisfied with this explanation. EM Cioran has done me a great service: "If there was no possibility of suicide, I might have killed myself a long time ago." [11] This film is about the possibility of living, and how we choose to live. Life is not imposed on us, that is the theme of this film.”[12]
Therefore, Buddy's mission or adventure in the film is to answer "Why do people live?" This philosophical question is inherently a life-and-death risk: if it cannot be answered, it may be the death of spiritual life, and if it is answered, it may be the birth or ascension of spiritual life. Buddy lay in the hole he dug not to die, but a life-and-death adventure. Before dawn, he may be able to find a way out and a new life for his spiritual life, or he may die without a spiritual way out.
There is no ready-made answer to this question, no opportunity to take advantage of it, and no one can make this decision for Buddy. He wasn't looking for someone capable of helping him spiritually, but simply someone who would do the physical work: pull him out, or cover him with dirt.
Most people have never seriously faced the question of "why live", they just live nonsensely, live with ambition, live innocently and happily, or endure all humiliation for no reason and live humbly. It cannot be said that this kind of living has nothing to do with spiritual life at all. It may have a vaguely unconscious connection with spiritual life. However, people who have not seriously asked this question will find it difficult to perceive the existence of their spiritual life and how to live their life. So, no matter how dangerous, Buddy had to lie down in the hole he dug and take it seriously.
It's not necessarily the first time in his life that Buddy has faced the question of why he lives, but he's never had the courage to take it seriously (lying in his pre-dug hole).
For example, the first young man who was invited to get in the car and face this problem with Buddy (the soldier's status is secondary). He was too frightened to look at the pothole, let alone face the problem.
We can imagine that the protagonist Buddy was once as young as the soldier, and as a soldier, and also encountered the confusion of "whether or not to live" in an unexpected situation. Maybe there was only one person in the car from start to finish: Buddy. Soldiers are when Buddy was young, when he first encountered the question of "why he was born." The theologian was also when Buddy was not so young. At that time, he also seriously thought about the question of "why to live", but he could only understand it abstractly, but could not really appreciate the taste of life.
Returning to real life, almost every young man who has asked "why live" is so frightened by this question that he doesn't know what to do, just like a soldier in a movie: he is immature, shy, nervous, at a loss, and at a loss. Frightened, in the end, he could only flee in a hurry.
We can imagine that the first time Abbas faced this problem in his life was about the same age as the soldier in the film: a farmer in the countryside who stumbled into this problem unprepared and didn't know what to do. To face it, unable to utter a single word, his head was paralyzed there, blank, let alone trying to say a reason to live.
We can also imagine that when Buddy and Abbas are just entering their thirties and forties, their ability to face this problem will not be much better than the theologians in the film. In the movie, the theologian has too little understanding of the conditions of life, and all he can say is some innocuous hanging book bags. As for the question of "Why do people live?", at most, we can only understand it from the concept of words, but we cannot really feel its meaning or taste, so Islamic theological discourse can't help him. When Buddy asked him, "If suicide is a sin, why not be unhappy? Isn't that a sin when an unhappy person hurts others?" The body is given by God, so people cannot self-harm." Buddy could only answer him: "I don't need a lecturer. If I need a lecturer, I won't look for you, but someone who has completed seminary. Academics, more experienced people.”
In real life, in the face of philosophical suicide, is it really that easy to find a reason enough to convince yourself to live? Especially from young to middle-aged, the easiest thing to find is the reason why people can't live, or don't want to live.
The problem is not the Koran, nor the wisdom of the sages and sages of Islam, but the shallow life experience of the theologians. The taste of life is like drinking water in cold weather, knowing the warmth and coldness: it cannot be expressed in words, and it is impossible to get the answer just from the words or discussions of others. "Why do people live" is not a question of knowledge. What matters is not the "answer", but confidence: the knowledge and confidence accumulated day by day from one's own understanding of life - a kind of life force.
Just like "The Taste of Cherry", before the appearance of the old Turk, all the clues in this film are telling us that "there is no reason to live" for more than half of the time. However, Abbas did not use the dialogue or narration that ordinary people are used to, but the entire film: image, dialogue, rhythm and sound.
Shortly after leaving the Theologian, Buddy had wandered aimlessly on the rolling hills of yellow sand. As far as the eyes can see, it is full of yellow dust and mounds, lifeless and lifeless; all the ears hear are the noises of the machines roaring into the sky, making people feel restless and so irritable that they just want to escape. If there is a door to get people out of this world, why not? ! In Abbas' early films, although life is desolate, the desolation has a deep and heavy poetic feel; although the taste is bitter and unpleasant, it is at least never empty. But until the old Turk got into the car, Buddy's world was dead, dull, monotonous, and lifeless. It's not like an Abbas movie at all, but more like most people's lives.
There may be occasional exceptions: the occasional turtledove (or quail) flying over the wasteland, the water springs and birdsong on the road, the tree planter trying to plant saplings on the loess hill, a group of strangers helping him when the wheels derailed on the road Help the car back to the road where he can continue on, while the cement plant guards and backhoe workers kindly offer him food. In this dead world, occasionally there is a little interest in life; in this desolate loess, occasionally there is a little human warmth.
However, like the guards of the abandoned cement factory, most of our lives are just waiting for a piece of land that is not worth waiting for, and does not need to be waited for, day after day without meaning to live.
Is such a life worth living?
When theology failed to produce a convincing argument, Buddy's heart became more and more heavy, and he was getting closer and closer to the death of spiritual life. In the sand-filled cement factory (or plaster factory), the shadows of sand and gravel on the conveyor belt continued to pour over Buddy's shadow, as if he was about to be buried in advance. Buddy looked at the hole that swallowed all the gravel, as if he was also swallowed in and crushed along with the gravel. In one corner of the factory, gravel and loess continued to slide down the uplifted slope, falling down completely unstoppable, as if it were falling into a bottomless pit. The falling force was unstoppable, falling into the bottomless pit of despair like Buddy.
He sat down in despair, in a thick fog of dust, in a suffocating sand.
He can't find any reason to live! This world is so stuffy that people can't breathe and can't live!
If there is a door to stop his pain, why not open it?
Isn't the existence of this door also the mercy of God? He endowed people with free will, allowing people to choose to live in pain, and because of his free will and ability to bear pain, he achieved the dignity of life; however, He also allowed people in pain to choose to leave in peace, thereby showing his mercy. is this correct? isn't it?
Buddy's spiritual life died in his despair, while he imagined the flesh being buried by bulldozers. A worker asked him, "Why are you here." The answer was clear: Buddy came here to bury himself.
However, very suddenly, the shot is no longer dusty and foggy, but clear and beautiful; and the background is suddenly quiet, only an old and calm voice announces that the third passenger has sat in the car, and the car is parked Next to the hole Buddy dug. Buddy was on his way back.
3. The taste of life
Many people thought that the third old Turk who got into the car rescued Buddy and gave the audience the answer they wanted (or waited for). However, no one knows how the old Turkish man got on the bus: when did he get on the bus? Where to get on the bus? For a long time, I even suspected that there was no one in the car but Buddy, so I could only imagine that the voice came from an invisible being—such as Buddy's own inner voice.
Most of the time along the way, only the old man was talking, and Buddy was silent or listening intently. Have you ever listened intently to the deepest, most subtle and imperceptible voice within yourself?
On the way back, the old man asked Buddy to leave the old road and take another road: "Turn left." "But I don't recognize this road." "I do, it's longer, but the road is smoother and more beautiful. I I have been imprisoned in this desert for 35 years.”
Is this relying on the old to sell the old? Is it still a hint: if you can survive all kinds of pain in life, you may finally be able to get out of the rough and see the smooth and beautiful life?
Buddy was led by an old horse who knew the way and guided him all the way, guiding him on a smooth and beautiful road, and also taking him through the spring that Buddy repeatedly missed. From here, for up to 4 minutes, the car advances on the winding road, and the audience finally sees Abbas's favorite long-lens panoramic view, and the landscape has since become beautiful and poetic.
The old man started the fascinating story that many people will never forget: one day not long after his marriage, he went out to commit suicide before dawn, but because he ate a sweet mulberry, he saw the beautiful morning light and shook his head. The mulberries that fell off a tree were eaten by elementary school students, and he watched his wife who had just woken up enjoying the mulberries with relish, and then he did not want to commit suicide.
Buddy's conversation with the old man went something like this: "You ate mulberries, your wife ate mulberries, and everything seemed fine." "No! Not like that. I changed. After that (a lot of things) were It improved, but (more importantly) I changed my mind. Everyone encounters various difficulties in his life, and life is like this.” The old man went on to say, “Your heart is sick, you must To change the way you see the world." "I left home to kill myself, but a mulberry changed me, an ordinary, nothing special mulberry." "The world is not what you see it, you have to Change the way you see the world."
The world has not changed much, nor has it become so sweet. What has changed is the attitude or angle of looking at the world.
"Have you lost all your vision?" "Have you ever looked up at the blue sky when you wake up in the morning?" Have you seen the moon? Don't you want to see the stars again? On a full moon night, don't you want to see it again?" "Don't you want to drink from the spring? Don't you want to wash your face with it?" "Look at the four seasons , every season bears fruit. So is summer, so is autumn. No mother can fit all the fruits of the four seasons into her refrigerator, and no mother can prepare so much for her children as God does." "You have to say no. All of this? Are you going to say no? Are you going to give up the taste of cherries? Don't, as your friend, I beg you!"
Life is not necessarily full of joy, but it is not necessarily full of pain; life is not necessarily full of sweet berries, but it is not desolate enough to have nothing.
But no matter how much you love the lines, the dialogue in the film doesn't necessarily reflect Abbas's own thoughts accurately. Abbas's later films often have no scripts, but only a few pages of film synopses. He said: "I don't give the actors lines, but as soon as I explain to them what each scene is about, the actors start talking more than I can imagine. I don't know if I'm teaching them what to say, or if they It's teaching me how to accept."[13] Therefore, Abbas's films are more of a collective creation than of a single director. The lines you hear in the movie are probably made up by the actor Abdolrahman Bagheri who plays the old man himself.
Then, the old man told a Turkish joke: a man ran to the doctor and said that he felt pain everywhere he touched his body with his fingers. The doctor said to him: You just broke a small hole in your finger. The old man also sang a Turkish song, to the effect of calling for the happy years of his past to hurry up and save himself in the current difficulties.
These two paragraphs seem to say: When you feel that the whole world has collapsed, it may only be the place you currently occupy; as long as you survive this section, there is likely to be another smooth road ahead.
When saying goodbye to Buddy, the old man expressed in a firm voice that he was sure that Buddy would not commit suicide, and then walked through a beautiful gate, which many people said was "as beautiful as the gate of heaven".
Buddy seemed to be shaken, and soon after he drove away, he quickly turned around, and went back and told the old man again and again: I will throw two stones on me to make sure he is asleep. Many concluded that Buddy's determination to commit suicide was shaken.
Then, Buddy sat outside the Natural History Museum, quietly watching the beautiful sunset. Although the foreground of the camera is a concrete jungle-like construction site and an abrupt and ugly crane, they cannot hide the beauty of the sunset, and even appear less ugly and abrupt in the sunset. An airplane flew in the sky, and a long cloud was drawn from the tail, like the trajectory of life, which crossed the whole picture straight and uninterrupted. Maybe Buddy is recalling what the old man said at the beginning: death is indeed the inevitable end of life, but it is not interrupted halfway. These images seem to be asking Buddy: Are you really going to interrupt your life and not let it go to its own end?
If the old man really affected Buddy's life trajectory, did he make Buddy believe that "the taste of life is as sweet as a cherry", or did he believe that "if you are willing to hold on, you may have the ability to finally walk on a smooth road and see the beauty of life." The other side? Could it be another possibility: life has its own trajectory, and respecting life means not interrupting its trajectory?
The former is to cover up the bitterness that life must have, while the latter two are to give people a reason to be willing to suffer. What does Buddy need in the face of philosophical suicide?
As night fell, Buddy closed the apartment, caught a taxi, headed to the pothole he had dug, smoked a cigarette, and lay down. The dark clouds in the sky are low and moving slowly, but they cannot hide the beauty of the full moon.
Many thought Buddy would wake up the next day, but attentive viewers would hear the rumble of thunder and the occasional flash of lightning across the screen. This night, Buddy's heart will be difficult to calm down. What's more, there is still a torrential rain waiting. A film reviewer said: This coming rain symbolizes the life that is about to recover. [14]
So, did Buddy wake up the next day?
Abbas leaves the answer to the audience to extend their own imagination and choice.
I guess Abbas is well aware of the fact that the director is not a god or a prophet, and he does not need to foolishly try to tell the audience the truth of life or instill an attitude towards life.
Faced with the choice of life and death, what matters is not the answer, but the life experience behind the choice. However, a movie is only two hours at most. It can only be used to outline rough clues at best, and it is impossible to lay out the director's full understanding of life. Therefore, even if the director speaks out his own choice in the film, the audience will not be able to use it.
Is there a way to overcome this inevitable gap between the director and the audience? In "The Taste of Cherry", Abbas's method is: let the audience face the risk of life and death by themselves, and face the decisions that only they can make.
4. A Spectator's Adventure
During Buddy's adventures, Abbas took turns facing the two people in the car with close-up reverse shots, and the people in the conversation often spoke to the camera. Such close-up shots are often oppressive and contribute to the suffocating feeling in the first half of the film. On the other hand, anyone who's been on TV knows: if you're going to make the audience think you're talking to him, you just talk to the camera. Therefore, many times the audience is like sitting in the front seat of the protagonist's car, sometimes facing the protagonist's questioning, and sometimes facing the lobbying of another person in the car.
Jonathan Rosenbaum, who was acclaimed as one of the best American film critics by Jean-Luc Godard, pointed out astutely: In "The Taste of Cherry", the whole film was shot outdoors, even in the crowd, without entering. In any room (the protagonist's apartment or the old Turkish man's studio at the Natural History Museum), but everyone's expression is extremely lonely, as if there is no one else around. This gives the whole film a tone: "On the one hand it presents the most private space - where a person bids farewell to his life in the most subtle self-consciousness, but on the other hand it understands life as entirely belonging to the public and society The realm of the crowd. This places the audience in exactly the same existential situation as the protagonist: contemplating the prospect of a person dying alone in the public space of the theater. It also places the audience in the same position as the three passengers, contemplating how to answer a stranger's request to assist him in suicide."[15]
This arrangement of shots is to deliberately pull the audience into the world of movies, to experience the protagonist's questioning of life and death together, and to allow the audience to measure for themselves whether the various arguments are convincing, and even whether they need to be developed after the film ends. Arguments that convince yourself.
Abbas's purpose is to guide the audience into the life situation of a philosophical issue, not to give the audience a clear answer. Using the power of film and Abbas's unique film aesthetics, the traditional nature of the question "Why do people live" has been completely subverted - from a boring speculation unrelated to a real life situation to a real life situation; It turned it from a pale, empty concept into a sense of loneliness, desolation, suffocation, despair, and an imperfect yet poetic fleeting beauty. From the beginning of the film to the end of the film, we have experienced a mixed life - a condensed and oversimplified version, but far more vividly and vividly than any philosophical work, depicting various aspects of life.
This film lays out the various flavors of life for the audience, not just the clues that "the taste of life is too sweet to make people reluctant to commit suicide". The old man's statement outlines many important life clues, but it is only a very rough and narrow part of the truth of life. Any clues that appear in this film are also an extremely limited part of the truth of life. From the various characters in the prologue, to the soldiers, the theologians, the guards of the cement plant, and the workers who planted trees, all clues have their effect. sex, and its limitations. Abbas used the movie to set up a game, and turned the audience into this game to experience various aspects of life, and also asked the audience various questions and clues, asking the audience to start from these fragmentary fragments, In real life, find out the realization that belongs to you.
The question and answer of life and death cannot be borrowed from other people's ready-made answers. It is like drinking water in cold weather. Movies are the beginning, not the end, of this adventure.
In traditional movies, the audience can stay out of the way and "watch" the protagonist's thrilling adventures without any worries, without taking any risks at all. However, Abbas wants to pull the audience into the film and let them face the risk of life and death by themselves, without giving them any answers - at most some unsatisfactory clues, as imagination and The beginning of an adventure.
Such a creative attitude is very clearly imprinted in the film "The Taste of Cherry", which makes it loosely structured, like an unfinished work that is still unfinished. It is open to the audience, waiting for the audience to complete it in a way that they can convince, or to continue to explore in real life.
Abbas appears with all the actors at the end of the film, and the image becomes rough and illegible. Because real life is far more difficult to tell and more difficult to identify than the story in the movie. No matter what the movie says, it's just a rough copy of real life. Out of the movie, the image becomes blurred, but the real life really begins.
The answer to "Why do people live" is not in movies, but in real life. In the movie, all the clues are very clear because of oversimplification; but in real life, the answer is extremely vague.
"The job of art should be to find the truth of life, that is, to try to get close to the essence of human existence. Each of my films is a key to this destination. The truth is impossible to get, it can only be approached. ”[16]
Abbas was not a prophet, but a poet. He subverts both traditional philosophy and traditional cinema. He turned philosophy and film into poetry, leading the audience to chew on the taste of life. Philosophy is no longer bland, nor pushy salesmanship; and cinema is no longer life-murdering entertainment, or sleight-of-hand deception.
Abbas called his own films "poetic films": "I think the more durable films are poetic films, not storytelling films. In my library at home, novels and Storybooks look new because I only read them once and don't touch them anymore. But poetry collections are scattered around because I'm going to read them over and over again. The next time you read it, you will catch a little bit different depending on your current situation.”[17]
The course of life is not like this: with different ages and changes in mood, our feelings about the present moment of life are always different. Even the question of "Why do people live?" is equally infinitely variable - although there may be a long-term development trend as we get older, making the accumulation of our lives thicker and wider, and making our minds more and more open. The more open-minded and accommodating, the embarrassment, embarrassment, and loneliness that may arise from time to time may end in death.
Abbas' films always seem to have only one theme: epic life journeys and adventures. For Abbas, the course of life is like poetry, not like stories. When the story is over, the imagination ceases. From beginning to end, the story traps the reader in the author's imagination. But poetry is different. Poetry opens the imagination, and poetry calls the reader's heart. Poetry has no boundaries, it guides the reader to the beginning, not the end.
It doesn't matter if Buddy dies or not, what matters is that he is willing to seriously face the question of "why live". More importantly, as an audience, have you begun to think about the question of "why live"?
It doesn't matter what the old Turk said, what matters is that you start to taste the taste of life seriously? Or do you still live in the midst of others, and have never personally experienced the taste of life?
[1] For example, Santas of Flagler College argues that the protagonist is not persuaded, see Constantine Santas, “Concepts of Suicide in Kiarostami's Taste of Cherry,” http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/00/9/taste.html
[2] David Sterritt, “Taste of Kiarostami,” Film Comment, vol.36, no.4 July-Aug 2000. A more complete version of the interview appears at http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/00/9/kiarostami.html
[3] See paraphrase by Dan Schneider, “Taste of Cherry by Abbas Kiarostami” and paraphrase by Jonathan Rosenbaum, “Fill In The Blanks,” at http://www.altfg.com/blog/film-reviews/ taste-of-cherry-abbas-kiarostami/ at http://www.chicagoreader.com/movies/archives/1998/0598/05298.html .
[4] Quoted from Liu Lifang, "Interview with Iranian Director Abbas: The Truth Can Only Be Approached", Beijing Literature and Art Network, http://www.artsbj.com/Html/interview/wyft/ysrw/95698.html
[5] Dan Schneider, the world-renowned host of literary and art websites, was very angry about this ending, see Dan Schneider, “TASTE OF CHERRY by Abbas Kiarostami.” http://www.altfg.com/blog/film-reviews/ taste-of-cherry-abbas-kiarostami/.
[6] The soundtrack is Armstrong's famous trumpet performance, titled St. James Infirmary. The original lyrics are about a man who went to the hospital to see his girlfriend, but found that she was dead, and the tune was brisk and strong. of melancholy. For an introduction to this piece, see this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._James_Infirmary_Blues
[7] David Sterritt, “Taste of Kiarostami,” Film Comment, vol.36, no.4 July-Aug 2000. A more complete version of the interview appears at http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/00/9/kiarostami.html
[8] David Sterritt, “Taste of Kiarostami,” Film Comment, vol. 36, no. 4, July-Aug 2000. A more complete version of the interview appears at http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/00/9/kiarostami.html
[9] David Sterritt, “Taste of Kiarostami,” Film Comment, vol. 36, no. 4, July-Aug 2000. A more complete version of the interview appears at http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/00/9/kiarostami.html
[10] David Sterritt, “Taste of Kiarostami,” Film Comment, vol.36, no.4 July-Aug 2000. A more complete version of the interview appears at http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/00/9/kiarostami.html
[11] EM Cioran was a French philosopher born in Romania in 1911 and died in 1995. This sentence is not to show off mysticism, but to say: because human beings have the freedom to commit suicide, so his life is based on his free will, his choice, not just a destined existence, a kind of freedom without freedom The existence of what can be said (and thus undignified)—whether there is pain or pleasure in it, it doesn't matter.
[12] David Sterritt, “Taste of Kiarostami,” Film Comment, vol.36, no.4 July-Aug 2000. A more complete version of the interview appears at http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/00/9/kiarostami.html
[13] See David Sterritt, “Taste of Kiarostami,” Film Comment, vol. 36, no. 4, July-Aug 2000. A more complete access draft appears at http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/00/9/kiarostami.html . This way of filming was originally intended to accommodate the characteristics of the extras (they did not memorize their lines and acted according to the habit and training of the script), but later it was gradually combined with Abbas's attitude towards the film.
[14] Dan Schneider, “Taste of Cherry by Abbas Kiarostami”, http://www.altfg.com/blog/film-reviews/taste-of-cherry-abbas-kiarostami/ .
[15] A very good film review, the skill of the film critic is indeed worthy of recognition. See Jonathan Rosenbaum, “Fill In The Blanks,” Chicago Reader Movie Review, http://www.chicagoreader.com/movies/archives/1998/0598/05298.html . It is said that in order to make each actor's face show a strong sense of loneliness, the actors did not meet each other during the whole filming process, and many scenes were filmed with only Abbas and the actors present, without the staff, by Abas. Bass drives.
[16] Quoted from Cui Qiao, "Abbas • Cube", http://www.lifeweek.com.cn/2007-01-19/0002917364.shtml
[17] See David Sterritt, “Taste of Kiarostami,” Film Comment, vol. 36, no. 4, July-Aug 2000. A more complete access draft appears at http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/00/9/kiarostami.html .
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