Taste of Cherry

Recently deceased Abbas Kiarostami's 1997 film Taste Of Cherry is generally considered one of his masterpieces. It is a simple story of a man under duress who drives around the outskirts of a city in Iran looking for someone who will assist him in his suicide attempt where he is planning on taking a large amount of sleeping pills and lie in a open grave he has dug. The assistant must come the next day and check to see if he has survived and if not he want the assist to bury him in the grave. There is much philosophical musing with his would be assistants. This was famously un-loved by Roger Ebert who called the film "excruciatingly boring"-but he gets almost universal praise from other critics. It is certainly an art film and of the "slow cinema" school, but it is great cinema-there are some amazing sequences throughout the film even though most of the film is people talking in a car. Furthermore, there is a controversial ending that serves as a sort of epilogue to the story that is likely to frustrate most viewers. It is certainly not for everyone.