Staging the Absurd: Camus’s Myth of Sisyphus in Kiarostami’s Taste of Cherry

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Assistant Professor of English Language and Literature, Department of Foreign Languages, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, Shahid Bahonar University of Kerman, Kerman, Iran.

2 Master’s student of English Language and Literature, Department of Foreign Languages, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, Shahid Bahonar University of Kerman, Kerman, Iran.

Abstract

Abbas Kiarostami’s 1997 film, Taste of Cherry, presents a profound philosophical problem through its famously controversial ending. By abruptly shifting from the protagonist's existential crisis to behind-the-scenes footage of the film's own production, Kiarostami shatters the narrative illusion, forcing the audience to confront questions about artifice, reality, and meaning. This paper undertakes a comparative analysis of Kiarostami's cinematic work and Albert Camus’s philosophical essay, The Myth of Sisyphus, to argue that this ending is more than a stylistic choice. Using Camus's specific formulation of the absurd—particularly his concepts of revolt and the absurd creator—as its primary theoretical lens, this study examines how both works grapple with the human condition in a world devoid of inherent meaning. The analysis concludes that Taste of Cherry performs a complete staging of Camus's philosophy. It first dramatizes the core responses to the absurd through its character encounters and then, through its meta-ending, embodies the ultimate act of the absurd creator: the repudiation of the artwork itself. In doing so, Kiarostami's film becomes not just a depiction of the absurd, but a direct, cinematic confrontation with it.

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