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I must confess that I was a latecomer to the work of celebrated Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami; now I’m a devotee. He is a master storyteller who opens our eyes to the humanity of his native culture while exploring universal emotions and conflicts.

Taste of Cherry is one of his most provocative films. He wastes no time with preliminaries, pulling us immediately into the agitated world of its main character, Mr. Badii (Homayoun Ershadi, who a decade later would do such a wonderful job as Baba in The Kite Runner). A well-dressed man, he drives a Range Rover around the outskirts of Tehran, a look of desperation on his face. The reason: he is looking for someone who will promise to bury him after he commits suicide.

He is willing to pay a handsome sum, but suicide is a sin, and one by one, the people he tries to convince turn him down. The man who finally agrees to perform the task turns out to be something of a philosopher.

Kiarostami tells us precious little about Mr. Badii, yet we learn a great deal about the people he meets during his frantic search…and we acquire a tangible sense of place as he drives from the bustling city to its arid outskirts and back again.

As Stephen Holden wrote in the New York Times, “Mr. Kiarostami, like no other filmmaker, has a vision of human scale that is simultaneously epic and precisely minuscule. While each of the men Mr. Badii approaches is a vivid, autonomous individual with a rich personal history and an innate sense of dignity, each is also seen as part of the human anthill.”

The movie asks us to ponder what life is about—and what it’s worth. Mr. Badii seems to have attained some level of success but it clearly hasn’t brought him happiness. The security guard at a construction site whom he accosts could surely use the money he is offering, but he refuses to have anything to do with his outrageous scheme. A soldier responds the same way.

In this contemplative context, Kiarostami deliberately confounds the viewer by leaving the outcome of his story to our imagination. It is a curious ploy that caused a number of critics to denigrate the film, in spite of its reception at the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Palme d’Or. I can neither defend nor explain the finale, but I also cannot allow it to undermine all that has preceded it. Taste of Cherry is a haunting film with moments that have stayed with me for years.

133. THE THIRD MIRACLE

(1999)

Directed by Agnieszka Holland

Screenplay by Richard Vetere and John Romano

Based on the novel by Richard Vetere

Actors:

ED HARRIS

ANNE HECHE

ARMIN MUELLER-STAHL

MICHAEL RISPOLI

CHARLES HAID

JAMES GALLANDERS

CATERINA SCORSONE

BARBARA SUKOWA

JAMES GALLANDERS

JOHN-LOUIS ROUX

KEN JAMES

I honestly don’t know how actors do what they do. They endure constant rejection, and then, if they’re lucky and achieve some measure of success, they have to choose between commercial projects that will pay the rent and keep them in the public eye, and smaller, more personal films that offer deep-down satisfaction. The smart ones find a way to navigate between both worlds, as Ed Harris does.

Still, I’m sure it’s frustrating when someone puts his heart and soul into a movie that nobody sees. Sometimes, when I mention such a film during an interview, I feel as if I’ve touched a raw nerve, reminding the actor of something that once meant a great deal but didn’t pay off. While I was talking to Ed Harris about National Treasure: Book of Secrets, I brought up The Third Miracle and said I was sorry that it had flown under the radar. “That was a really nice movie,” he said, and smiled when he mentioned the name of its director, Agnieszka Holland. “My last film with Agnieszka was Copying Beethoven…it didn’t even get to the radar. But The Third Miracle was a really nice film.” Then, after a pause, he added, “I’m very proud of that film, actually,” as if warming to the memory of it.

Based on a novel by Richard Vetere, The Third Miracle deals with a priest (Harris) who is assigned to investigate a supposed miracle in a working-class Midwestern