Moving Narratives 2 - 22nd March - BAFI202

Wednesday 22nd March 2017                          Moving Narratives 2                     Kaz Rahman

Screening "Taste of Cherry"                     Genre - Drama                    Director - Abbas Kiarostami

The film itself I found pretty haunting, the way that the main character "Mr Badii" is planning to kill himself but he needs someones help, he's on an adventure around the wasteland to discover the one for the job.

The narrative for this particular film made myself remember the story about the good samaritan, within the film itself I guess it could be argued that the man meets 5 characters along the way, "Mr Badii" the main character plans to kill himself but he wants an assistant to help and pour dirt over him. He first meets the man in the phone box who basically says back off or ill smash your face in, a young soldier in training who is scared off, a young international student who doesn't think killing yourself is the answer, the machines in the industrial site where we watch his sillouette get covered with dirt from the machines and finally he meets the taxidermist who agrees to help Mr Badii to kill himself.

There is a great sense of time throughout this film, the way the camera moves around the windy road, the jump cuts throughout the film, in particular once the international student disagrees to help Mr Badii he is dropped back off at the place of pickup, we are shown a mid shot from inside the door with the student in the frame, the door is shut and then we cut to a tracking shot of the car along the windy road, although we can hear the voice of an old man who later on we work out to be the taxidermist who offers his services to aid with the suicide of Mr Badii.

The colours within this film are predominantly dark for the scenes with Mr Badii, in particular the scene at the end as we watch Mr Badii enter into the dark hole that he has made for himself to lay at rest and kill himself. Bright light can be visually seen for the shots of the car as it travels up to the top of the hill where Mr Badii takes the three main actors to show them where he has dug this mysterious hole to lay in and die. Overall I would say there is a mixture of dark and light colours used to re-enhance the location for the film, the rough landscape, the cinematic style works well to enhance the culture within the film.

Sound is used cleverly, there is quite a lot of dialogue but I feel like music is somewhat minimalistic which builds up to the jazz piece at the end for the end scene which overall is self reflective. There are a lot of sound effects which help to bring the visuals alive, the loudest noises are within the industrial site and we can hear the dirt being poured into the quarry.